Psychological Perspectives on Advertising  (PSYC 267)    S.J. Gilbert, SUNY-Oneonta, Spring 2008

Listed below are 98 "propositions" concerning how advertising works, taken from a 1978 book by Stuart Henderson Britt.  The propositions are organized according to the categories explicated in Chapter 6 of that book (your Reading A-2), namely: ATTENDING, PERCEIVING, LEARNING & REMEMBERING, MOTIVATING, AND PERSUADING.

Some propositions for understanding advertising, from Britt, S. H. (1978). Psychological Principles of Marketing and Consumer Behavior. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. The identifying codes (e.g., E-1, E-2) are mine. The numbers following the identifying codes are the pages in Britt's book containing his discussion of the propositions, and the research (as of 1978) supporting them.

EXPOSING

E-1 (48-49) COMPATIBILITY. The members of an audience are more likely to be exposed to a message or medium that is compatible with their beliefs, activities, and lifestyle, than to a message or medium that is not.

E-2 (55-56) REPEATING EXPOSURE AND ATTENDING & PERCEIVING. The more often a message is exposed to audience members, the more likely they will attend to and perceive the product or service advertised.

A-1 (64-65) COMPLEXITY. A more complex message will not have as high a level of attending as a simple one, unless it is novel or is of high interest to the audience.

A-2 (65-67) CONTRAST. A message containing a contrast to the environment in which it appears, is more likely to result in attending by members of an audience, than a message that is harmonious with the environment.

A-3 (69-70) MATERIAL DESIGN. Audience members will more likely attend to materials that are based on good design characteristics -- balance, proportion, sequence, unity, and emphasis -- than those of poor design, with the exception that if the materials are very badly designed, then attending will occur.

A-4 (73-74) INTERNAL CONSISTENCY. Audience members will more likely attend to a message if the primary attention-getting device (e.g., headline in a print ad) facilitates an understanding of the ad and complements its ideas, than if this device is used only to gain attention and competes with the message content.

A-5 (76-77) INTENSITY. An intense message will be more likely attended to by audience members than a message that lacks strength and emphasis.

A-6 (79-80) ATTENTION SPAN. An audience member's attending decreases as the length of the message increases, other factors, such as interest, being equal.

A-7 (88-89) EXPECTANCY. Past experience often determines what is attended to and can prevent attending to messages that are not expected or to which members of the audience are not accustomed.

A-8 (94-95) SOCIAL VARIABLES. Audience members attend more to messages featuring models of the same sex, race, ethnic group, socioeconomic group, than to messages which don't.

A-9 (96-98) NOVELTY VS. FAMILIARITY. People attend to moderately novel stimuli more than to familiar ones, but they like familiar ones more than novel ones. Novel stimuli are most likely to attract attention in audience members whose personality characteristics incline them toward novelty, and in audience members with no particular message-type preference at the time of exposing.

P-1 (108-109) RELATED EVENTS. A message is partially defined by the nature of the events to which it relates; the audience member can relate, to some extent, any given communication to current events and situations.

P-2 (110-111) EDITORIAL ENVIRONMENT. The greater the similarity between the message's editorial environment and the message, the greater is the degree and accuracy of perceiving of the message by the audience.

P-3 (111-117) CONGRUITY. The greater the congruity or consistency among message elements, the greater are the chances that the entire message will be perceived by the audience as the communicator desires.

P-4 (117-118) INCONGRUITY. Incongruous elements in a message are more readily perceived than congruous elements.

P-5 (120) MISATTRIBUTION IN HUMOR. Humor may serve to separate the content of a negatively arousing message from its affect, by deflecting the affect to involvement in a comedic situation. Thus, the negative arousal is not carried over into the psychological process of perceiving and dealing with the actual message.

P-6 (121-123) EQUIVOCALITY. The more a message lends itself to multiple interpretations by the audience members, the more they will rely on past experience and expectations in interpreting and organizing their impressions of that message.

P-7 (130-131) ACCESSIBILITY. Highly accessible categories are more likely to be successfully used than less accessible ones. Accessibility is a function of the degree of the audience's previous familiarity with stimuli falling into the category in question.

P-8 (134-135) AMBIGUITY AND MISINDEXING. MISINDEXING is the outcome of erroneous perceiving. It occurs when stimuli are assigned by the audience to a category other than the category the communicator desires. This usually happens when the category the audience chooses is for them more accessible and/or less ambiguous than the one the communicator desires.

