Implicit and explicit changes following subtle and blatant advertisings

This study investigated the different effectiveness of subtle and blatant advertisings on implicit and explicit attitudes. Generally speaking, a persuasive message is assimilated when it is followed by a congruent change of attitude, whereas contrast occurs when the same persuasive message is followed by a change in the opposite direction. According to many theories (e.g. Wegener & Petty, 1995), contrast effects are the result of an individual “correction” of the effect of the persuasive message. As a consequence, correction processes are more likely to happen when the individual perceive and over-estimate the strength of the persuasive attempt. In 1999, Glaser and Banaji demonstrated that correction processes can occur unconsciously, thus in this contribution we hypothesized that subtle advertising produces assimilation of persuasive messages, whereas blatant advertising produces contrast, both in explicit and implicit attitudes. Further, given the nature of implicit attitudes (cf. Strack & Deutsch, 2004), we hypothesized that implicit attitude changes would be short-term in nature, whereas explicit changes would last longer. 62 psychology undergraduate students were involved in the study for no reward. Participants were chosen according to their preference toward one of two major brands of cola. We used a mixed factorial design, manipulating between subjects the type of advertising that participants watched (subtle, blatant, and control) and within subjects the time in which measures were taken. The study followed a pre – post – test design with a follow-up (third session) after 48 hours. Results generally supported our hypotheses. The subtle advertising was assimilated explicitly, while the blatant advertising had no effect. Explicit assimilation even increased after 48 hours. In addition, we observed that the blatant advertising produced an implicit contrast, which disappeared after 48 hours. These results provide evidence that subtle advertising may be more effective than blatant advertising, which can sometimes be counterproductive.