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Humor in Advertising: An Associative Processing Model

Madelijn Strick, Rob W. Holland, Rick B. van Baaren, Ad van Knippenberg, and Ap

Dijksterhuis

Radboud University Nijmegen

Madelijn Strick, Rob W. Holland, Rick B. van Baaren, Ad van Knippenberg

and Ap Dijksterhuis, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen,

Montessorilaan 3, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Madelijn Strick is now at Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, The

Netherlands.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Madelijn

Strick, Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.140, 3508 TC

Utrecht. Phone: +31 30 253 46 15; Fax: +31 30 253 47 18; E-mail: [email protected]


Abstract

This article reviews a research program on the effects of humor in advertising on

positive and negative brand associations and brand choice, and integrates the findings

into a single, overarching model. Based on the Associative and Propositional

Processes Model of Evaluation (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006, 2007, 2011), we

propose that repeated pairings of a novel brand with brand-unrelated humor forms

positive brand associations, which mediate spontaneous brand choice. This associative

process was found to be independent from the level of distraction posed by humor and

from awareness of the stimulus pairings. In fact, the distraction posed by humor

benefits persuasion by preventing negative brand associations. Previous marketing

research, which mainly viewed humor as a cue in peripheral processing, was rather

pessimistic about the persuasive impact of humor. In contrast, this research program

suggests that a repeated pairing of a brand with humor affects the brand’s underlying

associative structure, which may lead to stable attitude changes that guide overt

spontaneous brand choice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.


Humor in Advertising: An Associative Processing Model

Persuasion is among the central issues of social behavior, and persuasion attempts can

be found almost everywhere. Just walking down the street or surfing the Internet we

are already exposed to countless advertising messages. When we read a newspaper or

turn on the TV, we see political candidates trying to sway people to vote for them.

Even at home, our friends and spouses try to lure us into doing things like join their

birthday parties, babysit their children, or take out the trash. The literature on

persuasion has addressed a multitude of persuasion variables. Some variables

influence deliberative persuasion processes such as the impact of argument quality,

biased information processing, and cognitive dissonance, whereas others influence

intuitive persuasion processes such as the impact of source credibility, source

attractiveness, and the sheer number of arguments. Somewhat surprisingly, it has left

out systematic research on one very prevalent message element: the use of humor. It is

estimated that between 30 and 42% of ads are intended to be humorous (Markiewicz,

1974; Weinberger, Spotts, Campbell, & Parsons, 1995). In the present article, we aim

to address this gap in the social psychological literature by reviewing a research

program on the effects of humor in advertising and by introducing an associative

model of humorous advertising.

Prior Research on Humor in Advertising

Although social psychologists have not paid much research attention to the

topic, humor is one of the most frequently used and studied message strategies in the

advertising and marketing literature. This research has revealed several interesting and

sometimes paradoxical effects of humor on various marketing outcomes. There is

broad agreement among advertising researchers and practitioners that humor enhances

the amount of attention paid to ads (e.g., Madden & Weinberger, 1982). Several


experiments demonstrated that humor directly increases positive attitudes towards ads

and brands (Chung & Zhao, 2003; Chattopadhyay & Basu, 1990; Cline & Kellaris,

1999; Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986; Lee & Mason, 1999). Humor can also enhance

persuasion indirectly by positively biasing ad elaboration (e.g., Allen & Madden,

1985), or by increasing motivation to process ads (e.g., Zhang & Zinkhan, 2006).

Other researchers have noted that humor may disrupt critical processing of advertising

claims (Cline & Kellaris, 1999), and may reduce negative responses to advertisements

like counterarguing (Nabi, Moyer-Guse, Byrne, 2007) or reports of reactance

(Skalski, Tamborini, Glazer, & Smith, 2009, for reviews see Eisend, 2009, 2011).

On the downside, there is also evidence that humor can harm the memory for

products and brand claims (e.g., Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986; Krishnan & Chakravarti,

2003), which suggests that humor distracts attention from products. Even more

importantly, marketing studies generally found that humor has little or no effect on

behavioral persuasion variables such as behavioral compliance, purchase intentions,

or brand choice (Chattopadhyay & Basu, 1990; Scott, Klein, & Bryant, 1990; Zhang

& Zinkhan, 2006). In fact, a comprehensive review about the effect of humor in

advertising concluded “the current conclusion from the overall literature concurs with

the view that humor does not offer significant advantages over non-humor when

persuasion is the goal” (Weinberger & Gulas, 1992, pp. 56-57).

