Why is Charlize Theron so beautiful?

This advert always manages to capture my attention. My eyes are fixed, my mouth slightly open and I start to wish that I was taller, thinner, had beautiful blond hair and the perfect nose. She is absolutely beautiful. Talk about a Halo effect the advertisers have literally immersed her in a radiating golden glow. She attracts the attention of everyone in that room which just exaggerates her social desirability (Dion & Berscheid, 1972).  I then start to believe that if I douse myself in Dior then I too will radiate a golden façade just like Charlize Theron (Lott & Lott, 1965).

Only the other day I drove past a billboard for this ad, my attention was diverted and nearly crashed my car!! The Aston Express Way really is not an appropriate place for such an ad to be placed. They are clearly trying to get someone killed!

So many other individuals must have the same response, hopefully they do otherwise I seriously need to seek some professional help regarding my response to Charlize Therons beauty.

Well I was happy to discover that I am not the only weirdo and that my reaction to this advert is exactly what the advertisers were planning on. It turns out that us human beings have an automatic response to physical attractiveness, which makes beauty very hard to ignore (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005).

After all I completely doubt that the advert would invoke the same response if this lady was the leading the campaign.

Well turns out she is!! But how come she looks so unbelievably different in the ad? Well apparently we prefer good-looking individuals to us normal types, but would never openly admit it of course. Efran and Patterson (1976) discovered that good-looking political candidates got two and a half more votes than unattractive candidates. But when asked about it the participants did not know about their bias. 

On top of this Cialdini and colleagues (1976) discovered that we like to associate ourselves with positive things and disassociate ourselves with the negative (the latter photo!).

So the advertisers have captured my attention, they have made me believe that Charlize Theron is the most socially desirable woman alive, they have tricked my unconscious and made me want to associate myself with this everything about this product. But they are not happy to stop there, on no!

Further to this the advert has been placed all over the media and on billboards across the country increasing exposure and increasing Charlize Therons attractiveness (Peskin & Newell, 2004). This is all done so that her attractive traits rub off onto the product and entice me to purchase (Smith & Engel, 1968).

Reference

Cialdini. R., Borden. R., Thorne. A., Walker. R.M., Freeman. S., & Sloan R. L.  (1976) Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 34. 366-375.   

Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of personality and social psychology, 24(3), 285.

Efran, M. G., & Patterson, E. W. J. (1976).  The politics of appearance. Unpublished

manuscript, University of Toronto.

Lott, A. J., & Lott, B. E. (1965). Group cohesiveness as interpersonal attraction: A review of relationships with antecedent and variables. Psychological Bulletin, 64, 259-309.

Olson, I, R. C, Marshuetz,(2005) Facial Attractiveness Is Appraised in a Glance.

Emotion 4, 498-502.

Peskin, M. & Newell, F. N. (2004) Familiarity breeds attraction: effects of exposure on the attractiveness of typical and distinctive faces. Perception 33, 147-157.

Smith, G.H. & Engel, R. (1968) Influence of a Female Model on Perceived Characteristics of an Automobile, Proceedings from the 76^th  APA Annual Convention, 681-682.

An Inconvenient Truth: A Convenient Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAK8Cd4t0WA

Earthquakes, flash floods, breaking icebergs: these are the drastic climatological changes that have been captured in the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ which were thought could never happen is of no concern. As such, the film is supposed to present an incredibly outlandish situation that no one in their mind would wish to experience. However, in recent years, there are a motherload of totally destructive climatological catastrophes that certainly deliver a message of ‘earth danger’ which successfully draws public’s attention to environmental issues with caution. Would those special effects of impending disaster featured in the film finally becomes reality?

Being inspired by the scenes of destruction and spectacle moments of dramatic action presented in the film, the former Vice President Al Gore produced a documentary called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ revealed the global warming’s deadly progress by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. The documentary discussed the scientific facts behind global warming, explained the disastrous consequences if the world’s government and citizens did not act, and shared what people could act against these crisis to protect the earth and future generations.

With the use of fear appeal, guilt tactics, scientific based evidence, and misleading inference, he offered a passionate and inspirational look at one man’s commitment to inspire audience to take responsibility for their own actions – a catastrophe of their own making. In his eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his presentation, he also stressed the severity of ‘environmental scarcities’ – a term used to describe the degradation of land and water resource (Dixon, 1994). Of the major environmental changes facing humankind, land and water deprivation are attributed to increased carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning. Assuming burning as usual, Gore maintained the view that these problems are expected to intensify.