P-9 (135-136) PRIOR-ENTRY EFFECT. That stimulus or message that utilizes a certain distinguishing feature first will be considered the original by audience members; all other messages that emphasize the same feature will be compared with the first. The risk always exists that the second message will be considered the imitator and that the audience will attach a negative connotation to it.

P-10 (136-137) CONFIRMATION BIAS. Once a tentative categorization of a message element has been made, openness is limited to cues that will confirm the categorization. Once confirmation has been completed, incongruent cues are either normalized or gated out, assimilated or rejected by the audience.

P-11 (137-138) STEP-ECONOMIZING. With repetition of a message and familiarity with its elements, the audience becomes capable of economizing the steps of perceiving. In future messages, each cue may be represented less frequently (e.g., 1 15 second version of a 30 second commercial), and the perceptual process will retain its rapidity and efficiency.

P-12 (141-143) RELEVANCY OF STIMULUS INFORMATION. In considering the composition of the entire message, the communicator will do a better job of inducing "proper" perceiving by the audience if main cues employed to get attention are related to the main product features and message points, than if the attention getting cues are irrelevant to the primary intent of the message.

P-13 (149-150) FUNCTION OF SYMBOLS. The function of symbols is to economize the quantity of referents needed to express a concept, and to evoke a group of ideas in the minds of the audience members for the message of the communicator.

P-14 (150-152) COLORS. Because of the associations audience members have established regarding different colors, a consistent and significant relationship exists between the colors used in a message and the meanings that may be attached to the message. Colors, then, have a psychological effect upon and a symbolic meaning to each audience member.

P-15 (152-154) VALUE ADDED. Messages which associate an object with actions or attributes valued by the audience, will alter the perception of the object. Such associations will cause the audience members to perceive the object as intrinsically more valuable (i.e., better).

P-16 (154-155) BRAND IMAGE. An audience member may come to perceive an item as more valuable or better than other items because of perceived brand distinctions, created through advertising which associates particular "added values" (see P-15, above) with particular brands. "Brand Loyalty" results.

P-17 (159-160) PERCEPTUAL CONSTANCY. Audience members tend to perceive messages in the way they are accustomed to perceiving them, even though the stimuli change; that is, audience members preserve a relatively stable image of reality in a world where things are constantly changing.

P-18 (160-162) POLARIZING. Audience members need to establish a definite (clearly structured) stance toward a message. Thus, they tend to interpret the message (and the item advertised) in such a way that they either definitely will or definitely will not feel a personal relation or liking for the item or message.

P-19 (162-163) POLARIZING OF MODELS. If a model (person) is shown or described in a message, audience members tend to polarize their experience of connection to the model's experience; that is, they view the model as definitely like themselves, or definitely not like themselves. Thus the model's behavior and experience become definitely relevant or not relevant to the audience members.

P-20 (164-165) ASSIMILATING. If the audience is presented with a message that seems only slightly different from their previously established opinions and attitudes, they often will perceive the message to be closer to their opinions and attitudes than it actually is.

P-21 (166-167) CONTRASTING. If the discrepancy between the message viewpoint and the audience members' viewpoint seems large, the message viewpoint will be judged as more different than it actually is from their own ideas.

P-22 (169-172) VALENCE AND POTENCY. Valence refers to the correspondence of a message to an individual's needs, interests, and values (i.e., internal forces). Potency refers to ability of message stimuli to cause audience members to attend to the message. The more valent and potent a message, the more accurately and completely it will be perceived by the audience.

P-23 (173-174) PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE. When faced with an anxiety-producing or ambiguous message, audience members tend to distort the message by perceiving it to be or mean something less negatively arousing.

P-24 (176-178) OVERSELL. A message which promises benefits that surpass what is credible to the audience, will be perceived more negatively than one which remains below the audience member's threshold of incredibility.

P-25 (183-185) SELF-IMAGE. The greater the similarity between the self-images of the members of an audience and their images of the message, the greater will be the motivating of the audience members toward the message.

P-26 (186-188) COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY. Leveling occurs when a stimulus is perceived as having more symmetry, less irregularity, and less incongruity than it objectively has. Sharpening occurs when one element of a message is perceived as more prominent (and other elements as less) than it really is. People low in cognitive complexity tend to level and sharpen more than people high in cognitive complexity. Thus, they distort messages more.

P-27 (188-189) DEMOGRAPHICS. People differ in attitudes, values, cognitive styles, and personality, in part as a function of age, sex, socioeconomic class, and ethnic background. Such differences affect how audience members perceive, learn, are motivated, and are persuaded by messages.