This pessimistic view about the persuasive impact of humor among marketing

researchers could be explained by the fact their research was mainly guided by the

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Humor was assumed

to affect consumer behavior only through the peripheral route to persuasion.

Persuasion through the peripheral route occurs when the consumer is unable or

unwilling to engage in much message-relevant thought, and instead uses simple


mental shortcuts to process a persuasive message (e.g., the sheer number of arguments

presented or the attractiveness of the source). Peripheral processing only generates

weak and short-lived attitude changes that are hardly persuasive on a behavioral level

(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Our Research Approach

In the present article we deviate from the ELM approach, and instead propose

an associative processing model of humor in advertising. We start by the notion that

humor is a source of positive affect, and humorous ad campaigns usually present

viewers with multiple brand-humor pairings. We propose that this repeated humor-

brand pairing forms positive brand associations that guide spontaneous brand choice.

In contrast to peripheral processing, associative processing is thought to always

influence brand attitudes; when consumers process the ad only superficially, but also

when they process it more thoroughly (although this is a domain of debate). Brand

associations formed on the basis of multiple pairings with affective stimuli are robust

(Sweldens, Osselaer, & Janiszewski, 2010) and are considered fundamental for

persuasion (Greenwald & Leavitt, 1984; Osselaer & Janiszewski, 2001). Compared to

the general conclusions of marketing research, our model proposes that humorous ad

campaigns can promote overt brand choice, which may help to explain why so many

advertisers choose to use humor in their ads. Importantly, our model also speaks to the

particular psychological mechanisms involved in the processing of humorous ads.

Although marketing research has made important progress in identifying the kinds of

messages, market segments, and consumer types in which humor can impact

persuasion, it spoke less to the particular psychological mechanisms involved.

Besides using a different theoretical approach, we also used a different

experimental approach than most previous marketing studies. We chose to employ a


less obtrusive, and in some respects more ecologically valid way to investigate the

effect of humorous advertising. In the majority of marketing studies participants were

presented with a single humorous or non-humorous ad, and afterwards reported their

thoughts about the ad and brand, and/or rated their attitudes and purchase decisions on

explicit Likert-type rating scales (e.g., Chattopadhyay & Basu, 1990; Cline &

Kellaris, 1999; Lammers, Leibowitz, Seymour, & Hennessey, 1983; Lee & Mason,

1999; Zhang & Zinkhan, 2006). An important limitation was that the research relied

exclusively on self-report measures to assess attitudes and purchase intentions.

Moreover, the research participants were usually aware of the experimenter’s goal to

investigate advertisements. It is unlikely that the explicit way in which research

participants were consulted about their opinions about ads in marketing studies

resembles the way consumers deal with ads in the real world. In real advertising

situations consumers are frequently exposed to multiple humorous ads promoting the

same brand, and this happens mostly involuntarily and without being asked for an

opinion afterwards.

We also took into account the fact that automatic processes may govern the

impact of ads on brand choice. The average consumer is exposed to thousands of ads

per day (Jhally, 1998). This abundance of advertising information exceeds the

attentional resources of most consumers, which means that a lot of product

information passes by unnoticed and will not be deliberately evaluated at all (see

Heath, 2001). Although consumers are usually inattentive of what is said about brands

in ads, they certainly form impressions of them. They unintentionally pick up brand

information throughout the day, from tasting, using or wearing a particular product to

seeing its particular packaging or logo in the shop or in a marketing campaign. When

making a spontaneous purchase decision (e.g., in the supermarket), consumers often


rely on this automatically retrieved brand information (see Bargh, 2002; Dijksterhuis,

Smith, Van Baaren, & Wigboldus, 2005).

Furthermore, we took into account that real advertising situations potentially

evoke resistance and ad avoidance. Ads typically force themselves upon consumers,

sometimes in unwanted places (e.g., in e-mail and SMS text messages), and/or at

inconvenient times (e.g., interrupting a popular TV show). More generally, every ad is

an overt attempt to change the opinion and behavior of its perceiver, which

automatically triggers resistance (Sherman, Crawford, & McConnell, 2004; for a

review, see Knowles & Linn, 2004). Thus, compared to experimental participants on

whom previous research conclusions were based, actual consumers may experience

more resistance when confronted with commercial advertising, and may react with

more avoidance or irritation.

