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Self‐Referencing and Persuasion: Narrative Transportation versus Analytical Elaboration
Abstract
This article contrasts narrative self-referencing with analytical self-referencing. I propose that narrative self-referencing persuades through transportation, where people become absorbed in a story-in this case, in their storylike thoughts (Green and Brock 2000 ). When ad viewers are transported by these narrative thoughts, persuasion is not negatively affected by weak ad arguments. Conversely, analytical self-referencing persuades via more traditional processing models, wherein cognitive elaboration is enhanced by relating incoming information to one's self or personal experiences, which results in a differential persuasive effect of strong versus weak arguments. I also propose that ad skepticism moderates the effect of narrative transportation. My assertions are tested in two experiments in the context of mental simulation as a form of narrative self-referencing. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
... Esto se debe a que el Yo es una estructura de memoria compleja y altamente organizada, que almacena y mantiene disponible este tipo de información que utiliza en juicios posteriores (De Graaf, 2014). Por esta razón, la autoreferencia se verá incrementada ante el mensaje informacional más que ante los mensajes narrativos, con lo cual mejorará su impacto persuasivo sobre las variables de resultado efectividad percibida del mensaje, creencias e intenciones (Burnkrant y Unnava, 1989, 1995De Graaf, 2014;Debevec y Romeo, 1992;Escalas, 2007;Petty y Cacioppo, 1986). ...
... La auto-referencia se identificó como mediadora de los efectos del mensaje informativo en las variables de resultado, en línea con la literatura sobre persuasión que sugiere que argumentos sólidos fomentan la reflexión personal (Escalas, 2007). La mayor auto-referenciación se asoció con actitudes más positivas hacia el mensaje. ...
... El mensaje mixto generó más emociones positivas y negativas, siguiendo la idea de que la persuasión a través de narrativas induce emociones que aumentan la aceptación del mensaje mensaje (Dillard y Peck, 2000;Nabi y Green, 2015). Se identificaron correlaciones positivas entre la implicación y variables como contra-argumentación y emociones positivas, concordando con la literatura que sugiere mayor reflexión en temas de interés (Burnkrant y Unnava, 1995;De Graaf, 2014;Escalas, 2007). Sin embargo, esto difiere ligeramente del estudio 1. ...
La promoción de comportamientos saludables se ha realizado tradicionalmente a través de mensajes persuasivos que entregan información sobre cifras o argumentos y son diseñados con un objetivo abiertamente persuasivo. No obstante, recientemente se han establecido otras estrategias como el uso de mensajes narrativos y de formatos mixtos (que combinan información y narran una historia). La evidencia no es concluyente sobre la eficacia de estas tres modalidades de persuasión (informacional, narrativa y mixta) ni sobre los mecanismos responsables. Metodología: Se realizaron dos experimentos que compararon los efectos de las tres modalidades de mensajes persuasivos mencionados y que fueron diseñados para promover la higiene del sueño como un factor de control del peso corporal. Además, se contempló el papel de la implicación con el tema del mensaje y la necesidad de cognición como posibles variables moderadoras. Resultados: Se observó que el mensaje informacional ejercía efectos indirectos significativos sobre la efectividad percibida del mensaje, las creencias y la intención de conducta a través del mecanismo de la auto-referencia. En cambio, los mensajes narrativos y mixto debían su eficacia persuasiva a la activación emocional, el transporte narrativo y la identificación con el protagonista. Conclusiones: El presente trabajo avanza los conocimientos sobre persuasión y sobre las estrategias más efectivas para diseñar campañas de control del peso corporal a través de la promoción de la higiene del sueño.
... Currently, a wealth of research has investigated the impact of "you" usage on individuals' mental state and/or behavior. For instance, "you" can draw the attention of a conversational party and hence evoke higher involvement [7][8][9] . Moreover, generic "you," as in "you shall not murder," signals normative behavior and hence impacts persuasion [10][11][12][13] . ...
... This feature of "you" usage may, in turn, lead to observable behavioral patterns in peer review outcomes. First, the personal and engaging conversational tone stimulated by "you" usage may in and of itself make the reviewer like the responses more, as individuals tend to favor things that are personally relevant 8,14 . Second, communicative norms that govern such conversations may call for greater politeness, civility, and embarrassment avoidance ("face-saving") in communications [21][22][23][24] , making the comments more favorable (or less harsh) than they otherwise would be and resulting in greater positivity and fewer questions in reviewer comments. ...
... With respect to second-person pronouns, while their usage has been studied in unidirectional, one-off communication [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] , understanding "you" usage in dynamic, bilateral, reciprocal contexts remains critical. Thus far, important work has explored the bilateral usage of "you" in close relationships 4,[15][16][17] . ...
Pronoun usage’s psychological underpinning and behavioral consequence have fascinated researchers, with much research attention paid to second-person pronouns like “you,” “your,” and “yours.” While these pronouns’ effects are understood in many contexts, their role in bilateral, dynamic conversations (especially those outside of close relationships) remains less explored. This research attempts to bridge this gap by examining 25,679 instances of peer review correspondence with Nature Communications using the difference-in-differences method. Here we show that authors addressing reviewers using second-person pronouns receive fewer questions, shorter responses, and more positive feedback. Further analyses suggest that this shift in the review process occurs because “you” (vs. non-“you”) usage creates a more personal and engaging conversation. Employing the peer review process of scientific papers as a backdrop, this research reveals the behavioral and psychological effects that second-person pronouns have in interactive written communications.
... Specifically, we propose that such a nostalgic ad effect will be stronger when consumers anticipate group consumption but weaker when they anticipate solo consumption. Based on the self-reference theory, individuals tend to be more susceptible to messages relevant to their goals (Escalas, 2007;Lee et al., 2002). As consumers in group consumption often have a goal of building social connectedness, and nostalgic ads signal information relevant to this goal, we expect that when consumers anticipate group consumption, nostalgic (vs. ...
... Drawing on the self-reference theory, previous research implies that the power of nostalgic ads could lie in the ability in evoking selfreference thoughts and facilitating message elaboration (Marchegiani and Phau, 2010). Self-reference theory describes a cognitive process that individuals process information by relating it to themselves (Escalas, 2007). This theory posits that messages relevant to consumers' goals or self-concepts can facilitate the recall of relevant information stored in memory and promote message elaboration, therefore enhancing persuasion (Escalas, 2007;Lee et al., 2002). ...
... Self-reference theory describes a cognitive process that individuals process information by relating it to themselves (Escalas, 2007). This theory posits that messages relevant to consumers' goals or self-concepts can facilitate the recall of relevant information stored in memory and promote message elaboration, therefore enhancing persuasion (Escalas, 2007;Lee et al., 2002). Nostalgic ads can encourage self-reference thoughts that help consumers to process information by relating it to their personal experiences or memories, which in turn promotes message elaboration and boosts ad effectiveness (Muehling, 2013;Wildschut et al., 2006). ...
Previous research has documented the power of nostalgic ads, yet little is known about whether and how their effectiveness will be affected by social influence, which is often unavoidable in the service context. To fill this gap, the current research investigates the relative effectiveness of nostalgic (vs. non-nostalgic) ads in a restaurant setting by examining two underexplored but practically relevant boundary conditions: consumption context and crowding. Two experimental studies show that nostalgic (vs. non-nostalgic) ads lead to higher levels of visit intention. Importantly, such an advantage arises (disappears) when consumers anticipate group (solo) consumption and when the environment has low (high) crowding. Moreover, we find that consumers’ sense of social connectedness is the psychological mechanism explaining the superiority of nostalgic (vs. non-nostalgic) ads. Implications for optimizing nostalgic advertising are discussed.