P-28 (189-191) CULTURAL INFLUENCES. A message is more likely to be perceived as intended by the advertiser, if the message is consistent with the norms and expectations of the cultural framework in which the audience members function at the time.

L-1 (204-206) PASSAGE OF TIME. After an item or message has been learned to some extent by an audience member, passage of time is associated with a decrease in the audience member's retention of that item or message.

L-2 (206-209) REPETITION AND OVEREXPOSURE. Repetition aids in the learning of a message, but repetition of identical messages beyond a critical point causes overexposure, with no improvements in learning.

L-3 (209-211) CONTINUITY OF VARIED STIMULI. The audience's learning and remembering of a message is enhanced by repetition with slight variations in the message. This ensures no loss of meaning through over learning of a single repeated message.

L-4 (211-214) PRIMACY AND RECENCY. Audience members experience greater learning of items at the beginning and end of a message than for those in the middle.

L-5 (216-218) DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE. Distributed repetitions of a message are more effective in causing audience members to learn the message than massed repetitions of the message given a certain number of initial exposures.

L-6 (225-229) SEMANTIC GENERATION AND SEMANTIC SATIATION. Continued repetition of a meaningless word generates its increased meaningfulness to audience members (semantic generation). However, continued repetition of a meaningful word will render it meaningless to audience members.

L-7 (229-230) DOMINANT MEANING. When a statement is made that associates two words, the word with the more dominant meaning will experience less meaning change to audience members than will the other word, which will be changed in meaning because of the association. [This is the basis of the CONGRUITY THEORY of Osgood; SJG.]

L-8 (230-232) STIMULUS COMPLEXITY. Messages that consist of several elements will be increased in effectiveness of audience learning when they are shown repeatedly. With repetition, audience members will attend to more cues and thus will learn the messages more completely.

L-9 (235-237) POTENCY OF PICTORIAL CUES. If a message is pictorially represented, it is better remembered than if the audience member reads its verbal counterpart.

L-10 (240-242) DEGREE OF AFFECTIVE VALUE. The members of an audience will learn and remember messages that have great affective value to them -- positive or negative -- much more than they will learn and remember messages to which they are emotionally neutral.

L-11 (242-243) COMMUNICATOR CREDIBILITY. A message delivered by a communicator perceived to be of high prestige initially will be learned better by audience members than a communication delivered by a communicator perceived to be of low prestige. However, time causes a dissociation of the message content from the communicator. [Sleeper Effect; SJG.]

L-12 (243-245) REINFORCEMENT. An audience member is more likely to learn arguments that reinforce his existing beliefs and attitudes than those which dispute these beliefs and attitudes.

L-13 (245-246) EMPHASIS. Stimulus elements perceived by audience members as emphasized (e.g., by isolating the item against an otherwise homogeneous background) are better learned and remembered than those not receiving emphasis. This positive learning effect, however, diminishes as more stimulus elements receive emphasis.

L-14 (254-256) NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT AND ANXIETY AROUSAL. Audience members learn messages that contain negative information, or that arouse anxiety, in an effort to avoid undesirable consequences; but if the anxiety arousal is too strong, these messages will "backfire" by causing the audience members to tend to ignore them.

L-15 (262-263) INVOLVEMENT. If an audience member is highly involved with a message, he or she will more likely learn that message than if he or she is only slightly involved.

L-16 (265-266) COVERT INVOLVEMENT. Devices that increase covert involvement of audience members (e.g., the fizz of opening cans; the crunch of potato chips), increase learning of the advertising message.

L-17 (266-268) VICARIOUS PRACTICE. Learning is strengthened when audience members see an item being demonstrated along with an explanation of its special features, instead of seeing the item not in use.

L-18 (272-273) CURIOSITY. Novel stimuli that do not create dissonance may arouse curiosity or exploratory behavior and facilitate more learning in an audience member, than if the stimuli are not unusual.

L-19 (273-275) REDINTEGRATION. A single element of a past configuration of stimuli (e.g., a trademark, slogan, jingle, character) may elicit the same response in the audience members that was originally elicited by the entire configuration.

L-20 (281-284) MENTAL COMPLETING (CLOSURE-ZEIGARNIK EFFECT). An incomplete stimulus pattern tends to be remembered better than a complete pattern.

L-21 (285-288) SLEEPER EFFECT. Covert changes in attitudes under certain circumstances may be greater some time after certain stimuli have been presented than immediately after exposure to the stimuli.

L-22 (293-294) LANGUAGE. Language and culture are so interrelated that both communicators and targets should infer essentially the same cultural meanings from the language of a message.