Facing several environmental degradations due to climate change, individuals may decide to migrate to high developing countries where food security and health are less affected. The cost of ‘environmental scarcities’ is an undue focus on the necessity at hand, which leads to a lack of judgment about wider issues, and an ability to imagine longer-term consequences. The effect of the ‘environmental scarcities’ may has catastrophic results in particular in relation to international conflicts (Rafael Reuveny, 2006), for example, tension between ethnic groups. Therefore, underdeveloped societies are at high risk of facing environmental threats, particularly if they depend on environment for livelihood should make rational choices before exit.

In general, humanity is now sitting on a time bomb.  If the contents of the presentation are the exact reflection of such a global crisis, we have limited time to avert a major catastrophe that could send the entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction. Being active or remain neutral, it is entirely up to us.

References

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. "Environmental scarcities and violent conflict: evidence from cases." International security 19.1 (1994): 5-40.

Reuveny, Rafael. "Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict." Political Geography 26.6 (2007): 656-673.

Children See. Children Do.

This New Zealand television advert encapsulates the modelling behaviour fundamental to child development, showing the way children learn socially undesirable behaviours from the individuals around them, and persuading these individuals, particularly parents, to act in a positive and influential way.

Whilst the initial analysis of this advert focussed heavily on the anticipatory regret of target parents, it forgets to talk about the important imagery of dependency and responsibility, and the way in which this evokes an anticipatory emotion in the adult audience and persuades their influential behaviour.

Firstly, the use of children and parents in a modelling situation is a technique used to heighten the sensitivity of persuasion (Pratkanis & Gliner, 2004), and in combination with the feelings of guilt and embarrassment from the adult audience, individuals are influenced to acting in a more positive way as role models.

Carlsmith and Gross (1969) induced students into thinking they gave others painful shocks and found that those guilty students were more likely to comply to a behaviour than the control group. Similarly, Apsler et al (1975) had students perform a set of four embarrassing acts in front of each other. Compared to a control group, those embarrassed students were more likely to consent to help another student regardless of whether they had witnessed the embarrassing event or not.

As well as evoking these emotions of embarrassment and guilt in the adult target audience, the use of the negativity effect as an overriding theme gives rise to the true persuasiveness of this advert. Hodges (1974) found that giving individuals negative information had a greater impact than those individuals given positive information.

Lakhita Uppal

Reference 

Pratkanis (2007). The science of social influence: Advances and future progress. Psychology Press

You wouldn’t start a night like this... so why end it that way?

In 2008 the Home Office created a series of adverts (including the one above) as part of a £4million binge-drinking awareness campaign. A young girl is seen to be getting ready for a night out, a seemingly standard process for the majority of girls enticed by the thrilling yet sleazy world of clubbing.  It is not until we see her tear her clothes, smear her make-up, rip her shoe apart and drag vomit into her hair that we begin to question her intentions, until the phrase ‘You wouldn’t start a night like this, so why end it that way?’ appears chillingly on our screens.

The idea of the commercial is to raise awareness of the effects of binge drinking in situations that young adults in particular can relate to.  The advertisement makes use of some clever influential tactics which make the advert so provocative and memorable.

One interesting tactic that the advertisers exhibited was an influence tool with the aim to embarrass the target of an influential message. It is well known among society and researchers that when something embarrassing occurs, we typically strive to avoid it reoccurring as much as possible. Similar to guilt, embarrassment stimulates a feeling of a need to restore one’s self-image which can ultimately lead to compliance (Pratkanis, 2007).  Research asserts that we strive to avoid embarrassing situations; in one study participants who were presented with a potentially embarrassing situation, by helping a stranger who had dropped some tampons, tended to help the stranger significantly less than participants who were confronted by a stranger who dropped envelopes (Foss & Crenshaw, 1978).  Using this information, advertisers have a powerful tool of influence in their hands in which they can cleverly persuade people to avoid getting into an undesirable situation by presenting it to them and making them feel uncomfortable as a mere observer.  With the idea that we avoid embarrassing situations, advertisers would predict that viewers would therefore be careful in the future to avoid the situation they observed in the advertisement.  With this in mind, it would be expected that the Home Office advertisement should be a large success among the typically self-conscious young adults who venture on raucous nights out.

Another tactic demonstrated in this ad is the well documented negativity effect.  Research suggests that negative information tends to receive greater weight and attention than positive information when making judgements (Pratkanis, 2007; Kanouse, 1984). A study found that negative information about US Presidential candidates was more influential than positive information during elections (Lau, 1982).  Displaying a negative portrayal of binge drinking in this advert would, according to such research, make people consider the effects of drinking more due to the striking negativity of the advert which would as a result be more memorable.