To simulate a situation of general low involvement and information overload,

we presented brands in an information-rich environment including other brands,

various humorous and non-humorous stimuli and lots of filler material. Care was

taken to disguise the hypotheses under investigation, the particular brands and ad

variables we were interested in, and the particular pairings between brands and

humorous stimuli. We also minimized the obtrusiveness of the dependent

measurements by using implicit measures of memory and attitudes, and behavioral

observations. In several experiments we examined the impact of resistance by

experimentally manipulating resistance, measuring individual differences in

resistance, or employing field settings in which we encountered natural resistance.

Before presenting the model it is useful to define the term humor as it is used

here. The present work subscribes to an incongruity-resolution theory of humor,

which defines humor as a cognitive-linguistic problem-solving task that elicits


positive affect (Goel & Dolan, 2001; Raskin, 1985; Suls, 1972). A typical joke

contains a setup that causes perceivers to make a prediction about the likely outcome.

The punch line violates this expectation, and perceivers will look for a cognitive rule

that will make the punch line follow from the setup. When this cognitive rule is found,

the incongruity is resolved and the joke is perceived as funny. Thus, the processing of

humor comprises two characteristic stages: (1) resolution of a schema-incongruity in

order to “get the joke” (cognitive stage), and (2) experience of positive affect

(affective stage). Content analyses show that indeed about 69 to 82% of humorous ads

throughout the world are based on incongruity-resolution (Alden, Hoyer, & Lee,

1993; Spotts, Weinberger, & Parsons, 1997).

It is important to note that our experiments and model only concern low

involvement consumer decisions, which can be defined as spontaneous choices

between brands or products that consumers make without much deliberation of the

choice alternatives (e.g., choosing between two brands of ballpoints or soft drinks).

Indeed, the consumer market segments that most frequently employ humor in

advertisements (ads) are non-durable, low involvement products such as snack foods,

soft drinks, and beer (Madden & Weinberger, 1984; Weinberger & Campbell, 1991).

As mundane as these spontaneous consumer decisions may seem, the sales of low

involvement consumer goods amount to billions of dollars. The soft drink market is

worth $64 billion in the United States alone (Oakland Tribune, 2004). Moreover,

these kinds of small decisions that consumers make in daily life have a significant

impact on medical, social, and economic outcomes on both individual consumers and

society as a whole (Verplanken & Wood, 2006). Thus, we think it is important to

examine how advertising influences low involvement consumer decisions.


We also wish to point out that our theory and experiments are only relevant to

advertising in which the humor is unrelated to the brand. We chose to study only

brand-unrelated humor because it is more common in advertising than brand-related

humor. According to content analyses of Spotts and colleagues (1997), 71% of humor

in ads worldwide is brand-unrelated. Thus, although we cannot draw conclusions

about the effects of brand-related humor, we can still generalize our findings to most

humorous ads. Although our research does not pertain to deliberate consumer

decisions (e.g., deciding on houses, political voting) or to brand-related humor, we do

speculate on the effect of humor in these domains in the discussion.

Finally, we chose to study only novel instead of mature brands because this

gives a clear picture of the effects of humor on brand perceptions and brand choice

per se, without having to incorporate possible confounding factors like prior

knowledge and experience with the brand. Thus, our findings can only be generalized

to novel, non-mature brands, as previous research has indicated that humor affects

novel and mature brands in qualitatively different ways (Chattopadhyay & Basu,

1990; see also Gibson, 2008).

Foundations of the Model

Our model derives in essential ways from three theoretical approaches. From

the research on schema-incongruity (e.g., Heckler & Childers, 1992; Houston,

Childers, & Heckler, 1987) we derived our hypotheses regarding the effects of humor

on attention and memory processes. Research on schema-incongruity distinguishes

two types of incongruity in ads: unexpectedness and irrelevance. Unexpectedness

refers to advertising information that is somehow incongruent with prior expectations

or schemas. Consider, for example, a TV ad for a British food manufacturer showing

an Englishman ordering a shepherd's pie in a restaurant. After taking the order, the


waiter suddenly jumps on the table and starts singing “O sole mio”. Research shows

that unexpected information (i.e., the waiter jumping on the table and starting to sing)

receives enhanced attention and elaborative processing. Similarly, our model predicts

that the inherent schema-incongruity in humor is likely to attract attention and

enhance recall of the humorous parts of the ad.

