Madelijn Strick

Humor in advertisements enhances product liking by mere association.

Humor in advertising is known to enhance product liking, but this attitude change is often considered nonpredictive of product choice. Previous research relied exclusively on explicit self-report measures to assess attitudes and purchase intentions. The present research shows that unobtrusive association of a product with humor can affect persuasion through implicit attitude change. Participants viewed humorous and nonhumorous cartoons in a mock-up magazine. One of two products was consistently presented in the vicinity of the humorous cartoons, whereas the other product was consistently presented in the vicinity of the nonhumorous cartoons. The results of an evaluative priming task showed enhanced evaluations of products paired with humor (Experiment 1, 2, and 3). Furthermore, these enhanced evaluations mediated the relation between association with humor and product choice (Experiment 2 and 3). Paradoxically, products paired with humor were also less recognized than the control products (Experiments 2 and 3). In summary, the present research demonstrates that mere association with humor enhances product evaluations and product choice in a way that is dissociated from the accessibility of the product in memory.

Finding Comfort in a Joke: Consolatory Effects of Humor Through Cognitive Distraction

This study aimed to demonstrate that the cognitive demands involved in humor processing can attenuate negative emotions. A primary aspect of humor is that it poses cognitive demands needed for incongruency resolution. On the basis of findings that cognitive distraction prevents mood-congruent processing, the authors hypothesized that humorous stimuli attenuate negative emotions to a greater extent than do equally positive nonhumorous stimuli. To test this idea, the authors used a modified version of the picture-viewing paradigm of L. F. Van Dillen and S. L. Koole (2007). Participants viewed neutral, mildly negative, and strongly negative pictures, followed by either a humorous or an equally positive nonhumorous stimulus, and then rated their feelings. Participants reported less negative feelings in both mildly and strongly negative trials with humorous positive stimuli than with nonhumorous positive stimuli. Humor did not differentially affect emotions in the neutral trials. Stimuli that posed greater cognitive demands were more effective in regulating negative emotions than less demanding stimuli. These findings fully support Van Dillen and Kooles working memory model of distraction from negative mood and suggest that humor may attenuate negative emotions as a result of cognitive distraction.

Good morning creativity: task reactivation during sleep enhances beneficial effect of sleep on creative performance

Both scientists and artists have suggested that sleep facilitates creativity, and this idea has received substantial empirical support. In the current study, we investigate whether one can actively enhance the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity by covertly reactivating the creativity task during sleep. Individuals’ creative performance was compared after three different conditions: sleep‐with‐conditioned‐odor; sleep‐with‐control‐odor; or sleep‐with‐no‐odor. In the evening prior to sleep, all participants were presented with a problem that required a creative solution. In the two odor conditions, a hidden scent‐diffuser spread an odor while the problem was presented. In the sleep‐with‐conditioned‐odor condition, task reactivation during sleep was induced by means of the odor that was also presented while participants were informed about the problem. In the sleep‐with‐control‐odor condition, participants were exposed to a different odor during sleep than the one diffused during problem presentation. In the no odor condition, no odor was presented. After a night of sleep with the conditioned odor, participants were found to be: (i) more creative; and (ii) better able to select their most creative idea than participants who had been exposed to a control odor or no odor while sleeping. These findings suggest that we do not have to passively wait until we are hit by our creative muse while sleeping. Task reactivation during sleep can actively trigger creativity‐related processes during sleep and thereby boost the beneficial effect of sleep on creativity.

Unconscious-Thought Effects Take Place Off-Line, Not On-Line

The unconscious-thought effect refers to an improvement in decision making following distraction from the decision context for a period of time. The dominant explanation for this effect is that unconscious processes continue to deal with the problem during the distraction period. Recently, however, some researchers have proposed that unconscious thinkers may be merely recalling a judgment that was formed on-line (i.e., during information acquisition). We present two experiments that rule out the latter interpretation. In the unconscious-thought condition of the first experiment, participants who reported making their decision after unconscious thought made better decisions than those who reported making their decision on-line. In the second experiment, all participants judged the choice alternatives both on-line and off-line. On-line judgments were predictive of off-line judgments only in the immediate-decision condition, but not in the conscious- and unconscious-thought conditions. These results demonstrate that a period of unconscious thought does improve judgments that were formed earlier on-line.

Humor in the Eye Tracker: Attention Capture and Distraction from Context Cues

ABSTRACT The humor effect refers to a robust finding in memory research that humorous information is easily recalled, at the expense of recall of nonhumorous information that was encoded in close temporal proximity. Previous research suggests that memory retrieval processes underlie this effect. That is, free recall is biased toward humorous information, which interferes with the retrieval of nonhumorous information. The present research tested an additional explanation that has not been specifically addressed before: Humor receives enhanced attention during information encoding, which decreases attention for context information. Participants observed humorous, nonhumorous positive, and nonhumorous neutral texts paired with novel consumer brands, while their eye movements were recorded using eye-tracker technology. The results confirmed that humor receives prolonged attention relative to both positive and neutral nonhumorous information. This enhanced attention correlated with impaired brand recognition.