A third tactic to be considered here is association, where an issue in society is linked to a negative concept with the aim of transferring meaning and consequence to the issue (Pratkanis, 2007).  In this advert’s case, the creators are linking the appalling and somewhat disturbing appearance of the young girl to excessive drinking.  Similarly the principle of association can also be attributed to the association that young adults have with drinking, as many of them could relate to having a ‘messy’ night out about town, and no doubt have seen either themselves or their peers in a similarly undesirable state.  Association has proven effective in studies such as one which paired names with positive or negative words, and uncovered that the meanings paired with the words tended to transfer to the original names, creating an association (Staats and Staats, 1958).

So, according to these tactics and the research justifying their use, it would be expected that this advert would have a large impact on the target audience of binge-drinkers and party-goers, reducing the amount of wild binge-drinking. But after studying news headlines over the past 5 years,  is this really the case?

Rachel Stirling

References

Foss, R. D., & Crenshaw, N. C. (1978). Risk of embarrassment and helping. Social Behaviour and Personality: An international journal, 6, 243-245.

Kanouse, L. (1984). Explaining negativity biases in evaluation and choice behaviour: Theory and research. Advances in Consumer Research, 11, 703-708.

Lau, R. (1982). Negativity in political perception. Political Behaviour, 4, 353-377.

Pratkanis, A. R. (2007). The Science of Social Influence. New York: Psychology Press.

Staats, A. W., & Staats, C. K. (1958) Attitudes established by classical conditioning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 57, 37-40.

"Where r..." A second look!

The above advert shows the disastrous consequences that can occur from texting whilst driving. As mentioned in an earlier blog on this advert, advertisers have used a dimensional alteration effect and also the consequences templates. However, there are also other persuasive tactics in use.

The company who created this advert, AT&T, are an American telecommunications provider, similar to Vodafone or O2 here in the UK. The very fact that it comes from them, shows the use of the Expert-Unknowing altercast. As they are experts within this field they cast the target of the advert into the position of someone no in the know. In general, it has been seen that linking a message with a source of expertise increases persuasion (Hoveland, Janis & Kelly, 1953). This effect increases the source credibility which in turn increases the persuasiveness of the message.

A further increase in Source credibility comes from the use of the Defector-Confident Altercast. For AT&T, it would be in their interests for their customers to be sending texts and using their services as often as possible as this increases money in their own pockets. So, the very fact that they advertise against this and highlight what is a very important issue, the overall effectiveness of their communication will be more effective (Walster Aronson & Abraham., 1966).

Additionally, the use of Fear can have a strong influence on increasing the persuasive power of a message. By linking an undesired action (texting whilst driving) with negative consequences (Brain damage and injury) an avoidance tendency toward that behaviour is created. Leventhal (1970) has shown this technique to be particularly effective when the appeal arouses intense fear, offers recommendation for overcoming this fear (not texting whilst driving) and the target believes the negative consequence of the undesired action will be avoided by performing the recommendation.

Clearly then, this advert is built to be persuasive on a number of levels. The combination of the dimensional alteration effect and consequences template previously mentioned with the Expert-Unknowing altercast, Defector-Confident Altercast and the Fear technique, will ultimately result in a very persuasive message to stop people texting whilst they drive.

George Coe

Hovland, C.I., Janis, I.L., Kelly, H.H. (1953). Communication and persuasion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.   

Leventhal, H. (1970). Findings and Theory in the Study of fear communications. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental and social psychology (Vol. 5, pp.119-186). New York: Academic Press. 

Walster, E., Aronson, E., & Abrahams, D. (1966). On Increasing the persuasiveness of a low prestige customer. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 325-342. 

  

The woman who lost her voice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zWB4dLYChM

Terrie is a 51-year-old woman who is providing “tips” on how to tackle the issues she faces in her daily life as a result of addictive smoking.  This advertisement is part of range of adverts known as “tips from former smokers” designed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to spread awareness about the effects of smoking.

The use of a real life example is very captivating and powerful because the viewer is able to see the reality of the situation. According to Pratkanis (2007) negative information received more attention than positive information also known as the negativity effect. In this case, Terrie’s gaunt & disfigured face, bald head and her husky breathless voice creates shock in the viewer because her voice is so faint to the point that she cannot articulate her own name properly. This vivid appeal creates fear in the viewer by linking smoking with the negative consequences such as missing teeth, a thin body and a hole in the neck due to a laryingectomy. This arousal of fear could change the attitudes and behaviour of the targeted audience since it creates an aversive state that must be escaped (Pratkanis, 2007).

