Lisa Vandeberg

Effects of Disclosing Sponsored Content in Blogs How the Use of Resistance Strategies Mediates Effects on Persuasion

This article presents two studies examining the effects of disclosing online native advertising (i.e., sponsored content in blogs) on people’s brand attitude and purchase intentions. To investigate the mechanisms underlying these effects, we integrated resistance theories with the persuasion knowledge model. We theorize that disclosures activate people’s persuasion knowledge, which in turn evokes resistance strategies that people use to cope with the persuasion attempt made in the blog. We tested our predications with two experiments (N = 118 and N = 134). We found that participants indeed activated persuasion knowledge in response to disclosures, after which they used both cognitive (counterarguing) and affective (negative affect) resistance strategies to decrease persuasion. The obtained insights do not only advance our theoretical understanding of how disclosures of sponsored blogs affect persuasion but also provide valuable insights for legislators, advertisers, and bloggers.

Dissociating explicit and implicit effects of cross-media advertising

Knowledge of cross-media advertising effects is mainly based on explicit psychological measures, such as self-reports. To fully understand the mechanisms responsible for the success of cross-media advertising, it is important to also use implicit measures. We used both types of measures to assess whether exposure to different media combinations affects the cognitive and evaluative impact of advertising. Results show that participants performed better on all explicit and implicit measures of memory and brand preference after exposure (versus no exposure) to target ads, which validated the use of these measures. Comparison of cross-media versus single medium exposure showed differences on the explicit level, but not on the implicit level. This suggests (1) that cross-media advantages may be driven by explicit rather than implicit memory mechanisms, and (2) that implicit advertising effects may require more drastic manipulations than context changes, such as varying the combination of media used for exposure to advertising.

Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Language Affects Perceptual Vividness in Memory

We examined whether language affects the strength of a visual representation in memory. Participants studied a picture, read a story about the depicted object, and then selected out of two pictures the one whose transparency level most resembled that of the previously presented picture. The stories contained two linguistic manipulations that have been demonstrated to affect concept availability in memory, i.e., object presence and goal-relevance. The results show that described absence of an object caused people to select the most transparent picture more often than described presence of the object. This effect was not moderated by goal-relevance, suggesting that our paradigm tapped into the perceptual quality of representations rather than, for example, their linguistic availability. We discuss the implications of these findings within a framework of grounded cognition.

How verbs can activate things: Cross-language activation across word classes

The present study explored whether language-nonselective access in bilinguals occurs across word classes in a sentence context. Dutch-English bilinguals were auditorily presented with English (L2) sentences while looking at a visual world. The sentences contained interlingual homophones from distinct lexical categories (e.g., the English verb spoke, which overlaps phonologically with the Dutch noun for ghost, spook). Eye movement recordings showed that depictions of referents of the Dutch (L1) nouns attracted more visual attention than unrelated distractor pictures in sentences containing homophones. This finding shows that native language objects are activated during second language verb processing despite the structural information provided by the sentence context.

Disentangling Rheumatoid Arthritis patients’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward Methotrexate.

Medication non-adherence is a major public health problem that has been termed an ‘invisible epidemic.’ Non-adherence is not only associated with negative clinical consequences but can also result in substantial healthcare costs. Up to now, effective adherence interventions are scarce and a more comprehensive model of adherence determinants is required to target the determinants for not taking the medication as prescribed. Current approaches only included explicit attitudes such as self-reported evaluations of medication as determinants, neglecting the role of associative processes that shape implicit attitudes. Implicit processes can predict daily behavior more accurately than explicit attitudes. Our aim is to assess explicit and implicit attitudes toward medication and explore the relation with beliefs, adherence and clinical (laboratory) outcomes in chronically ill patients. Fifty two Rheumatic Arthritis (RA) patients’ attitudes toward Methotrexate (MTX) were explicitly (self-reported) and implicitly (Single-Category Implicit Association Test) assessed and related to the Beliefs about Medicine Questionnaire, the Compliance Questionnaire on Rheumatology and laboratory parameters [Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR), C-Reactive Protein (CRP)]. Results show that explicit attitudes were positive and health-related. Implicit attitudes were, however, negative and sickness-related. Half of the patients displayed explicitly positive but implicitly negative attitudes. Explicit attitudes were positively related to ESR. A positive relationship between implicit attitudes and disease duration was observed. In this study, we have obtained evidence suggesting that the measurement of implicit attitudes and associations provides different information than explicit, self-reported attitudes toward medication. Since patients’ implicit attitudes deviated from explicit attitudes, we can conclude that the relationship between implicit attitudes and medication adherence is worthwhile to be further explored. With this information we can improve our understanding of the subconscious, automatic processes underlying adherence and we can develop interventions that target these implicit attitudes.

Media multitasking and the role of task relevance in background advertising processing

People are increasingly combining multiple media simultaneously (e.g., checking Facebook while watching television, listening to the radio while reading). Simultaneously using multiple media with different screens, audio sources, and content is referred to as media multitasking (Chinchanachokchai et al., 2015; Ophir et al., 2009; Voorveld, Segijn, Ketelaar, & Smit, 2014; Voorveld & van der Goot, 2013).

Implicit and Explicit Measures: What Their Dissociations Reveal About the Workings of Advertising

Consider a scenario in which you participate in a study on advertising effects. You are instructed to attend to an advertisement, after which you are asked about your memory for the advertisement and advertised brand, your attitude towards the ad and brand, and your intention to purchase the advertised brand. Sometimes, you will also be asked to reflect about the proposed process that is considered to underlie advertising effects, with questions along the lines of ‘do you think that this advertisement has affected your attitude about the brand?’ or ‘do you think the music in the advertisement affected how positive you feel about the brand?’.

Distinguishing Implicit from Explicit Brand Attitudes in Brand Placement Research

Brand placement is a popular topic, both in business and academia. Brands are placed in a wide-ranging array of media, including television programs, movies, radio shows, magazines, games, music videos, and websites. Expenditures on brand placement are still growing (PQ Media, 2013), as well as the number of scientific studies on the effects of brand placements (for reviews see Balusubramanian, Karrh, & Patwardhan, 2006; Van Reijmersdal, Neijens, & Smit, 2009). These studies have contributed to the knowledge about explicit (deliberative, conscious, or intentional) brand placement effects, but little is known about whether and how brand placements affect consumers’ implicit (associative, unconscious, or automatic) responses toward the placed brand.