Those who laugh are defenseless: how humor breaks resistance to influence.

Three experiments illustrate that humor in advertisements prevents the development of negative brand associations due to resistance. Previous research on humor in advertising suggested that humor can counter negative responses during ad processing, but less is known about the effect of humor on the development of negative brand associations in memory. Brand associations are important because there is often a time delay between ad exposure and brand decisions. We separately manipulated two typical aspects of humor processing, that is, distraction and positive affect, and examined their effects on the development of respectively negative and positive brand associations. All experiments were conducted with university students as participants. The results showed that resistance causes negative brand associations (Experiments 1 and 2), and humor prevents the development of these negative brand associations more than nondistracting positive stimuli and neutral stimuli (Experiment 2 and 3). The prevention of negative brand associations was caused by the distractive properties of humor. Irrespective of resistance, the positive affect engendered by humor enhanced positive brand associations. Experiment 3 showed that distraction and positive affect in humor uniquely contribute to brand preference. Together, these results illustrate that the effect of humor on resistance follows a two-step process: humor forestalls the development of negative brand associations because of its distractive properties (cognitive mechanism), and engenders positive brand associations because of its positive emotional outcomes (affective mechanism). These effects of humor on brand associations jointly promote brand preference.

Zen meditation and access to information in the unconscious

In two experiments and two different research paradigms, we tested the hypothesis that Zen meditation increases access to accessible but unconscious information. Zen practitioners who meditated in the lab performed better on the Remote Associate Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962) than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. In a new, second task, it was observed that Zen practitioners who meditated used subliminally primed words more than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The Effectiveness of a Cue-Reminder Intervention to Reduce Adolescents' Alcohol Use in Social Contexts

AIMS To examine the use of a cue-reminder to target alcohol use among youth in social contexts. METHODS Two experiments were conducted. First, among 92 late adolescents, we tested if a cue-reminder could be effectively associated with information about empowerment, awareness and monitoring of ones own limits with regard to alcohol use. Second, among 107 young adults, the effect of the cue in a real-life drinking setting was examined. RESULTS The first study showed that adolescents in the experimental condition recalled more empowerment information compared with adolescents in the control condition (mean 2.00 ± 0.92 vs mean 1.52 ± 0.96, P = 0.017), indicating the possibility of creating an association between a symbol (cue-reminder) and empowerment information with regard to alcohol use. In the second study, significant interaction effects between general drinking frequency and condition were found in relation to having an alcoholic consumption (β = -0.24; P = 0.027) and to the amount of alcoholic consumptions (β = -0.24; P = 0.035), suggesting that the presence of the cue-reminder in a drinking situation may have an inhibitory effect on alcohol consumption among frequent drinkers. CONCLUSION The cue-reminder seems to have the potential to function as an intervention to reduce excessive alcohol use in social settings.

Filling a missing link: the influence of portrayals of older characters in television commercials on the memory performance of older adults

ABSTRACT The portrayal of older characters in television commercials has over time become more varied and positive. This study examines how different portrayals of older characters relate to self-stereotyping, a process through which older individuals apply their beliefs about older people in general to themselves and behave accordingly. The study thereby seeks to connect, as few have previously done, cultural studies and critiques of media portrayals with psychological studies of the effects of self-stereotyping. Sixty participants aged 65–75 years were primed with television commercials that portrayed older characters in different ways: ‘warm and incompetent’, ‘warm and competent’, and ‘cold and competent’. It was hypothesised that priming with warm/incompetent portrayals would have a negative effect on memory performance because such representations match the dominant stereotype, and that the effect would occur only among older people who identify with their own age group. It was found that the participants who identified with their own age group did indeed show impaired memory performance after priming with warm/incompetent portrayals, but also that the same effect was found after priming with warm/competent portrayals. The findings are discussed in terms of resistance against stereotyping by older individuals themselves as well as by media producers.

A case for thinking without consciousness

People can engage in prolonged thought processes, such as when they are facing an important decision or when they are working on a scientific discovery. Such thought processes can take months or even years. We argue that while people engage in such thinking, they make progress not only when they consciously think but also sometimes when they are consciously thinking about something else—that is, while they think unconsciously. We review the literature on unconscious thought (UT) processes and conclude that there is indeed quite some evidence for UT. Conceptualized as a form of unconscious goal pursuit, UT is likely to be especially fruitful for thought processes that are complex, important, or interesting to the thinker. In addition, we discuss other characteristics of the UT process. We end with proposing Type 3 processes, in addition to Type 1 and Type 2 (or Systems 1 and 2) processes, to accommodate prolonged thought processes in models on thought.