Studies have found that 80% of new releases contain smoking, which is often associated with youthful vigor, good health, good looks and professional acceptance (Hazan et al, 1994). To contrast this a study was conducted where subjects were exposed to an advertisement that implied teenagers view smokers as unwise, unattractive and misguided. Results showed that the young viewers image of smoking was tainted and it generated negative thoughts about the actors in the advert who smoked (Pechmann & Shih, 1999). This shows that when the viewers are presented with smoking being in an extreme negative light it has more of an impact on the audience.

In this advertisement there is irony involved because Terrie says she will give tips on how to get ready in the morning. Usually a tip is a piece of advice often related to something positive however in this case Terrie is not actually giving tips. Instead there is a sarcastic undertone where she is warning heavy smokers that if they become like her their life would involve denchers, and a hands free device connected to the hole in the throat.

This advertisement is one of its kind because of the rarity of the patient experiencing such extreme consequences by smoking.  However the advertisement still managed to make an emotional bond with the view, engaging them more.

References

Pratkanis, A. R. (Ed.). (2007). The science of social influence: Advances and future progress. Psychology Press.

Hazan, A. R., Lipton, H. L., & Glantz, S. A. (1994). Popular films do not reflect current tobacco use. American Journal of Public Health, 84(6), 998-1000.

Pechmann, C., & Shih, C. F. (1999). Smoking scenes in movies and antismoking advertisements before movies: effects on youth. The Journal of Marketing, 1-13.

Say no to coke. Say no to Capitalism. Say yes to freedom.

 

Coca cola estimate that 94% of the world’s population recognise their red and white coca cola logo. Although this statistic should not be considered on face value, it does seem obvious that a high proportion of citizens have come into contact with one of many coca cola’s advertising schemes that have been distributed across the world. However, upon closer inspection, the viewer realises that this advert embodies a rebellion against businesses and corporations, such as coca cola which falsely sell us products we do not need or that are bad for our health.  The association created between coca cola and this anti-advertising statement forces the viewer into a state of systematic, effortful cognitive processing. This ingenious, paradoxical collaboration of worlds is what makes this advertisement so powerful.

According to the mere exposure hypothesis, viewers report higher levels of preference for something if they have been exposed to it before (Hekkert et al, 2013). In Hekkert et al’s study, participants were presented with either familiar or unfamiliar proportions of shapes. The familiar rectangular proportioned shapes were rated as the most attractive.  As the majority of us have inevitably been in contact with the coca cola brand, we are likely to recognise the copycat nature of coca cola’s trademark colours and font and therefore experience feelings of positivity when the advert initially catches our eye.

The use of this favourable “pre-persuasion” environment is quickly demolished as the viewer stumbles across the words “fuck that” in the same font in which they would expect to read “coca cola”. The viewer is forced to discard their heuristic processing of evaluating the advert favourably and instead switch to a systematic processing style where they feel inclined to actually read the writing. The “hidden truth” which the message presents is likely to lead to an attitude change as the way in which an argument is labelled directly influences the viewer’s thoughts (Pratkanis, 2007). Human beings are known to try to avoid losses. The losses the viewer may feel uncomfortable with after reading the small print in their loss of dignity, intellect and freedom to living a life without a façade as the article rightly states that we are being controlled. These thoughts should make the viewer feel motivated to avoid the loss of obliging to corporate schemes. Research supports this claim, for example, Yechiam and Hochman (2013), in a series of 5 studies found that when participants were presented with choice alternative tasks where they had to choose a strategy of loss or gains based on various consequences, participants were more likely to cognitively evaluate their performance in order to increase their gains. Participants delegated more attention to understanding why they were experiencing losses. The use of a coca cola theme has therefore acted as a catalyst for Banksy to spread his message as the viewer’s instant attraction to the advert has accelerated their interested and processing of the advert.

Banksy has acquired a reputation over the years as a respected graffiti artist portraying corruption in Western society. The viewer can conclude that the message in the coke bottle silhouette is credible as Banksy is considered to be an expert in his field of work. Coca cola is also a credible source as it is a well-established drinks company with a reputable quality of taste. The combination of these credible sources are likely to lead to attitude change and shape future interactions of the viewer to not comply or strive to materialistic ideologies as well as questioning the reasons behind advertising. Research into credible sources and attitude change is vast. Lucassen et al (2013)’s concluded that exposure to a trustworthy and positive cue was likely to lead to an attitude change. This was discovered by participants being shown a piece of familiar and unfamiliar information (both of high quality and low quality), either in the style of it having been written from Wikipedia or in Microsoft word. The findings suggested that half of the participants trusted Wikipedia as a source of information whereas a lot of the participants did not because of its open editing ability. Lack of trust regarding Wikipedia’s credibility was due to its open editing capability.

So there you have it. A combination of two worlds for one message. However, it still has not put me off drinking coke… Are you put off?

