Affective/Emotional
Conditioning
• Advertisement (US) --> change in feeling
state (UR)
• Watson & Raynor (1920)
• Taste aversion
– Emotional state “automatic”
– Lack of conscious control
Affect
• Little agreement in literature on
terminology
• Bower & Forgas (2000)
– Emotion: intense, short-lived, has identifiable
cause
– Mood: subtle/diffuse, long-lasting, non-specific
causation
– “Affect” encompasses both emotion and mood
Advertising
• To influence consumers’ brand opinions
• Use affect to change brand evaluation
• Performance content
– Content to convince consumers that the brand is
best
• Performance void
– Visual and/or audio to induce positive feelings
Classical Conditioning
Framework
• CS = brand
• US = something that produces affective
state (i.e., the UR)
• CR = induced affective state; influences
operant decision to purchase
• Affective Classical Conditioning (ACC)
Example: Visuals as US
• Generate positive feelings
– e.g., kitten
• For some brands, may also imply brand benefits or quality
– e.g., for tissues, kitten may also indicate softness
– e.g., for water filter, mountain stream may indicate purity
• See: Mitchel & Olson (1981)
Methodology Issue
• To control for visuals, use US that produces
affect with no potential brand meaning
• But, CS and US need to have shared
relevance/relatedness in advertising
– Hard to generate artificial neutral stimuli
Ad Framing
• Presenting positive or negative
consequences
• Aims to alter affect in consumer
• Positive ad framing
– Make purchase and receive positive affect
• Negative ad framing
– Don’t purchase and receive negative affect
Which is Better?
• Kahneman & Tversky (1979): Prospect
Theory
– Argue in favour of negative ad framing
– People should react more strongly to potential
loss than to potential gains
– Displeasure of losing perceived as more
consequential than pleasure of gaining
• However, majority of research generally
shows positively framed messages to be
more effective
Affect Priming
• Ad framing presents information producing
affect-congruent associations
• Affect priming is subsequent activation of
affect paired with brand
• Associationist’s principle of “similarity”
– Similar affect-related associations more easily
linked
Effects of Affect
• Schwarz & Bless (1991)
• If individuals feel positive, they believe the
environment is safe
• Safe subjects are less likely to engage in
message elaboration
• More likely to rely on “peripheral cues” for
judgments, less message elaboration.
• Martin, Ward, Achee & Wyer (1993)
– Happy people engaged in a task
• Believe task is enjoyable, produces the affect itself,
continue task longer
– Sad people engaged in the same task
• Attribute negative affect to task and quit sooner
• Mathur & Chattopadhyay (1991)
– Happy TV program contexts lead to more
attention to ad and message elaboration than
sad program context
– Transfer to advertisements?
Affect Source?
• From advertisement?
• From brand?
• From context in which advertisement is
embedded?
– For TV commercial, the TV program
– For print advertisement, the magazine,
newspaper, etc.
• All could be producing ACC effects
Emotional Perspectives
• Affective conditioning hypothesis
– “Subconscious”
• Mood judgment interpretation
– Cognitively “active”
Emotional Arousal
• From advertisement?
• From brand?
• From context in which advertisement is
embedded?
– For TV commercial, the TV program
– For print advertisement, the magazine,
newspaper, etc.
Effects of Arousal
• Yerkes-Dodson effect
Memory/response
– Inverted U
– Aids memory retention/recall to some point
Arousal/intensity
Excitation Transfer of Arousal
Paradigm
• Study effect of arousal on behaviour
• Emotion produced by interaction of:
– Physiological arousal
– Cognitive processing of situation
• Emotional effects can be delayed and can linger
– Underlying physiology (neurotransmitters, hormones)
• Associate arousal with brand/product
Importance of Timing
• Park & McClung (1985)
– Highly arousing TV program may interfere with commercial’s
effectiveness
•
•
•
•
View arousing TV program, view commercial
No delay: arousal attributed to program
Short delay: mistakenly attribute arousal to commercial
Implication
– Be careful when/where you place embedded advertisements
In the “Pod”
• First few may not benefit from residual
arousal
• Later commercials will
• Control over ad placement in pod?
Product Evaluation
• Hedonic criteria
– Product enhances positive affect via selfesteem, social validation, reputation, immediate
gratification, etc.
• Utilitarian criteria
– Product solves a problem
• Evaluation parallels “transformational
products” and “informational products”
Product Type, Affect Effects
• Adaval (2001)
• Affect effects re: purchasing appear when
product evaluation for hedonic criteria
• Less relevant for utilitarian criteria; product
performance more significant
Chang (2008)
• Sneakers with fictitious brand name in artificial ad
• Positively and negatively framed ad messages (re:
self-esteem, social recognition)
• Folder with sneaker ad and other distracter ads
given to subjects
• Questionnaire on affect and thoughts on ads and
products
• Positively framed ads elicit higher levels of
positive affect than negatively framed ads
Gresham & Shimp (1985)
• Attitude to ads (AAd)
• Attitude to brands (AB)
• What mediates processes for AAd to
influence consumer’s AB?
– Central issue for advertisement theory
• Four possibilities
Four Possibilities
• Classical conditioning
– Brand paired with
affectively-valenced ad
• Cognitive Response
– AAd influences AB
indirectly via impact on
brand cognitions
– Effects of arousal
• Reciprocal Causation
– AAd & AB are mutually
causative
– Positive/negative attitude
held to both product and ad
– Causative strength varies
with consumer and situation
• No relationship
– AAd & AB influence choice
independently
Requirements for Classical
Conditioning
• Affective reaction to ad changes buyers’ AB
without altering their cognitive structure
(CSB)
Hypothesis 1
• Positive/negative affective ads -->
significant influence on AB
• But, could AB affect AAd?
Hypothesis 2
• Experimental group (positive/negative
affective ad) will have more/less positive AB
than control group
• But, also must show AB affected by AAd, not
by changes in CSB
Hypothesis 3
• No significant difference in experimental
and control subjects’ CSBs
Study
• Rated 15 TV commercials (supermarket
products) on affective scale
– Positive, neutral, negative
• 5 experimental groups
– One ad from each group
– Questionnaires for AAd, AB, and CSB
• 1 control group
– Questionnaires for AB and CSB
Results
• Statistically speaking, inconclusive
• More generally, trends offer support for
classical conditioning interpretation
Design Problems
• Used “mature” brands
– e.g., Zest, Schlitz, Dr. Pepper
– Consumers familiar with product
– Drives AB --> AAd
• Recommendation
– Develop new TV ads for fictional products
– Tricky and expensive