L-23 (294-296) NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. Meaning of a message is conveyed not only by verbal but by nonverbal cues, such as tonal quality, situational context, and physical behavior of the communicator.

MP-1 (327-328) ORDER OF PRESENTATION. A message is more likely to motivate or change the attitudes of audience members if they are made aware of their needs for a solution before this solution is presented in the message, than if the solution is presented before they are made aware of their needs.

MP-2 (330-333) PRIMACY AND RECENCY. Audience members will usually be more affected by the first and last parts of a message than by its middle parts. Thus, the communicator should place the most motivating or persuading points at the very beginning or end of the message.

MP-3 (334-335) FAMILIARITY THROUGH REPETITION. As audience members become more familiar with the content of a message through repetition, they become very skillful in handling that message; the effects of primacy and recency then become less important.

MP-4 (335-338) ONE-SIDED AND TWO-SIDED ARGUMENTS. A presentation of both sides of an argument in a message will more readily motivate audience members if they are well informed, or initially opposed to the communicator's position, or familiar with the issue, or likely to be exposed to opposing views. When the audience members are unfamiliar with the issue, or in favor of the issue, or not informed, a one-sided argument is more effective.

MP-5 (338-340) EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT CONCLUSIONS. Explicit conclusions are effective if the message is complex or difficult to understand, or if the wrong conclusion might be drawn by an audience member. Implicit conclusions are more effective if the message is simple or easy to understand, or if the audience members are ego-involved with the message's subject matter.

MP-6 (340-343) IMMEDIACY. The greater the immediacy (intensity and directness) of a message, the more likely the audience will be motivated or persuaded to accept it.

MP-7 (343-347) PRERATIONALIZING (REDUCTION OF POST-PURCHASE DISSONANCE) A communicator, in proposing an action about which the audience members are uncertain, can facilitate the motivational and persuasive effect of his message by including reasons to act that audience members will find personally acceptable, so that later they may feel their behavior was justified.

MP-8 (347-348) PROJECTED FANTASY. A communicator can use projected fantasy motivating in his message to draw audience members into the communicating process and to motivate them to associate the realities of the message with their own hopes and dreams.

MP-9 (350-352) ANXIETY AROUSAL. Appeals that incite anxiety are motivational and persuasive to the extent that they arouse avoidance responses, but the audience will reject a message in which the appeals are too strong or do not relieve the anxiety aroused.

MP-10 (354-355) STRENGTH OF ANXIETY APPEALS. A strong anxiety appeal (vs. a weak one) is more effective when the communicator presents a solution to the problem in the message, when the communicator is considered to be a highly credible source, and when the self-esteem of the audience is not challenged.

MP-11 (355-357) RESISTANCE TO ANXIETY. The audience's continuous exposing to an anxiety-arousing situation reduces their emotional reactions to subsequent appeals on the subject. [SJG: Due, in part, to adaptation level, and the build-up of defenses.]

MP-12 (357-358) DISTRACTION. Under some circumstances, audience members will more easily be motivated or persuaded in an environment of distractions because they cannot concentrate to formulate strong counterarguments.

MP-13 (362-363) EXPERTNESS OF THE COMMUNICATOR. The more expert the communicator is perceived to be by the members of the audience, the more likely he/she will be to motivate and persuade them to agree with the message. However, no amount of expertise will suffice if the communicator is not viewed as trustworthy by the audience members.

MP-14 (363-366) PERCEIVED INTENT OF THE COMMUNICATOR. Regardless of expertness, a communicator who is perceived as intending to influence the audience in his/her favor will be perceived as less trustworthy (and thus, will be less motivating and persuasive) than one who is not perceived as attempting to do so. [SJG: This is one reason why most commercials employ "overheard" vignettes, and simulated personal influence.]

MP-15 (368-371) COMMUNICATOR-AUDIENCE SIMILARITY (IDENTIFICATION). Audience members tend to be more easily motivated and persuaded by a communicator they perceive as being similar to themselves than by a communicator who seems dissimilar.

MP-16 (373-375) CREDIBILITY-DISCREPANCY INTERACTION. When the communicator has low credibility, then the greater the amount of change he/she advocates, the higher will be the audience's resistance to the communication. However, if the communicator is perceived as highly credible, then the greater the discrepancy between the audience member's initial position and the communicator's, the greater the amount of attitude change in the direction advocated.

MP-17 (377-379) DECREASING SIGNIFICANCE OF CREDIBILITY OVER TIME. The probability of attitude change increases over time for the members of an audience exposed to a low-credibility source, to the extent that the message becomes disassociated from its source. [SJG: Allows high attention-grabbing but low credibility sources to be used early in a campaign.]