Irrelevance, on the other hand, concerns the extent to which a piece of

information pertains directly to, and helps the identification of, the theme or message

of a commercial. Research shows that irrelevant information receives little attentional

processing and, if encoded, is poorly linked within the associative network. Because

the waiter singing “O sole mio” is irrelevant for shepherd's pie (it would be more

relevant, however, if the guest ordered lasagna), this product will be poorly processed.

Similarly, our model predicts that humor does not support the processing of

advertising information that is irrelevant to the humor, such as a relatively

meaningless brand name (see also Krishnan & Chakravarti, 2003). In fact, given that

humor requires solving incongruities and therefore poses cognitive demands, it is

likely that humor withdraws cognitive resources from the processing of humor-

unrelated brand names. Thus, we hypothesized that the solving of incongruities within

humorous ads impairs memory for humor-unrelated brands.

A second theoretical approach we relied heavily on is the Associative and

Propositional Processes Model of Evaluation (APE-model) of Gawronski and

Bodenhausen (2006, 2007, 2011). We used this model to derive our hypotheses

regarding the effects of humor on implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes. This model

differentiates two qualitatively distinct mental processes related to attitude change,

namely associative or propositional processes. Associative processes are defined as

mental processes based on the activation of mental associations in memory, which are


formed by feature similarity and contiguity between stimuli in space and time. In

contrast, propositional processes are defined as the validation of the information that

is implied by the activated associations, which is guided by the principles of logical

reasoning.

The most important difference between associative and propositional

processes is their (in)dependency of subjective truth. Whereas associations can be

activated in memory regardless of whether the person considers the information

implied by these associations accurate or inaccurate, propositional processes are

inherently concerned with a subjective assessment of the validity of activated

information. For example, the propositional implication of a positive automatic

reaction to a brand on a supermarket shelf (e.g., “I like Brand X cookies”) may be

rejected when it is inconsistent with other propositions that are currently considered

(e.g., “Brand X cookies are very heavily advertised” and “I shouldn’t buy cookies just

because they are advertised a lot”).

The behavioral outcomes of propositional processes are typically measured

with self-report scales (also termed explicit attitude measures), while the behavioral

outcomes of associative processes are typically measured with response latency

measures (also termed implicit attitude measures). Implicit attitude measures are

better measures of the outcome of associative processes because they tap directly into

the evaluations that are automatically activated upon exposure of the attitude object.

One particularly thorny issue is the use of the term implicit attitude. Recently,

researchers have noted that although the measure is implicit, the attitude is not, since

there is no evidence that the individual is unaware of the attitude (Fazio & Olson,

2003; Gawronski, LeBel, & Peters, 2007). We completely agree with this position.


However, we use the term implicit attitude in this article because it is common in the

field.

Explicit and implicit attitudes may be similar or dissociated, depending on

whether the propositional implications of the automatically activated implicit attitude

is accepted or rejected as a valid basis for evaluative judgment (e.g., Gawronski &

Strack, 2004; Nosek, 2005; Olson & Fazio, 2006). We hypothesized that repeated

pairing of a brand with brand-unrelated humor leads to a pattern of explicit and

implicit attitude change that the APE-model denotes as Case 1 (Gawronksi &

Bodenhausen, 2006). Case 1 involves a direct influence on implicit brand attitudes

through repeated pairing with humor, that is, evaluative conditioning (EC; for a

review, see De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens, 2001). These implicit attitudes, in turn,

provide the basis for explicit brand attitudes. Case 1 implies corresponding changes in

implicit and explicit attitudes, with changes in explicit attitudes being fully mediated

by changes in implicit attitudes. According to the APE model, Case 1 should emerge

when humor leads to a change in associative structure of the brand’s attitude1.

Additionally, the Case 1 pattern only emerges when the consumer accepts the

implication of the newly formed brand associations as a valid basis for the evaluative

judgment, and hence, does not reject it on the basis of conflicting propositions that

call into question the truth-value of the associative evaluation. The APE model argues

that contingency awareness, that is, awareness of the pairings of a particular brand

with positive or negative stimuli, may provide such conflicting information that

reduces trust in the validity of the associative evaluation, leading to a pattern of

explicit and implicit attitude change that the APE-model denotes as Case 2. As in the

example above, consumers who are contingency aware may discard their liking for


brand X because they attribute it to advertising rather than to the true merits of a

brand.

