Dolf Zillmann

Born in the former Province of Brandenburg, in the now Polish town of Meseritz, Zillmann's birthplace was highly contended, changing hands between German, Polish and Soviet forces throughout the duration of the Second World War. Much of his early educational experiences in the Western region of Poland took place in underfunded and understaffed educational institutions. Within Poland, roughly 20 percent of the population over the age of 10 were illiterate. Many of the primary schools had been closed, instead being utilised as hospitals for soldiers. Those schools that were open were highly filtered and structured through the Nazi ideology for the education of Slavs.

With his Father's conscription into the war, later death, and the contention in the area his family resided, Zillmann, along with his mother and sister, spent the majority of the war fleeing violence, leading to poor living conditions throughout most of his youth, irrespective of his family's affluence in Meseritz. Eventually, he and his family would settle in Marburg, a university town in the Hessen Region of Germany. Zillmann was self-taught, his only means of gaining an education due to the widespread post-war resource shortages.

Zillmann would continue on to higher education studying German architecture at the Ulm School of Design, a new Bauhaus School of Architecture which had been re-opened by the Swiss architect Max Bill after its closure by Nazi authorities during the war. After the acquisition of his diploma in architecture in 1955, he began working with Max Bill, entering architecture competitions in Zurich, beginning city planning in Isfahan, and designing and planning several public projects in many other European cities.

Zillmann would go back to formal study at the Ulm School, studying in the fields of communication and cybernetics, engaging with many different academics in the field outside of Ulm such as the German aesthetics philosopher Max Bense at the University of Stuttgart and Professor of visual science Herbert Schober at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Zillmann would acquire his diploma in communication and cybernetics in 1959 while also working as a scientific advisor for a holding company in Zurich. …

Zillmann has conducted research in media psychology and communication for 30 years developing a wide range of psychological and communications theories and models. His research has been in a range of domains, these include:

The three-factor theory of emotion proposed by Zillmann is an advancement of Schachter's two-factor theory model, which proposed that emotion and emotional excitation was the product of both one's interoception of internal physiological stimuli (e.g. blushing, sweating or shaking etc.) and the environmental stimuli (e.g. media, people or danger etc.) which one is currently engaged with. This cognitive approach to emotion emphasised context specific emotional appraisal and cognition in relation to the stimuli present in the environment along with the internal states one experiences to cognitively formulate the most appropriate emotional response in a particular circumstance. In Schachter's two-factor theory, as Reisenzein (1984) posits "physiological arousal is necessary for the experience of an emotion (feeling), but not for emotion-related behaviour. Zillmann combined Schachter's cognitive approach to emotion with Hullian Drive Theory, particularly in regards to Hull's concept of 'excitational residues' in the cognitive process of emotional responses, implicating that both present and prior excitatory stimuli affect both excitatory levels and emotional cognition. However, Zilllmann argues that the individual is usually unable to recognise this residual effect of prior stimuli on current response, leading to a disproportionate response to a current stimulus. It is from this three-factor theory of emotion Zillmann would construct the foundation of his Excitation Transfer Theory, which he attributes as his most significant contribution to the field of media psychology.

Zillmann's excitation transfer theory posits that residual emotional excitation from a particular stimulus will be carried over and applied to another stimulus. The excitatory response one has to the following stimulus will be in proportion with the levels of prior excitation from the first stimulus upon exposure to the latter, resulting in an over-exaggerated response to an otherwise low or moderate excitatory stimulus. …