... Social psychologists have shown that stories allow individuals to organize their experiences, explain unusual events, gain perspective, and make evaluations (e.g., Bruner 1986;Pennington and Hastie 1986;Shank and Abelson 1995). Additionally, consumer research has shown that narratives are persuasive (e.g., van Laer et al. 2014van Laer et al. , 2019, making them an effective means of marketing communications (e.g., Adaval and Wyer 1998;Escalas 2007;Hamby, Daniloski, and Brinberg 2015). An important question then is when do consumers naturally engage in narrative processing? ...
... Of particular importance to consumer research is the finding that narratives can be persuasive (e.g., Escalas 2007;van Laer et al. 2014;Hamby and Brinberg 2016). One way in which narratives persuade is through narrative transportation (Green and Brock 2000). ...
... This is qualitatively different from transportation, where consumers become absorbed into the narrative world, imagining the scenario as if real, and empathizing with characters (van Laer et al. 2014). Transportation elicits affective and cognitive responses that change beliefs, attitudes, and intentions (van Laer et al. 2014), and attitude change often occurs through reduced cognitive responding, realism of experience, and strong affective responses (Escalas 2007;van Laer et al. 2014). ...
... One reason for the widely illustrated persuasive potential of narratives in various contexts and fields (Braddock and Dillard 2016;Shen, Sheer, and Li 2015;van Laer et al. 2014) is that narrative ads invoke less cognitive elaboration of arguments and fewer negative cognitive responses (Escalas 2007;Krause and Rucker 2020). These findings also reflect the notion that information processing of narratives requires relatively high amounts of cognitive resources (Chang 2009a). ...
... These findings also reflect the notion that information processing of narratives requires relatively high amounts of cognitive resources (Chang 2009a). This narrative processing is linked to the persuasive mechanism induced by narrative texts, which is called narrative transportation (Escalas 2004b(Escalas , 2004a(Escalas , 2007Green and Brock 2000). ...
... In nonnarrative ads the message is often designed straightforwardly, persuading consumers in an informational, rational way, typically explained by dual process models (e.g., elaboration likelihood model; Petty and Cacioppo 1986). In contrast, narrative ads persuade through narrative transportation and not through cognitive analytic elaboration, which is outlined in transportation theory and encapsulated in the transportation-imagery model (Escalas 2007;Brock 2000, 2002). Previous research has investigated a variety of factors related to transportation in narrative persuasive messages, for example, the propensity of narrative ads to go viral (Seo et al. 2018) and the valence and reflection in cautionary stories (Hamby and Brinberg 2016). ...
... Compared with factual ads that highlight specific product benefits (Padgett and Allen 1997), narrative ads also improve customers' attitudes toward ad and product (Ching et al. 2013), purchase intentions (Mattila 2000), and engagement (Farace et al. 2017). Because narrative ads stimulate affective rather than cognitive processing (Escalas 2007), they can lead to narrative persuasion too, through narrative transportation (Escalas 2004a). ...
... Grabbed and intrigued by the story (Gerrig 1993;Green and Brock 2000), a story receiver engages in "an integrative melding of attention, imagery, and feelings" (Green and Brock 2000, 247), which implies a transformational experience (Phillips and McQuarrie 2010;Van Laer et al. 2014), through which story receivers feel changed (Gerrig 1993). The ensuing narrative persuasion influences their affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses (Van Laer et al. 2014) in ways that are potent, long-lasting (Green 2008;Green, Garst, and Brock 2003), and independent of the presented argument strength (Escalas 2007). Accordingly, increasing scholarly interest centers on determining which design elements of an advertisement might foster narrative transportation and bring about narrative persuasion. ...
Marketers today are increasingly using storytelling to engage their audiences. However, the design of narrative visuals is often inspired by a text-centric understanding of narratives. Despite the fast increase in visual content and the distinct processing it induces, extant research on visual narrativity remains fragmented, lacking a comprehensive framework to explain how a single still image can convey a narrative. Our literature review addresses this gap through the lens of narrative transportation theory. Based on a systematic review of 64 articles from marketing and adjacent disciplines, the authors propose that an image must narrate, act, and resonate (NAR) to stimulate narrative processing and transport viewers into its narrative. They also identify specific visual features that can facilitate this process and explore how characteristics of the storyteller, story receiver, and story settings can influence the strength of visual narrative transportation (VNT). Finally, the authors highlight affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses of transported viewers. This research extends narrative transportation theory to the visual domain, offering practical design principles that can be easily applied by marketing professionals. It also outlines an actionable research agenda for marketing scholars to further explore visual narrativity.
... In contrast to scientific information, cli-fi stories are seen as a form of narrative persuasion. Narrative persuasion is a form of goal-based communication whereby a persuasive message is embedded within a story, wherein identifiable and relatable characters and events unfold over time in a plot (Escalas, 2007;Moyer-Gusé and Dale, 2017;Appel et al., 2019). The goal of narrative persuasion is to engender a narrative congruent change in the audience's emotions, beliefs, attitudes, or behavior. ...
... The goal of narrative persuasion is to engender a narrative congruent change in the audience's emotions, beliefs, attitudes, or behavior. Studies have noted that compared to non-narrative formats of communication, narratives can be easier to read and comprehend, more emotionally compelling, and transport the reader more effectively int. the narrative world (Green and Brock, 2000;Escalas, 2007;Dahlstrom, 2014;Bullock et al., 2021). Apart from giving readers new information, or framing information in particular ways, they can also prevent counter-arguing, for example through greater identification with the protagonist's viewpoint (Dahlstrom, 2014). ...
Recent research has begun to investigate if climate fiction, or cli-fi, can increase people’s support for pro-climate initiatives. Emerging evidence focuses on whether cli-fi stories affect people’s self-reported emotions, attitudes, and intentions. Few studies, however, examine the effect of such stories on revealed behavior, and whether the cli-fi story medium, i.e., whether stories are presented in text, audio, or audio-visual format, matters. We investigate the causal effect of cli-fi stories, and the medium through which they are communicated (textual, audio, or audio-visual) on self-reported support for climate policy, individual and collective action intentions, and a revealed measure of charitable donations. In a pre-registered online experiment (n = 1,085 UK adults), participants were randomly assigned to one of 5 conditions – to read scientific information about climate change (scientific information condition), read a story unrelated to the environment (control), read a cli-fi story in which a protagonist took intentional pro-environmental actions (fiction text), listen to the same cli-fi story in audio format (fiction audio), or watch an animation of the cli-fi story (fiction video). When comparing the fiction-text, fact-text, and control conditions, we found that cli-fi stories are not always more effective than alternative climate communications: participants in the fact-text condition reported higher support for climate policies, and intentions of taking individual environmental actions, and negative feelings of sadness, disappointment, and guilt, compared to the text-based control and cli-fi text condition. When comparing the cli-fi media format, we found that cli-fi videos were most effective in increasing pro-environmental charitable donations in an incentivized choice task, and self-reported feelings of happiness, hope, and inspiration. The findings show that scientific information about the climate and climate-fiction have an important place in the climate communications toolkit and can offer distinct pathways to enhance support for policy and behavioral change. Communicators seeking to inspire individual pro-environmental actions can consider telling cli-fi stories in video, which may be more compelling. And communicators seeking to enhance public support for societal changes, via climate policies, may benefit from disseminating scientific information about climate change.
... According to Green and Brock (2002), scholars have generated a variety of transportation theories, such as those found in (Bilandzic & Busselle, 2011;Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009;Csikszentmihalyi, 1997;and Escalas, 2006). Narrative transportation theories have a common important concept which is the text immersion. ...
... To evaluate SR, we adapted scales from research in consumer behavior and advertising persuasion effects. 108,109 Adaptations to the measurement items for this experiment entailed minor language modifications to enhance relevance, such as replacing the word "product" with "article" in the original scale items. Participants responded to statements like "This article is closely related to my life", "This article is significant to me", "This article reminds me of my life experiences", "This article seems to be written for me", "This article is important to me", and "This article reminds me of myself". ...