It should be noted that following the recent debate on the role of contingency

awareness in EC, the APE model acknowledges that not all EC effects are associative

in nature and may sometimes require contingency awareness (see Gawronski &

Bodenhausen, 2011, and the discussion of this article). The exact impact of attention

and contingency awareness on EC effects is still under debate (e.g., Pleyers, Corneille,

Luminet, & Yzerbyt, 2007; Bar-Anan, De Houwer, & Nosek, 2010; Stahl, Unkelbach,

& Corneille, 2009). In line with the APE model, we consider EC as an effect that can

be both driven by associative or propositional processes. As mentioned before,

however, we hypothesized that within the confinement of our experiments (i.e.,

repeated exposure of a novel low involvement brand in the context of unrelated humor

while disguising the particular pairings between brands and humorous stimuli), the

impact of humor on brand attitudes follows an associative process described as Case 1

in the APE-model. This pattern would be indicated if 1) humor affects brand attitudes

without contingency awareness; 2) There is correspondence between implicit and

explicit attitude change; and 3) Effects of humor on explicit attitudes and behavioral

choice are fully mediated by implicit attitude change.

A third theoretical approach that strongly influenced our thinking on the

associative processes involved in humorous advertising is the Evaluative Space Model

of attitudes (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997; Norris, Gollan, Berntson, &

Cacioppo, 2010). A central assumption of this model is that attitude positivity and

negativity are independent and can (and should) be separated. For a long time,

attitudes have been conceptualized as unidimensional constructs, which implied that

when an attitude becomes more positive, it will also become less negative


(comparable to the bipolar scale of a thermometer: when it gets warmer, it gets less

cold). However, one of the central tenets of the Evaluative Space Model of attitudes is

that attitude positivity and negativity are separate and often uncorrelated attitude

dimensions. This proposition is in line with approach-avoidance models of behavior

that generally assume that the behavioral response toward an object depends on the

relative strength and salience of both the positive and negative responses towards the

object (Dollard & Miller, 1950; Gray, 1987; Knowles & Linn, 2004). Hence, to foster

a behavioral change to buy a brand, an ad should ideally form positive brand

associations, and simultaneously prevent the formation of negative brand associations.

As we will explain below, we hypothesized that the repeated pairing of a brand with

humor causes exactly these two processes.

An Associative Processing Model of Humorous Advertising

From the aforementioned theories we derived several expectations about the

effect of pairing a novel brand with brand-unrelated humor that formed the basis for

our model of associative processes in humorous advertising. The model is

summarized in Figure 1. The general idea of the model is as follows. Incongruity

research demonstrates that advertising information that is incongruent with prior

expectations or schemas enhances attention and elaborative processing of ads (e.g.,

Heckler & Childers, 1992; Houston et al., 1987). Therefore, the model predicts that

humorous ads attract more attention than non-humorous ads. However, the enhanced

attention is mostly devoted to the schema-incongruity in humor and distracts from the

processing of humor-unrelated information such as brand names. In fact, the model

proposes that the solving of incongruities within humor impairs the explicit memory

for brands that are presented in humorous ads.

(Figure 1 about here)


Besides affecting brand attention and memory, humor will also affect brand

evaluations. Given the positivity of humor, we predict that a repeated association with

humor will form new, positive brand associations (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006).

These positive brand associations should become apparent in different ways. They

should be manifested in implicit measures of the brand attitude. If the person currently

does not consider propositions that conflict with the positive brand association (e.g.,

awareness of the pairing with humor), it will also become apparent in positive explicit

brand attitudes and behavioral choice. Furthermore, the model posits that the

distracting property of humor benefits the persuasion process by preventing negative

brand associations, for example due to high resistance. The more humor distracts, the

better it works to prevent the formation of negative brand associations.

In summary, the model proposes that the persuasive effect of humor follows a

two-step process: a cognitive step and an affective step. The process by which humor

prevents negative brand associations is a cognitive process, as it is based on an

account of limited cognitive resources: humor distracts, and thereby draws on limited

cognitive resources that are required to form negative brand associations. The process

by which humor creates positive brand associations is an affective process, as it is

based on the property of humor to elicit positive affect. These effects of humor on

positive and negative brand associations jointly stimulate spontaneous brand choice.

In the following section we will provide empirical evidence to support the theoretical

model.

