Date of Completion
Spring 5-1-2024
Thesis Advisor(s)
Blair T. Johnson
Honors Major
Psychological Sciences
Disciplines
Advertising and Promotion Management | Behavioral Economics | Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Other Psychology
Abstract
With advertising commanding so much money as an industry, it is critical to determine what people like or do not with ads. Our focus was on three main factors within advertising, two dimensions within how the advertisement is presented, one based on the person reading the ad. The two dimensions based on presentation were the complexity of the ad, done the first time by omitting letters from the ad and the second time by swapping letters within words, and celebrity endorsement, comparing popstar Taylor Swift’s to Alicia Steele, an AI-generated celebrity. We also measured Need for Cognition (NFC), the level at which a person enjoys using thought to complete tasks. Participants from the University of Connecticut’s participant pool were given messages in a 2 × 2 factorial design with celebrity and complexity as the manipulated factors. No hypotheses was supported. Instead, results showed that simple ads were significantly preferred to complex ones; celebrity status did not matter significantly. NFC negatively impacted impressions when complexity was manipulated using swapped letters. In conclusion, the best advertisements are simple. Celebrity endorsements are probably not worthwhile unless the population can be segmented into groups where celebrity preference can be known beforehand.
Recommended Citation
Stave, Stratton; Johnson, Blair T. Dr.; Martinez-Berman, Lisset; and Jané, Matthew B., "Persuasion as a Function of Celebrity, Argument Complexity, and Need for Cognition" (2024). Honors Scholar Theses. 992.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/srhonors_theses/992