Purpose
How individuals engage with social media can significantly impact their psychological well-being. This study examines the impact of social media interactions on mental health, grounded in the frameworks of the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Schema Activation Theory. It aims to uncover behavioral differences in information sharing between the general population and individuals with depression, while also elucidating the psychological mechanisms underlying these disparities.
Methods
A pre-experiment (N=30) and three experiments (Experiment 1a N=200, Experiment 1b N=180, Experiment 2 N=128) were executed online. These experiments investigated the joint effects of information quality, content valence, self-referential processing, and depression level on the intention to share information. The research design incorporated within-subject and between-subject methods, utilizing SPSS and SPSS Process to conduct independent sample t-tests, two-factor ANOVA analyses, mediation analyses, and moderated mediation analyses to test our hypotheses.
Results
Information quality and content valence significantly influence sharing intention. In scenarios involving low-quality information, individuals with depression are more inclined to share negative emotional content compared to the general population, and this tendency intensifies with the severity of depression. Moreover, self-referential processing acts as a mediator between emotional content and intention to share, yet this mediation effect weakens as the severity of depression rises.
Conclusion
Our study highlights the importance of promoting viewpoint diversity and breaking the echo chamber effect in social media to improve the mental health of individuals with depression. To achieve this goal, tailoring emotional content on social media could be a practical starting point for practice.
... Among other researchers, Kumar et al. (2016) illustrated the significant impact of MGC on customers' purchase decisions. On a two-sided platform, this may be due to the heterogeneity of customer motivations; varied needs; and the trustworthiness of MGC (Escalas, 2007), including various sentiment influences from MGC. ...
Although user-generated content is reported to improve Airbnb host's sales, the impact of Marketer-Generated Content (MGC) on the minimum sales generated from the reviewers who have reviewed the MGC is yet to be explored. This study examines MGC of title descriptions analysis from the City of Los Angeles listing data to understand their importance in predicting hosts' net sales. The analysis employs two complementary econometric approaches: parametric multiple regression and the non-parametric multivariate adaptive regression spline model across three neighbourhood groups and two price groups. The findings indicate hosts can employ MGC to optimize sales and should highlight feature words in the title that best reflect the property characteristics and appeal to a target group that may be location-specific, price-sensitive, or both. The title should be informative and detailed within a limit of 10 words. The novelty of the work is to identify the influence of total sales for respective feature words from the title description of Airbnb property and to analyze their uses in marketing communications. The practical implications indicate that host-generated feature words are crucial in maximizing net sales for the property. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Despite the critical role of argument strength for argument-only messages, a few marketing and advertising studies combining arguments and narratives found a diminished effect of argument strength. Escalas (2004Escalas ( , 2007 tested how argument strength worked under narrative transportation versus analytical elaboration, followed by additional studies investigating the interaction effects between argument strength and narrative presence across presentation forms or narrative lengths (Chang, 2009;Krause & Rucker, 2020;Lien & Chen, 2013). Their results consistently showed that strong arguments did not differ from weak ones in their persuasive effects when combined with narratives, as narrative engagement distracted people from discerning the varying levels of argument strength (Escalas, 2004). ...
... The self-reference theory or self-reference effect refers to people's tendency to better remember information when that information has been linked to the self than when it has not been linked to the self. In marketing for instance, according to self-reference theory, consumers' ability to relate the brand more easily to their own personal experiences in brand selfies can generate higher levels of cognitive elaboration and mental simulation of brand consumption (Escalas, 2007), which has been linked to higher levels of brand engagement (Elder and Krishna, 2012). (Hartmann et al., 2021) rely on self-reference theory to collect different types of consumers-selfies images from social media, to classify social media brand imagery and explain user response (purchase intention). ...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming fundamental in almost all activity sectors in our society. However, most of the modern AI techniques (e.g., Machine Learning – ML) have a black box nature, which hinder their adoption by practitioners in many application fields. This issue raises a recent emergence of a new research area in AI called Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), aiming at providing AI-based decision-making processes and outcomes to be easily understood, interpreted, and justified by humans. Since 2018, there has been an exponential growth of research studies on XAI, which has justified some review studies. However, these reviews currently focus on proposing taxonomies of XAI methods. Yet, XAI is by nature a highly applicative research field, and beyond XAI methods, it is also very important to investigate how XAI is concretely used in industries, and consequently derive the best practices to follow for better implementations and adoptions. There is a lack of studies on this latter point. To fill this research gap, we first propose a holistic review of business applications of XAI, by following the Theory, Context, Characteristics, and Methodology (TCCM) protocol. Based on the findings of this review, we secondly propose a methodological and theoretical framework in six steps that can be followed by all practitioners or stakeholders for improving the implementation and adoption of XAI in their business applications. We particularly highlight the need to rely on domain field and analytical theories to explain the whole analytical process, from the relevance of the business question to the robustness checking and the validation of explanations provided by XAI methods. Finally, we propose seven important future research avenues.
... Effective stories downplay these logical motives and focus on other incentives such as distraction or diversion (Slater 1997). Consumers who do not think in narrative form engage in analytical self-referencing, according to Escalas (2007), which can lead to elaboration and, in turn, a critical assessment of the strength of an argument. On the other hand, effective story communication encourages greater peripheral processing, where persuasion is unaffected by weak arguments. ...
The study aims to identify an effective digital marketing plan for start-ups. Digital marketing is an important tool for start-ups. Start-ups place a high value on their commercial ties, and this is especially true today given the high level of digitalization. Digital marketing is regarded as cutting-edge for alluring and retaining company partnerships. But one underlying reason why start-ups struggle with obtaining and keeping commercial clients when using digital marketing is a lack of resources. This calls for a deeper understanding of the connection between consumers and start-ups which strikes a chord with the latter. It is said that “a good story is more convincing than an argument” and stories lie at the heart of social interactions. Building on the theories of narrative, storytelling as a technique is explored and combined with insights on impression on consumer through authentic stories and the intervening role of perceived responsibility of the storyteller.
... If, indeed, the most likely outcome of communication is further communication, a more explicit focus on these relationships forces scholars to be more purposefully communication-centered in explaining what their theory offers. After all, while other fields find important use in theories and models such as framing (e.g., Abhyankar et al., 2008) and the transportationimagery model (e.g., Escalas, 2007), applying the Causality Principle could help substantially improve the explanatory power of theories by integrating more communication-based variables into their postulates. For instance, while research in psychology or marketing is likely to be interested in the question of how storytelling can be utilized to sell products, the Causality Principle encourages scholars to examine how exposure to storytelling breeds interpersonal discussion (e.g., Chatterjee et al., 2009), sharing of information (e.g., Kennedy et al., 2004), or selection of additional stories (e.g., Wang & Singhal, 2016). ...
Communication seeks internal coherence and external distinction as its research profile grows and diversifies. The present essay calls for the establishment of scientific principles to guide future communication research and solidify the field’s unique scholarly identity within the marketplace of ideas. An argument is made that the field has achieved the necessary foundations to establish scientific principles but has yet to embrace this undertaking as a collective goal. This offering is intended as an initial foray into the process of identifying and evaluating scientific principles of communication by considering the value of these fundamental pillars for the field’s maturation. It proposes evaluation criteria which are then applied in a rendering of two candidate principles. These observations aim to initiate a broader conversation and spark a collective effort toward elucidating scientific principles of communication that can help to guide and anchor the field in its next stage of knowledge generation.