MP-18 (381-383) SELF-CONFIDENCE. When exposed to motivational messages, audience members of low self-confidence are more readily motivated and persuaded to act as a communicator desires than are individuals of high self-confidence. [SJG: Advertising often works first to induce a temporary state of low self-esteem, to "soften up" the audience for an influence attempt.]

MP-19 (386-387) IMAGINATION. Audience members of an imaginative nature with strong affinities for symbolism are more easily motivated and persuaded as a communicator desires than are less imaginative individuals.

MP-20 (387-391) DEGREE OF PERCEIVED RISK. Audience members who are high-risk perceivers are more willing to seek information and are more motivated by it than are low-risk perceivers.

MP-21 (391-393) INTELLIGENCE (AND EDUCATION). More intelligent (and educated) audience members are more responsive to arguments based upon factual evidence and are more resistant to arguments based upon unsupported generalities and emotional appeals than are less intelligent (and educated) audience members.

MP-22 (395-397) INNER AND OTHER DIRECTEDNESS. Audience members who possess traits of other DIRECTEDNESS and/or who are educated in fields that attract mostly other directed individuals, tend to be more highly susceptible to motivational messages and thus more easily motivated and persuaded by a communicator than are audience members who are more inner directed.

MP-23 (399-401) FAMILY. For members of cohesive families, messages that dispute family beliefs and attitudes will have little or no motivational effect, because family influences far outweigh the influence of the mass media.

MP-24 (406-409) OPINION LEADERS. A communicator can motivate people effectively by directing the message to opinion leaders of their reference groups, who in various ways transmit the message to less-innovative people.

MP-25 (412-414) PERSONAL COMMUNICATION. If a media message conflicts with the views of an audience member's membership and reference groups (personal communications), the message is unlikely to produce motivation or persuasion. [SJG: Many effective advertising campaigns "mimic" personal communications from reference group members.]

PS-1 (426-427) ATTITUDE CREATION AND REINFORCEMENT VS. CHANGE. Persuasive communications are more successful at forming new opinions and attitudes, or reinforcing old ones, than at changing attitudes already formed.

PS-3 (434-437) ATTITUDINAL INERTIA. Attitudes tend to remain stable and fixed. When communications conflict with individuals' prior attitudes, they are more likely to reject or distort the communications, than change their attitudes. [SJG: All of the major cognitive consistency theories predict this -- balance, dissonance, congruity.]

PS-4 (444-445) ATTITUDE CHANGE TO REDUCE DISSONANCE. Communications that persistently arouse cognitive dissonance can change attitudes in the receivers area of relative flexibility or noncommitment. [SJG: Potency of communication and depth of commitment to a prior attitude with which the communicator is dissonant, can be viewed as "competing" in a multiple compensatory causal schema.]

PS-5 (447-449) INVOCATION OF CURIOSITY AND DOUBT. Testable counter-attitudinal communications that invoke curiosity may progressively change individuals' attitudes, as they seek further information.

PS-6 (457-459) EGO INVOLVEMENT AND ISSUE IMPORTANCE. If audience members are highly ego involved with the issue discussed in a communicator's message, they will be less susceptible to persuasion than if they were not ego involved. [SJG: Involvement suggests that beliefs challenged by the message are implicated in a network of other beliefs, that also would have to change if the message were to be accepted.]

PS-7 (459-461) INVOLVEMENT AND FOREWARNING. When a persuasive message concerns an issue with which an audience is highly involved, then forewarning them of the persuasive intent of the message is likely to reduce attitude change. Forewarning should increase attitude change for low involvement messages.

PS-8 (463-464) FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR. A person who has complied with one (usually small) request from a communicator is more likely to be persuaded to comply with a larger request, than if he had not made the first commitment.

PS-9 (464-466) CLOSE MINDEDNESS AND AVOIDED SITUATIONS. Closed minded people tend to avoid situations in which their attitudes are likely to be challenged, but when placed in such situations, they are more susceptible to persuasive messages than are open minded people, especially when the source is highly credible, and invokes emotional language.

PS-10 (466-468) AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY. Audience members of authoritarian personality are more persuaded by an appeal utilizing an authority figure than by an informational appeal. The opposite is true of audience members with nonauthoritarian personalities.

PS-11 (471-473) REFERENCE GROUP AND CONFORMITY. Individuals who are made aware that one of their opinions differs from a group-supported opinion are increasingly likely to change in the direction of the group to the extent that they value their group membership. [SJG: A major weapon used by advertisers is to show reference groups using products.]