Empirical Evidence for the Model

Explicit Versus Implicit Brand Memory

Previous studies have found consistent evidence that humor increases the

attention paid to an ad (e.g., Madden & Weinberger, 1982; Stewart & Furse, 1986; see


also Gulas & Weinberger, 2006; Weinberger & Gulas, 1992). However, the evidence

concerning the effects of humor on attention for products is far from clear. Some

researchers found that humor impairs memory for brands (e.g., Cantor & Venus,

1980; Lammers et al., 1983; Gelb & Zinkhan, 1986). Others, in contrast, found

positive influences of humor on memory (e.g., Krishnan & Chakravarti, 2003;

Madden & Weinberger, 1982; Stewart & Furse, 1986). These inconsistent findings

may be due to the fact that humorous ads as a whole receive more attention than non-

humorous ads. When total attention paid to the ad is experimentally controlled, for

example when exposure time is fixed (as was the case in most marketing studies)

humor distracts attention from brands. However, when total attention paid to ads is

freely decided upon by the consumer, as is the case in most real advertising situations,

humorous ads tend to receive more attention overall, which compensates for the

distraction effect.

These ideas were confirmed by one of our studies (Hansen, Strick, Van

Baaren, Hooghuis, & Wigboldus, 2009, Study 1). We presented participants with a

questionnaire that contained pictures of characteristic scenes of humorous and non-

humorous (control) ads that were frequently broadcasted on TV at the time. The

pictures showed characteristic scenes, that is, identifiable moments of the TV ads. We

suspected that participants had seen these ads on TV at home, and may recall some of

them. We had no control over the total attention that participants had paid to these ads

at home. Based on incongruity research we expected enhanced recall of humorous ads

compared to control ads (i.e., recall of the humorous storyline or ‘gist’ of the ad, see

Schmidt, 1994, 2002). However, the spillover effect from humorous ads to brand

recall was expected to be small because most of the enhanced attention is focused on

the humor, which goes at the expense of attention for brand names. In contrast, we


expected lower ad recall for control ads because they attract less attention overall, but

a bigger spillover effect from ad recall to brand recall. In summary, we expected ad

recall to be higher for humorous than control ads, but controlling for ad recall2 we

expected brand recall to be higher for control ads than humorous ads.

In our study, participants were asked for each picture whether they recalled the

ad, and if yes, to provide a short description of the storyline. Ad recall was calculated

as the percentage of ads for which participants correctly described the storyline. After,

participants were asked to recall what product they thought was promoted in the ad.

Product recall was calculated as the percentage of ads for which participants could

correctly recall the product.

The results showed that ad recall was indeed on average higher for the

humorous ads (67%) than the control ads (53%), confirming that humorous ads

receive more overall attention. However, absolute product recall did not differ

between humorous and control ads (52% and 49%, respectively). Note that these

results imply that controlling for ad recall brand recall is higher for control than

humorous ads. That is, if a participant recalled a particular control ad her chances of

recalling also the product were 92%, but if she recalled a particular humorous ad her

chances of recalling also the product were reduced to 77% (see Figure 2). These

results are in line with our hypothesis that humor increases attention to ads as a whole,

but within ads distracts attention from products.


More conclusive evidence of the distractive property of humor was found in an

experiment that used an online measure of selective attention, namely eye tracking

(Strick, Holland, Van Baaren, & Van Knippenberg, 2010a, Experiment 1). In the eye

tracker, all participants viewed pictures of four novel energy drink brands that were


paired with (i.e., consistently presented next to) humorous or control texts. A first

brand was consistently presented next to 15 different humorous texts (e.g., “The

spider was turned down for the position as web designer”), a second brand was

consistently presented next to 15 different positive but non-humorous texts (e.g.,

“Isabelle received the gold medal with tears in her eyes.”), a third brand was

consistently presented next to 15 different neutral texts (e.g., “Lisa takes the bus every

day to get to work and back.”), and a fourth brand was presented next to 15 neutral

filler texts. Figure 3 gives an illustration of the stimulus presentation of a brand-

humor pairing. Brand-text pairs were presented for 6,000 ms each. In this experiment,

and in all other experiments reviewed in this article, the assignment of brands to the

humorous and the various control conditions was counterbalanced between

participants to avoid confounding among variables. After viewing all stimuli,

participants completed an unexpected brand recognition task. Participants viewed a

one-by-one presentation of 24 brands (i.e., the four experimental brands and 20 novel

brands), and were asked to indicate for each brand as fast and accurately as possible

whether they had seen it before.