... Considering a third of the sample had been previously diagnosed with the depicted illness, future research on this topic may also need to consider self-referencing. It may seem counterintuitive for a viewer to reference a sense of self when identification is often identified as a "loss of self" (Cohen, 2001), but self-referencing can be conceptualized as a psychological process that is activated to comprehend messages in a way that connects information to concepts of the self (i.e., identity) or firsthand experiences (de Graaf, 2014;Escalas, 2007). Considering messages about a stigmatized identity may impact how people with that identity cope with stigma (Meisenbach, 2010), future research should explore this relationship and effects of selfreferencing on narrative engagement and outcomes regarding self-stigma. ...
... That is, self-referencing entails a dynamic reaction that is activated and developed while one links the event in the story to their own life. In this light, a story world with a character is necessary for identification to occur, whereas self-referencing could occur in any meaningful message, like advertising, advocacy, and so on (Escalas, 2007). In narrative scholarship, there is empirical evidence suggesting that self-referencing is a product generated by identification, such that the vicarious experience of taking the character's perspective may motivate one to reflect on their own life and apply the lessons learned in the story to themselves (Chen et al., 2016(Chen et al., , 2017. ...
This meta-analysis synthesized 19 empirical articles reporting 123 effect sizes of character-recipient similarity on narrative processing and persuasion outcomes across different contexts, including health, environmental, and social issues. We also aimed to investigate whether the effect magnitude varies depending on how the similarity is operationalized, which perspective is adopted, and what context the narrative persuasion is placed in. The results indicated that, compared to a dissimilar counterpart, a similar character leads to stronger identification (k = 34, d = 0.14, p < .01) and self-referencing (k = 12, d = 0.16, p < .01). The effects on transportation (k = 22, d = 0.13, p = .05) and resistance (k = 12, d = −0.16, p = .05) were marginally significant. It was also found that the similarity manipulated on chosen demographic and biographic variables like occupation and living place yields the strongest impact among other variables (i.e., innate demographic and biographic variables like age and sex, psychological and behavioral variables like beliefs and behaviors). Furthermore, the similarity effect in narrative persuasion becomes intensified when combined with a first-person perspective and placed in a social issue context. By presenting a synthesis of the existing research, this meta-analytical study sought to identify areas in need of further refinement and outline future investigation directions for narrative persuasion.
... According to a study carried out by Escalas in 2007, narrative thoughts, which a person develops in his head after watching a narrative advertisement was the critical factors in transporting a viewer into a story irrespective of the argument and strengths presented in the advertisement (Escalas, 2007). In this study, argument strengths referred to the ability of the advertisement to persuade the viewers about health promotion. ...
Narrative Advertisement effectively influences viewers' knowledge, attitude, behaviour, intentions, and belief. Despite knowing the importance of advertisements in influencing viewers, little has been studied about the characteristics of advertisements that engage and influence health knowledge, attitude, behaviour, intentions, and beliefs. Very few studies have reported on the various characteristics of advertising that influence public health attributes. This scoping review, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA), aimed to understand the impact of narrative advertisements on health-related behaviours. Out of 9977 papers collected for the study, only nine articles met the inclusion criteria related to health concerns, including smoking, condom use to prevent Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), substance use, and lifestyle health behaviours. The study found that the dose of exposure to the advertisements, the demographics of the population, and the emotional response to the advertisement were the important characteristics of the advertisement associated with the change in health outcomes. Furthermore, the mechanism that drives the change in health-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviour, and intention is explored. This work can guide advertisement production by government agencies and non-profit organizations.
... Sood ve M.ller 2008), düşünceler h.kaye formundak. anlatılar yoluyla yapılandırılır (Escalas, 2007) ve b.reyler argümanları anlamaya kıyasla h.kayeler. anlamaya daha yatkındır (Ryu, Lehto, Gordon, Fu, 2019). ...
Dünya ekonomisinin dinamosu olan turizm sektörü, hem gelişmiş hem de gelişmekte olan ülkelerde başlıca gelir ve istihdam kaynağı olmuştur. Elliden fazla sektörü bünyesinde bulunduran turizm, hızla yayılan teknolojik gelişmelerle işletmeler arası rekabeti arttırmış, uluslararası hizmet sektörünün ana aktörlerinden biri olmuştur. Emek yoğun bir alan olan turizm, artan istihdam olanakları doğrultusunda zamanla diğer tüm sektörler gibi yeni yönetim şekillerine ihtiyaç duymuş, farklı kültürleri yönetmedeki sorunları ve sürdürülebilir yönetim anlayışı gibi yeni ve önemli konuların araştırılmasına ihtiyaç duyulmuştur. Turizm sektörünün iş gücüne dayanan yapısı; yönetim anlayışının geliştirilmesi, çalışan-yönetici ve girişimcilik süreçlerinin iyileştirilmesine odaklanmayı da beraberinde getirmiştir. 21. Yüz yılda teknolojinin hızlanmasıyla birlikte turizmde de yapay zeka kullanımı, konaklama işletmelerinden yeme-içme sektörüne kadar yayılmış yeni uygulamaların kullanılması önemli bir ihtiyaç haline gelmiştir. Globalleşmeyle birlikte kolaylaşan ve ucuzlayan seyahat ihtiyacı, turizmi giderek çeşitlendirmiştir. Gastronomi turizmi; farklı deneyim arayan turistlere hitaben değişik kültürlerde farklı tatları tatma ve otantiklik duygusunu yaşamak adına günümüzde ön plana çıkmıştır. TURİZM ALANINDA ÇOK YÖNLÜ ARAŞTIRMALAR II kitabı, küreselleşme ve teknolojik gelişmeler kapsamında dünya ekonomisinde giderek önem kazanan turizm sektöründe ortaya çıkan yeni eğilimler hakkında çok yönlü bir kaynak olup üç ayrı bölümden oluşmaktadır. Kitap turizm sektöründeki profesyoneller ve bilim insanlarının yanı sıra farklı turizm eğilimlerini incelemek isteyen öğrenciler için de ilgi çekici bir kaynak niteliğindedir.
... Consumers with high SBC are not only more motivated to engage in brand-related behaviors such as spreading positive WOM (Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012;Eelen, Özturan, and Verlegh 2017) but also likely to resist negative brand information (Ferraro, Kirmani, and Matherly 2013). Moreover, they are likely to have deeper knowledge structures about usage situations (Alba and Hutchinson 1987), stronger autobiographical memories (Escalas 2007), and stronger core associations with the brand (Dretsch and Kirmani 2023). Thus, we propose an interaction effect of focus on brand meaning and SBC. ...
Brand cocreation campaigns offer consumers various activities centered on interpreting brand image. Yet, little is known about what brand cocreation characteristics increase digital consumer engagement (DCE; e.g., liking a brand on Facebook) and how they do so. Given the importance of DCE, the current research addresses this gap. Three experiments demonstrate that brand cocreation activities with high (vs. low) focus on brand meaning generate greater DCE among consumers who have high self–brand connection. Evidence suggests that this occurs because an activity's high focus on brand meaning facilitates the generation of abstract brand knowledge. For consumers with low self–brand connection, focus on brand meaning does not differentially affect DCE because these consumers lack appropriate knowledge about the brand. This research also offers implications for optimizing interactive marketing practice.
... Transportation can occur with fictional narratives, 24 news stories, 25 advertisements, 26 video games, 27 and even static images. 28 Over two decades of research have examined the antecedents and effects of narrative transportation, 29 resulting in a more comprehensive understanding of a mediated transportation experience. ...
... Contact with similar people can evoke spontaneous thoughts such as "Ah, this person looks like me, I like that," which is called self-referencing. In this condition, it may be cognitively easier to create a connection between the promoted brand and one's self (Burnkrant and Unnava 1995, p. 17;Meyers-Levy and Peracchio 1996, p. 408;Chang 2011), which results in "This brand is for people like me" impressions and is referred to as brand-self connectedness (Debevec and Romeo 1992;Forehand and Deshpande 2001, p. 337;Appiah 2007;Escalas 2007;Sirgy 2018). In summary, information that the model has not been photoshopped can evoke strong perceptions of similarity with the model and brand-self connectedness (Suls and Miller 1977;Wills 1981;Harrison and Hefener 2014, p. 137). ...