Hekkert, P., Thurgood, C., & Whitfield, A. (2013). The mere exposure effect for consumer products as a consequence of existing familiarity and controlled exposure. Acta Psychologica, 144, 411 – 417.

Lucassen, T., & Schraagen, J. M. (2013). The influence of source cues and topic familiarity on credibility evaluation. Computers in Human Behaviour, 29, 1837 – 1392.

Pratkanis, A. R. (2007).The science of social influence: Advances and future progress. New York: Psychology Press.

Yechiam, E., & Hochman, G. (2013). Loss-aversion or loss-attention: The impact of losses on cognitive performance. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 212 – 231.

 

 Nimarta Dugh

 

Be Smart, choose the best..

The advertisement above is presenting a car which supposedly can make our air not polluted, sky cleaner and plants flourish.  As it was mentioned in the previous analysis, perceptual contrast tactic was used. Marketing team was trying to create a visibility of a big difference between the clean and polluted world which is represented by contrasting views on the picture.

I believe that few more techniques were used when creating this advertisement. For example consequence template which was described by Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon (1999). This template is focused on showing us negative consequences of not acquiring what ad is presenting.  In the picture above we can see a dark, polluted place which shows us an implication of failing to follow a given advice, which is in this case – buying a particular car. Advertisements with long term consequences images were proven to be effective, especially for adult audience. For example Beaudoin (2002) found that the majority of antismoking advertisements for adults were focused on long term and health related consequences, while for young people social and short term consequences were more influential.

The car in the advertising is offering us ‘bright and clean future’ and we would of course prefer this option to a dark alternative. This difference between bright and dark is another trick used by marketing team of the company. Some colours and hues are known to be more desirable than the others. Schindler (1986) summarized previous finding in one table: Green, blue and white, which are predominant in the ‘good’ picture, are associated with hopefulness, accomplishment and purity respectively; brown and black on the other hand are associated with masculinity as well as mourning and mystery. As we prefer our future to be clean, bright and healthy our choice is quite obvious- to buy a car that will provide all that!

References:

Beaudoin, C. E. (2002). Exploring antismoking ads: Appeals, themes, and consequences. Journal of health communication, 7(2), 123-137.

Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing Science, 18(3), 333-351.

Schindler, P. S. (1986). Color and contrast in magazine advertising. Psychology & Marketing, 3(2), 69-78.


Elizaveta Khmelnitskaya 

i'm lovin' it

No promise of sales, celebrity endorsements or even delicious tasting food in this ad. It is purely a giant order of McDonald's to the face. And it is exactly that, the sheer simplicity of this ad that makes it so accessible. Oftentimes people will remember particular advertisements because they were humorous or demonstrated a good degree of creativity. This particular advertisement manages to achieve this same effect and more.

This ad makes use of an existing pedestrian road crossing. Cleverly placed, the location is familiar and acts as a funnel where ALL passersby must cross in order to cross the road. The location is a mundane and familiar route to its users, so it doesn’t take professor to recognise that what was black and white lines yesterday is now a giant order of fries (Cialdini, 2001). I'd say the mere contrast between the dull grey street and this striking red and yellow masterpiece would be enough to distract any walker-by. By adding a bit of fun to people's humdrum corpse-like drag to work, this ad will be more memorable and received with greater positive regard (Sundar & Kim, 2005).

The simplicity of this ad works in tandem with the short attention span of pedestrians. On their way to work, they all they are probably thinking of is “Walk. As quickly as possible. Don't get run over.” all of these thoughts fit well with this advertisement because the message is still conveyed with minimal effort from the target. The iconic red and yellow 'M' that we all know to be synonymous with McDonald's is the key because, not much else is present or even necessary. This ad aims to achieve one thing only; to increase the thought of having a meal at McDonald's - and thats it. Research has shown that by just making someone think of something more they are more likely to act based on this thought (MacLeod & Campbell, 1992). So by simply making you think of McDonald's, you are already more likely to decide to eat at McDonalds for lunch as compared to other shops because it readily comes to mind. Such mental shortcuts are commonplace, especially in the midst of a busy work environment where you don’t want to spend all that extra effort trying to think of where/what to eat. Take home message: in the city less is definitely more.

References:

Cialdini, R. B. 2001. Influence: Science and practice. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

MacLeod, C; Campbell, L. (1992). "Memory accessibility and probability of judgements:An experimental evaluation of the availability heuristic". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63 (6): 890–902

Sundar, S. S., & Kim, J. (2005). Interactivity and persuasion: Influencing attitudes with information and involvement. Journal of Interactive Advertising,5(2), 6-29.