The results are summarized in Table 1. Analysis of the eye tracking data

indicated that, compared to both the positive and neutral texts, the humorous texts on

average received longer visual attention. The results of the brand recognition task

indicated that enhanced attention for humorous texts came at the expense of attention

for the paired brands: the average percentage of correctly recognizing “humor brands”

was lower than the average percentage of correctly recognizing the “positive brands”

and “neutral brands”. The average viewing time of humorous texts was negatively

correlated with recognition of the humor brand. Visual attention and brand memory in


the positive and neutral conditions did not significantly differ from each other, which

indicates that distraction is unique to humor and is not found in non-humorous

positive stimuli (see also Strick, Holland, Van Baaren, & Van Knippenberg, 2010b).

(Table 1 about here)

In summary, our studies show that humor distracts from brands, impairing

brand recall and brand recognition. Most marketing researchers and advertising

practitioners would assume that poor brand memory is detrimental to advertising.

After all (they would argue), how can an ad influence brand choice if people forget

about the brand? We agree that some form of brand memory is needed for advertising

to promote later brand choice. However, this brand memory does not necessarily have

to be explicit and conscious. In recent years, advertising research has seen a growing

interest in implicit brand memory, which refers to is a type of memory in which

previous experience with the brand aid in the performance of a task without conscious

awareness of this previous experience (Jacoby, 1991; Schacter, 1987; Shapiro &

Krishnan, 2001). As an example, assume that one week after being exposed to an ad

of the beauty brand “Lady”, a person cannot consciously remember seeing the ad or

the brand. Nonetheless, she is more likely to complete the word stem LA_ _ with

LADY than with LAND or LACE than a person who has not been exposed to the

Lady ad.

There is empirical evidence that tests of explicit and implicit memory show

different effects of the same experimental manipulations. For example, divided

attention or longer delays between information exposure and memory assessment

reduce explicit memory more than implicit memory (Richardson-Klavehn, & Bjork,

1988; Schacter, 1987; Shapiro & Krishnan, 2001). Interestingly, research also

indicates that only implicit, not explicit brand memory predicts positive brand


evaluations (Hansen & Wänke, 2009) and brand choice (Shapiro & Krishnan, 2001).

Could it be that humor impairs only explicit but not implicit brand memory?

We examined this question in another experiment (Hansen et al., 2009,

Experiment 3). We measured implicit and explicit recognition of brand names one

week after exposing participants to 12 humorous and 12 non-humorous print ads. We

separated implicit and explicit memory of previously presented brand names by using

an adaptation of Jacoby’s process dissociation procedure (for a detailed description of

the process dissociation procedure see Jacoby, 1991, 1998). The memory data

revealed a significant interaction between type of ad (humorous/non-humorous) and

type of memory process. As expected, explicit brand recognition was lower for brands

that had been presented in humorous ads than in non-humorous ads, but implicit

recognition of brands was similar for both types of ads. These results imply that

although humor distracts and therefore leads to lower explicit brand memory, it leaves

implicit brand memory intact. Both humorous and non-humorous ads enhance implicit

brand memory to the same extent.

This finding is important because for humor to increase positive brand

associations that promote brand choice (which our model assumes) some trace of the

brand needs to be stored in memory. Previous research indicated that positive attitude

change and brand choice require implicit brand memory rather than explicit brand

memory (Hansen & Wänke, 2009; Shapiro & Krishnan, 2001). It thus becomes

possible that even though humor reduces explicit brand memory, it may increase

positive brand attitudes and choice. The finding is also important because it may shed

new light on the relation between of distraction and evaluation. Marketing researchers

have long been aware of the distracting effect of humor and other creative copy on

cognitive processing of brand-related information (termed the “vampire effect” by


practitioners, see Evans, 1988). However, less is known about how distraction relates

to attitude change and choice. Many marketing studies investigated either the effect of

humor on cognitive variables (i.e., attention, brand memory) or its effect on

evaluative variables (i.e., brand attitudes, choice, e.g., Eisend, 2009, 2011;

Weinberger & Gulas, 1992). It was assumed, at least implicitly, that explicit brand

memory and attitude change go hand-in-hand, and hence, distraction harms

persuasion. In contrast, the finding that humor does not harm implicit brand memory

suggests that it may lead to positive attitude change despite the distraction.

In the next section we will address the effect of humor on attitude change and

choice, and we will discuss how the distracting property of humor interacts with

evaluative processes.