There is a public debate about whether marketers should be required to provide information about photoshopping when they use idealized images of female ad models. Proponents of such information expect that this measure will counteract diminished self-esteem in young females and reduce consumer deceptions. In two experiments, we examine the effects of three factors: the depiction of female ad models in their idealized vs. Authentic appearance, the presence vs. absence of information that an idealized model has been digitally retouched, and the presence vs. Absence of information that a model shown in her authentic appearance has not been digitally retouched. We contribute to research as we focus on the impact on brand attitudes while previous research has mainly focused on the influence on self-esteem. We present new findings that could assist decisions in practice: For most beauty product categories, we find that non-extreme levels of model idealization result in highest brand attitudes. Information about photoshopping ad modelspromoting beauty products leads to lower brand attitude. Information about the non-use of photoshopping authentic ad models tends to result in higher brand attitudes.
... Through a process called narrative transportation, consumers experience cognitive and affective engagement with the stories they consume across myriad modalities, including movies, books, short commercial videos, video games, and so forth (Dessart, 2018). Through narrative transportation, consumer immersion serves as the primary mechanism of persuasion and leads to consumer attitudes that are aligned with those contained within the narrative (Argo et al., 2008;Escalas, 2007;Green & Brock, 2000). ...
... Moreover, neural activity is known to be modulated by various factors such as habituation and sensitization (Thompson and Spencer 1966), and therefore caution must be warranted when inferring moment-tomoment psychological states from contemporaneous signals. However, the whole-brain access with (Adaval and Wyer 1998;Escalas 2007;Kang, Hong, and Hubbard 2020). Based on the current findings of the relative importance of early-onset emotion and social cognition, and late-peak perceptual and executive function, we envision future research that manipulates the timing of these elements in video advertising in order to further establish the validity of the findings. ...
What drives the liking of video advertisements? The authors analyzed neural signals during ad exposure from three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets (113 participants from two countries watching 85 video ads) with automated meta-analytic decoding (Neurosynth). These brain-based measures of psychological processes – ranging from perception and language (information processing), executive function and memory (cognitive functions), and social cognition and emotion (social-affective response) – predicted subsequent self-report ad liking, with emotion and memory being the earliest predictors after the first 3 seconds. Over the span of ad exposure, while the predictiveness of emotion peaked early and fell, that of social cognition had a peak-and-stable pattern, followed by a late peak of predictiveness in perception and executive function. At the aggregate level, neural signals – especially those associated with social-affective response – improved the prediction of out-of-sample ad liking, compared to traditional anatomically-based neuroimaging analysis and self-report liking. Finally, early-onset social-affective response predicted population ad liking in a behavioral replication. Overall, this study helps delineate the psychological mechanisms underlying ad processing and ad liking, and proposes a novel neuroscience-based approach for generating psychological insights and improving out-of-sample predictions.
... Consumers focus more on scenarios and models in marketing communications than on product features (Escalas, 2007), and empathy is created among these consumers by generating emotions toward models that attract consumers' attention (Van Laer et al., 2014). This tendency is especially observed in novels, as readers empathize with the characters' emotions and have an imaginative experience based on the perspective of the characters in the story (Coplan, 2004). ...
Primarily originating from characters (models) in a story, empathy is essential for enhancing the effectiveness of marketing communications with the condition that concept-based realism is practiced. However, previous literature primarily considered celebrities when investigating the relationship between models and products in marketing communications. Remarkably, extant literature does not include examples of unknown models that focus on empathy in product usage scenes, as depicted in marketing communications, or their effects. Therefore, this study considers consumers’ observations of product usage scenes, focusing on personal computers (PCs) and smartphones (SPs) in Japan. The research question is how empathy—or consumers’ belief that the model uses the products in the same way they do in their daily lives—positively affects purchase intentions. The Japanese have a strong social culture that emphasizes empathy; therefore, it is thought that the above effects would be easy to evaluate. The effects of empathy were examined in the context of both celebrity and unknown models and the results demonstrated that empathy positively affected purchase intention in both. However, the effect was higher for celebrity models. These findings suggest the importance of determining and using a model for marketing communications, whether celebrity or not, based on a clear product concept.
Situated in the context of the climate crisis this research examines the LVMH Corporation’s 2020 and 2021 Social and Environmental Responsibility Reports through the lens of the narrative structure found in fairy tales. Central characters and the trajectory of the narrative are consistent with this literary form, and counter narratives that provide context to the corporate narrative also emerge. This analysis suggests the significance of narratives to corporate communications, their application extending beyond the brand communication or user-generated content generally investigated in the marketing and consumer research literature. Moreover, the article elaborates on how luxury corporations, like LVMH, communicate their efforts to counter climate crisis in ways that meet the expectations of stakeholders, especially investors and consumers. The findings have implications for future research on how narratives impact stakeholder perceptions of luxury corporations.
Available open access at: https://doi.org/10.1080/20511817.2023.2280321
Generative AI’s capacity to create photorealistic images has the potential to augment human creativity and disrupt the economics of visual marketing content production. This research systematically compares the performance of AI-generated to human-made marketing images across important marketing dimensions. First, we prompt seven state-of-the-art generative text-to-image models (DALL-E 3, Midjourney v6, Firefly 2, Imagen 2, Imagine, Realistic Vision, and Stable Diffusion XL Turbo) to create 10,320 synthetic marketing images, using 2,400 real-world, human-made images as input. 254,400 human evaluations of these images show that AI-generated marketing imagery can surpass human-made images in quality, realism, and aesthetics. Second, we give identical creative briefings to commissioned human freelancers and the AI models, showing that the best synthetic images also excel in ad creativity, ad attitudes, and prompt following. Third, a randomized field experiment with more than 173,000 impressions demonstrates that AI-generated online ads can compete with professional human-made stock photography, achieving an up to 50% higher click-through rate than a human-made image. Collectively, our findings suggest that the paradigm shift brought about by generative AI can help advertisers produce marketing content not only faster and orders of magnitude cheaper but also at superhuman effectiveness levels with important implications for firms, consumers, and policymakers. To facilitate future research on AI-generated marketing imagery, we release “GeneratedImageNet” that contains all of our synthetic images and their human ratings.
Purpose
The importance of effective public messages has been widely recognized during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In particular, the role of news items and interpersonal conversations for the acceptance of public health measures has been highlighted. The authors propose a conceptual model based on the existing literature on how to measure the degree of persuasion of news narratives in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted a whole population approach, where the unit of analysis was the population of the media news about the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors selected a sample to develop and test their conceptual model. The sample size was n = 248. The questionnaire was distributed online using a non-probability convenience sampling plan. The authors used a pre-post pseudo-experimental design. Respondents answered questions about their attitude toward the COVID-19 pandemic. After watching a narrative news report on the same subject, they then answered questions designed to measure changes in their attitude. A structural equation model, the Sobel test and a paired samples t -test were used to test hypotheses.
Findings
The results showed that there is a significant relationship between narrative with transportation and empathy. There was also a positive and significant relationship between transportation and empathy with attitude and interpersonal talk. The relationship between transportation and self-referencing was also supported. Further, transportation and attitude mediated the relationships between narrative and interpersonal talk, self-referencing as well as empathy. A paired samples t -test revealed that attitudes were changed or reinforced before and after watching the narrative news report.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by identifying the outcomes of narrative persuasion during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the fourth industrial revolution unfolds and the use of digital humans becomes more commonplace, understanding digital humans’ potential to replace real human interaction or enhance it, particularly in storytelling marketing contexts, is becoming evermore important. To promote interaction and increase the entertainment value of technology-enhanced storytelling marketing, brands have begun to explore the use of augmented digital humans as storytelling agents. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of leveraging advanced technologies and delivering messages via digital humans in storytelling advertisements. In Study 1, we investigate the effectiveness of narrative transportation on behavioral responses after exposure to an interactive augmented reality mobile advertisement with a digital human storyteller. In Study 2, we compare how consumers respond to augmented digital human versus real human storytelling advertisements after conducting an exploratory neurophysiological electroencephalography study. The findings show that both types of agents promote narrative transportation when the story fits the product well. Moreover, a digital human perceived as more human-like elicits stronger positive consumer responses, suggesting an effective new approach to storytelling marketing.
Story world absorption is a mental state in which a reader’s attention is captured by immersion in a story. Although there is extensive research on story world absorption in adults, there is very little research on story world absorption in children. This mixed-methods study investigated the mental state of story world absorption in 66 children ages 9–11 years old, asking how they experience that state. Motivated by the hypothesis that, despite differences in their reading frequency, most children can become absorbed by stories, we asked a diverse sample of readers to report on their reading experience. Although 9-year-old frequent readers reported greater overall absorption than 9-year-old occasional readers, 10- and 11-year-old readers reported similar levels of absorption, regardless of their reading frequency. Additionally, frequent and occasional readers across age groups were similar in the extent to which they differentially endorsed the four dimensions of the absorption experience: attention, transportation, emotional engagement, and mental imagery. Semistructured interviews conducted with a subset of the sample (18 children) provided additional information regarding the text types and features that are most likely to absorb child readers. Overall, the findings underline the possibility that both frequent and occasional child readers can become absorbed in a fictional world.
İçinde bulunduğumuz dijital çağda, markaların karşılaştığı en büyük zorluklardan biri, mesaj bombardımanına maruz kalan tüketicilerin dikkatini çekmektir. Bu ne- denle markalar açısından, tüketicilerin dikkatini çekecek ve ürünlere yönelik tu- tumlarını olumlu yönde etkileyebilecek, güvenilir ve etkin mesajlar ileten iletişim stratejileri oluşturmak önemli hâle gelmiştir. Giderek daha doygun ve istikrarsız hâle gelen mevcut piyasa senaryosu göz önüne alındığında, bunu yapmak giderek zorlaşmaktadır. Mc Studio iletişim ajansı tarafından yapılan bir araştırmaya göre, insanların yaklaşık %79'u bir metni kelime kelime okumak yerine, genel içeriğe bakmaktadır. Ayrıca, tüketicilerin yaklaşık %82'si, müdahaleci olduğu düşünülen reklamları görmezden gelmektedir. Bu bağlamda, artan sayıda marka, hikâye anla- tıcılığını birçok durumda tüketicileri çekmenin ve elde tutmanın anahtarı olduğu kanıtlanmış bir iletişim tekniği olarak kullanmaktadır (Crocchi, 2019: 439-440).
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article provides a research model of the process by which personal and social knowledge serves as a nucleus around which new knowledge is easily accumulated. In 4 experiments, Ss produced friends' names and then constructed sentences, each including a name together with an assigned (target) noun. Unexpected recall tests showed greatly superior memory for target nouns used in sentences with own friends' (self-generated) names vs. nouns used in sentences with others' friends' (other-generated) names. This "self-generation" effect was robustly observed across several procedural variations. Computer simulations of Experiments 3 and 4 supported the assumption that the self-generation procedure's effect on free recall of target nouns is mediated by retrieval of the self-generated names with which the nouns are sentence-paired. Together with other recent findings, these results indicate that powerful mnemonic effects associated with the self can be understood in terms of familiar, ordinary memory processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Participants estimated the attractiveness of vacations described in 2 travel brochures. The information about 1 vacation was conveyed in a narrative that described the sequence of events that would occur. In contrast, information about the other vacation was conveyed in an ostensibly unorganized list. Vacations were generally evaluated more favorably when they were described in a narrative than when their features were simply listed. Moreover, this difference increased when (a) negative features of the vacations were mentioned, (b) pictures accompanied the text information, or (c) recipients were encouraged to imagine themselves having the experiences described. Although narrative forms of information elicited more extreme affective reactions than list forms, this did not account for the difference in their effectiveness. Rather, the advantage of narratives was attributed to (a) their structural similarity to information acquired through daily life experiences and (b) the use of a holistic—as opposed to a piecemeal—strategy for computing judgments.
[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 55(6) of
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record
2008-10705-001). The word
case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task."] A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Through three studies we demonstrate that contextually detailed ads are facilitative in enhancing brand attitudes and intentions under anticipatory self-referencing, whereas ads stripped of contextual detail are facilitative in enhancing brand attitudes and intentions under retrospective self-referencing. We find that when minimal ad information is provided, self-related thoughts about the past contain more contextual information than self-related thoughts about the future. In study 1, we find that when consumers engage in retrospective self-referencing, providing more contextual information in the ad increases the incidence of self-related thoughts that are discordant with the advertised brand (hereafter, "self-brand discordant thoughts"), decreases self-related thoughts that are concordant with the advertised brand (hereafter, "self-brand concordant thoughts"), and decreases brand attitudes and behavioral intentions. Conversely, when consumers engage in anticipatory self-referencing, providing more contextual information in the ad increases the incidence of contextually detailed thoughts, increases the ability to form consumption visions, increases the incidence of self-brand concordant thoughts without affecting self-brand discordant thoughts, and increases ad and brand attitudes and behavioral intentions. Mediation tests suggest that the effects on brand evaluations are mediated both by the extent to which consumers form brand-related consumption visions and by the extent to which they can link themselves to the advertised brand through concordant thoughts. In study 2 we show that the demonstrated differences between retrospection and anticipation are predicated on self-referencing and are not obtained for other referencing. Together, the results indicate that it is important to account both for the presence of self-referencing and for the variations in the nature of self-referencing encouraged by the ad.
This article examines two related issues: how variation in the level of self-reference in which people engage affects their persuasion and what factors may moderate self-reference effects. Respondents viewed ads that varied on two dimensions intended to influence the use of self-reference, namely, the wording of the ad copy and the perspective from which the ad photo was shot. Results indicated that an initial (moderate) increase in self-referencing enhanced persuasion, while a further (extreme) increase undermined persuasion. These effects emerged, however, only when subjects were highly motivated to attend to the ad. When ad recipients' motivation was low, self-referencing had no effect. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.
Consumer researchers seem to believe that the use of imagery increases recall, enhances attitude toward the brand, and positively affects behavioral intentions. Yet few empirical investigations of imagery effects have been conducted in a consumer-behavior context. In this article, we provide a theoretical rationale based on extant literature as to which imagery content variables may influence imagery and how imagery may, in turn, affect key purchase-related variables such as attitudes and behavioral intentions. In addition, the results of two empirical investigations are presented. These studies address how self versus other relatedness and situation plausibility affect the degree of reported imagery and subsequently affect ad and brand evaluations. The results of the two studies show that the focal character and plausibility of the imagined scene influence the degree of imagery evoked by the message. Focal character is shown to directly affect attitude toward the ad. In addition, we find that imagery directly influences attitude toward the ad but has no effect on attitude toward the brand or behavioral intentions.
Two fundamental orientations toward message comprehension have appeared in advertising research: the traditional objective view, which applies an accuracy criterion to conceptualize and evaluate comprehension, and the subjective view, which applies other criteria related to the individual comprehender and the actual experience of the message. This article develops a framework for four levels of subjective comprehension on the basis of an elaboration criterion. Comprehension levels are hypothesized to differ in their relations to ad perceptions, attitudes, and memory. Results from an empirical study provide initial support for the framework, including new theoretical insights and explanatory ability beyond the objective orientation. Discussion focuses on implications for advertising theory and consumer research. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.
Undergraduates expressed their attitudes about a product after being exposed to a magazme ad under conditions of either high or low product involvement. The ad contained either strong or weak arguments for the product and featured either prominent sports celebrities or average citizens as endorsers. The manipulation of argument quality had a greater impact on attitudes under high than low involve- ment, but the manipulation of product endorser had a greater impact under low than high involvement. These results are consistent with the view that there are two relatively distinct routes to persuasion.
The degree to which the self is implicated in processing personal information was investigated. Subjects rated adjectives on four tasks designed to force varying kinds of encoding: structural, phonemic, semantic, and self-reference. In two experiments, incidental recall of the rated words indicated that adjectives rates under the self-reference task were recalled the best. These results indicate that self-reference is a rich and powerful encoding process. As an aspect of the human information-processing system, the self appears to function as a superordinate schema that is deeply involved in the processing, interpretation, and memory of personal information.
Two studies explored potential bases for reality monitoring (Johnson & Raye, 1981) of naturally occurring autobiographical events. In Study 1, subjects rated phenomenal characteristics of recent and childhood memories. Compared with imagined events, perceived events were given higher ratings on several characteristics, including perceptual information, contextual information, and supporting memories. This was especially true for recent memories. In Study 2, subjects described how they knew autobiographical events had (or had not) happened. For perceived events, subjects were likely to mention perceptual and contextual details of the memory and to refer to other supporting memories. For imagined events, subjects were likely to engage in reasoning based on prior knowledge. The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring draws on differences in qualitative characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined events (Johnson & Raye, 1981) and augment findings from more controlled laboratory studies of complex events (Johnson & Suengas, in press; Suengas & Johnson, 1988).
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.
Transportation was proposed as a mechanism whereby narratives can affect beliefs. Defined as absorption into a story, transportation entails imagery, affect, and attentional focus. A transportation scale was developed and validated. Experiment 1 (N = 97) demonstrated that extent of transportation augmented story-consistent beliefs and favorable evaluations of protagonists. Experiment 2 (N = 69) showed that highly transported readers found fewer false notes in a story than less-transported readers. Experiments 3 (N = 274) and 4 (N = 258) again replicated the effects of transportation on beliefs and evaluations; in the latter study, transportation was directly manipulated by using processing instructions. Reduced transportation led to reduced story-consistent beliefs and evaluations. The studies also showed that transportation and corresponding beliefs were generally unaffected by labeling a story as fact or as fiction.
This article provides a research model of the process by which personal and social knowledge serves as a nucleus around which new knowledge is easily accumulated. In 4 experiments, Ss produced friends' names and then constructed sentences, each including a name together with an assigned (target) noun. Unexpected recall tests showed greatly superior memory for target nouns used in sentences with own friends' (self-generated) names vs. nouns used in sentences with others' friends' (other-generated) names. This "self-generation" effect was robustly observed across several procedural variations. Computer simulations of Experiments 3 and 4 supported the assumption that the self-generation procedure's effect on free recall of target nouns is mediated by retrieval of the self-generated names with which the nouns are sentence-paired. Together with other recent findings, these results indicate that powerful mnemonic effects associated with the self can be understood in terms of familiar, ordinary memory processes.
This article examines the impact of writing stories on the evaluation of consumption objects. Generating a story creates greater liking for a painting than generating a dialogue about it. The positive impact of stories does not derive from generating more positive thoughts. Instead, stories generate fewer affective thoughts than do dialogues. The importance of generated stories derives from deeper elaboration, providing enhanced recollection of the coherent narrative, ease of generation, and more favorable attitudes toward the task. This work extends prior research on narratives and self referencing by making the consumer an active participant in the generation process, setting a rich agenda for future research.
The authors investigate the affective nature of autobiographical memories and the conditions and mechanisms leading to transfer of this affect to ad and brand judgments. They find that when ads encourage the retrieval of autobiographical memories there is a higher level of felt affect and reduced processing of product attributes. Furthermore, this generally positive affect is readily transferred to the ad, thus enhancing ad evaluations. However, the extent of transfer of autobiographical affect to the brand depends on forging a link in the ad between the brand and the personal memory, as Study 1 demonstrates. Study 2 shows that when autobiographical memories are encouraged, brand evaluations are no different given strong versus weak product arguments, further evidence that brand evaluations are not based on an analysis of product claims when such memories are evoked. Study 2 also provides evidence for the dominance of affective inputs into brand judgments when both autobiographical affect and product arguments are relatively accessible from memory.
A 9-item Likert-type scale was developed to measure consumer skepticism toward advertising Skepticism toward advertising, defined as the general tendency toward disbelief of advertising claims, was hypothesized to be a basic marketplace belief that vanes across individuals and is related to general persuasability. A nomological network was proposed, unidimensionality and internal consistency of the scale were established, and a series of studies were conducted to establish the scale's validity and to investigate the effects of ad skepticism.
This discussion uses the evidence adduced in the current issue's symposium on autobiographical narrative to examine the feasibility of the standard division of narrative from paradigmatic thought. It is suggested, first, that there is no evidence to support the assertion that representations of narrative information do not give rise spontaneously to generalizations and, second, that narratives often serve a formal, logical role in the management of life goals.
The tendency of subjects to employ a self-referencing strategy when processing messages was manipulated by varying message writing style. Recall of message content was higher in the high self-referencing than the low self-referencing condition. Self-referencing was also found to produce attitude and cognitive response effects similar to effects obtained in other research that employed involvement inductions. When self-referencing and argument strength were manipulated in a factorial design, it was found that arguments had a greater impact on attitude and cognitive responses under high self-referencing than under low self-referencing.
We examined how visual information in an ad may interact with and influence processing of verbal information and facilitate or inhibit self-referent judgments. Self-referencing is viewed as a mediator between individuals' perceptions of verbal and visual stimuli in advertising and their subsequent attitudes and intentions. A 3 × 2 experimental design was used to examine the effects of three verbal copy strategies (self copy, product benefit copy, and typical user copy) and two visual image strategies (product featured or typical users featured). To enhance realism, the study was conducted in the context of testing a new experimental magazine. The verbal focus of an ad was shown to encourage varying levels of self-referencing and differential attitudes and intentions when a product visual was featured, but not when a slice-of-life setting was featured. Self copy (copy written in the second person vernacular) accompanied by the product visual was the most effective strategy in encouraging self-referencing and favorable attitudes and intentions.
This article examines the process by which behavioral frequency judgments are generated in consumer surveys. The results from three experiments indicate that the regularity (periodicity of occurrences) and the similarity (idiosyncrasy of the content of occurrences) of a frequently occurring behavior determine (a) the accessibility of the requisite information in memory, and therefore the process by which the judgment is generated, and (b) the accuracy of the associated frequency report. Further, the use of heuristics such as rates of occurrence result in more accurate frequency judgments than the use of recall-and-count strategies based on episodic recall.
There have been a number of published measures of generalized consumer attitudes, perhaps the most familiar being the Index of Consumer Sentiment of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center. What this article proposes is an "index of consumer sentiment toward marketing," which is intended to be a validated, longitudinal, aggregate measure of national consumer sentiment toward marketing practice, to be reported at regular intervals to the marketing and consumer research communities. The article describes the measure and measurement procedure and provides validation evidence. Since this study also involved replication of prior research on this issue, information on the recent evolution of consumer sentiment toward marketing is presented.
A new technique for evaluating the roles of elaborative and organizational processing in the representation of social information is described. Although these concepts have found increasing application in theories of social knowledge, most investigations of elaboration and organization have relied on measures that can lead to interpretive ambiguities. Two studies show how analysis of the item-gain and item-loss components of multitrial free recall provides a means for assessing the contributions of elaborative and organizational processing while avoiding many of the problems found with existing measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reports an error in "The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes" by Stanley B. Klein and Judith Loftus (
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1988[Jul], Vol 55[1], 5-11). The word
case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record
1988-28556-001.) A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
examine evidence relevant to the judgment process under varying conditions of resource availability and resource requirements / perspective is that of the communication strategist whose objective is to enhance the persuasive impact of a message / consider research that offers some insight about the types of strategies likely to enhance message influence when the resources available for message processing are exceeded by the requirements of the communication task
assess ways of enhancing persuasion when there is a surplus of resources given the demands of the processing task
followed by a more mechanistic analysis of human resource allocation and its strategic implications as suggested in recent research pertaining to hemispheric lateralization
summarize the theoretical and practical implications emerging from our analysis (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
the purpose . . . is (a) to describe the forms of autobiographical memory and contrast them with other forms of memory; (b) to give a theoretical account of autobiographical memory in terms of the self; (c) to argue for the importance of phenomenal reports in the study of autobiographical memory; (d) to examine some of the experimental findings on autobiographical memory in the context of this analysis; (e) to give a detailed account of personal memory, one of the important forms of autobiographical memory; and (f) to outline a partially reconstructive view of personal memory (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When the self is thought of as a narrative or story, rather than a substance or thing, the temporal and dramatic dimension of human existence is emphasized. The operation of narrative "emplotment" (Ricoeur, 1983/1984) can configure the diverse events and actions of one's life into a meaningful whole. One's self-concept or self-identity is fashioned by adaptation of plots from one's cul-tural stock of stories and myths. Stories of personal identity differ from literary productions in that they are constructed within an unfolding autobiography and incorporate the accidental events and unintended consequences of actions. Under stressful conditions, a self-narrative may decompose, producing the anxiety and depression of meaninglessness. One function of psychotherapy is to assist in the reconstruction of a meaning-giving narrative of self-identity.
(Psychology)
The results of three experiments suggest that consumers' autobiographical memories involving products and product usage experiences are affectively charged. Furthermore, the three experiments demonstrate that the retrieval of autobiographical memories impacts information processing. When autobiographical memories are evoked, there is reduced analysis of product information. There is also clear evidence that cuing autobiographical memories influences ad evaluations. Support for the notion that the affect generated by cuing autobiographical memories influences brand evaluations is weaker. Also, the results demonstrate that autobiographical memories are naturally and spontaneously evoked in response to some types of ads and generate feelings of empathy for the characters and situations in the ad. Thus, together the experiments suggest an avenue for impacting consumer judgments that has not been investigated previously.
The authors present a resource-matching perspective to explain the relationship between vividness and persuasion. Three experiments confirm the predicted inverted-U relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for vivid information, and a positive linear relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for nonvivid information when vivid information is less resource demanding than nonvivid information. This persuasion pattern is reversed in experiment 4, where nonvivid information is less resource demanding than vivid information; that is, there is an inverted-U relationship for nonvivid information, and a positive linear relationship for vivid information. The contrasting persuasion functions for vivid and nonvivid information can predict when vivid information will be more versus less persuasive than nonvivid information. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.
Two experiments manipulate self-referencing by varying copy writing strategy. It is found that increasing self-referencing increases message elaboration and can increase persuasion when message arguments are strong. However, when self-referencing is increased in the presence of other variables that also enhance elaboration, the favorable effect of self-referencing on persuasion is moderated or reversed. A two-factor explanation is employed to generate predictions and account for results. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.
In theories and studies of persuasion, people's personal knowledge about persuasion agents' goals and tactics, and about how to skillfully cope with these, has been ignored. We present a model of how people develop and use persuasion knowledge to cope with persuasion attempts. We discuss what the model implies about how consumers use marketers' advertising and selling attempts to refine their product attitudes and attitudes toward the marketers themselves. We also explain how this model relates to prior research on consumer behavior and persuasion and what it suggests about the future conduct of consumer research. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.
This article identifies and analyzes two types of television advertising dramas: classical and vignette. Drama criticism in theater, film and television is the source used to identify the elements of advertising dramas--narration, plot, story, and character--and to propose models of the two different types. The two models are employed in an empirical analysis of an advertising sample. Consumer effects of classical and vignette dramas are proposed in terms of the attribution theory of persuasion and the elicitation of empathy versus sympathy responses. Copyright 1994 by the University of Chicago.
Television ads can be classified as either arguments or dramas or hybrids of these forms. We claim that form dimension influences how ads are processed. An argument backs its claims with appeals to objectivity and is processed evaluatively. A drama appeals more to subjective criteria and is processed empathically. A study is reported in which 40 television commercials were classified on a dramatization scale. They were shown to 1,215 people, and measures of evaluative and empathic processing were taken. The measures were found to be weighted differently for arguments and dramas, supporting the contention that form influences processing. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.
Outcomeversus Process-Focused Thought and Advertising
- Jennifer Edson Escalas
- Mary Frances Luce
Escalas, Jennifer Edson and Mary Frances Luce (2003), "Outcomeversus Process-Focused Thought and Advertising," Journal
of Consumer Psychology, 13 (3), 246-54.
Using Narratives to Discern Self-Identity Related Consumer Goals and Motivations” in The Why of Consumption: Perspectives on Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires eds
- Jennifer Escalas
- James R Edson
- Bettman
Escalas, Jennifer Edson and James R. Bettman (2000), “Using Narratives to Discern Self-Identity Related Consumer Goals and Motivations” in The Why of Consumption: Perspectives on Consumer Motives, Goals, and Desires eds. Ratti Ratneshwar, David Mick, and Cynthia Huffman, New York, NY: Routledge Press, 237-258
When Are Feelings Generated? Assessing the Presence and Reliability of Feelings Based on Storyboards and Animatics, in Emotion in Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Explorations The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives
- Goodstein
- C Ronald
- A Julie
- Marian Edell
- Chapman
Goodstein, Ronald C., Julie A. Edell, and Marian Chapman Moore (1990), When Are Feelings Generated? Assessing the Presence and Reliability of Feelings Based on Storyboards and Animatics, in Emotion in Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Explorations, eds. S.J. Agres, J. A. Edell, and T.M. Dubitsky, Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 255-268. r36 Green, Melanie C. and Timothy C. Brock (2000), The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79 (5), 701-721
Toward a Semiotic of Advertising Story Grammars, " in Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale
- David Mick
- Glen
Mick, David Glen (1987), " Toward a Semiotic of Advertising Story Grammars, " in Marketing and
Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale, ed. Jean Umiker-Sebeok, Berlin,
Germany: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 249-278.
Association for Consumer Research
- C Thomas
- Kinnear
Thomas C. Kinnear, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 572-576.
Recollection and Autobiographical Memory Chapter 12 in Human Memory
- Alan Baddeley
Baddeley, Alan (1990), "Recollection and Autobiographical Memory," Chapter 12 in Human
Memory, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
When Are Feelings Generated? Assessing the Presence and Reliability of Feelings Based on Storyboards and Animatics
- Ronald C Goodstein
- Julie A Edell
- Marian Chapman Moore
Goodstein, Ronald C., Julie A. Edell, and Marian Chapman Moore
(1990), "When Are Feelings Generated? Assessing the Presence and Reliability of Feelings Based on Storyboards and
Animatics," in Emotion in Advertising: Theoretical and Practical Explorations, ed. Stuart J. Agres, Julie A. Edell, and
Tony M. Dubitsky, Westport, CT: Quorum, 255-68.
- Susan T Fiske
Fiske, Susan T. (1993), " Social Cognition and Social Perception, " Annual Review of Psychology,
44, 155-194.
- David A Kenny
- A Deborah
- Niall Kashy
- Bolger
Kenny, David A., Deborah A. Kashy, Niall Bolger (1998), "Data Analysis in Social Psychology,"
Handbook of Social Psychology, eds. Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner
Lindzey, 233-265.