Positive Attitude Change in the Absence of Brand Awareness

Despite the ongoing debate about the important role of attentional resources

(Pleyers, Corneille, Yzerbyt, & Luminet, 2009) and contingency awareness (e.g.,

Pleyers et al., 2007; Bar-Anan et al., 2010) in EC, there is considerable empirical

support for the notion that EC is sometimes not hampered by distraction (Field &

Moore, 2005; Walther, 2002), and can ensue in the absence of conscious awareness of

the pairing of the stimuli (Aarts, Custers & Holland, 2007; Custers & Aarts, 2005;

Fulcher & Hammerl, 2001). Thus, there is reason to assume that despite the

distraction, humor could elicit positive associative processes. To study the effect of

humor on associative processes we arranged a situation in which products were

repeatedly paired with humor, yet in which participants were not intentionally

evaluating ads and products (Strick, Van Baaren, Holland, & Van Knippenberg, 2009,

Experiment 1). Participants were asked to view a series of full-screen frames

displaying two adjacent pages of an opened magazine on a computer monitor. An


illustration of the stimulus presentation in the magazine is presented in Figure 4. Each

magazine frame displaying two adjacent pages was presented for 10 seconds.

Participants experienced this stimulus presentation as though they were “leafing

through a magazine”. To evoke the situation of paying attention to humor instead of

brands, we asked participants to focus their attention on pictures in the magazine that

were surrounded by a yellow frame, which in fact were always humorous cartoons or

non-humorous cartoons (i.e., cartoons with humorous elements removed). Depending

on a counterbalance condition, a picture of a novel (but truly existing) energy drink

brand (Enorm or Shark) was consistently shown on the same page as a humorous

cartoon, whereas a picture of another novel energy drink brand (Shark or Enorm) was

consistently shown on the same page as a non-humorous cartoon. This pairing

occurred on 10 different pages per brand. Thus, throughout the magazine one brand

was 10 times paired humor using 10 different humorous cartoons, and the other brand

was paired 10 times with 10 different non-humorous cartoons. After this learning

phase we measured participants’ attitudes of the presented brands using an implicit

attitude measure. A third, novel energy drink brand (Warp) served as a baseline brand.


We expected the unobtrusive pairing with humor to increase brand attitudes.

More specifically, based on the notion of independence of attitude positivity and

negativity (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Norris et al., 2010) we expected that pairing a brand

with humor would lead to enhanced association of this brand with positive affect, not

necessarily to reduced association with negative affect. Assuming that positivity and

negativity are independent and separable attitude dimensions, pairing a novel brand

(i.e., a brand that lacks pre-existing associations) with a purely positive stimulus (i.e.,


humor) should only create new positive brand associations, but should not affect

negative brand associations.

Implicit brand attitudes were measured using an evaluative priming task

(Fazio, 2001; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powel, & Kardes, 1986), a widely used implicit

attitude measure (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Hermans, Vansteenwegen,

Crombez, Baeyens, & Eelen, 2002). In this task, participants are asked to indicate as

quickly and accurately as possible whether a target word (e.g., lovely, mistake) is

positive or negative by pressing a left “negative” or right “positive” key. Before each

target word appears on the computer screen, a prime is presented (in this case, one of

the two experimental brands, the baseline brand, or a filler picture). The task is based

on the fact that the primed brands automatically activate an evaluation (Fazio et al.,

1986; Fazio, 1995), and in turn facilitate responses to target words that are

evaluatively congruent, and inhibit responses to target words that are evaluatively

incongruent. For example, if the automatic evaluation of a primed brand is positive,

responses on subsequent positive targets will be faster.

We disentangled positive and negative brand associations by means of

separately analyzing the response latencies to positive and negative target words of

the evaluative priming task. Usually, in an evaluative priming task, the difference

score between response latencies to positive and negative targets after priming with an

attitude object is used to assess the evaluation of an the attitude object. Separating

priming effects on positive and negative target words is a more recent procedure in

the field of the evaluative priming procedure (see Robinson & Kirkeby, 2005;

Robinson, Ode, Moeller, & Goetz, 2007). However, given our predictions about the

independent effect of humor on positive and negative associative processes, it made

theoretical sense to separate them.


As expected, the response latencies of the evaluative priming task indicated

that priming with the humor brand, compared to priming with the control brand or the

baseline brand, speeded up responses to positive target words, indicating positive

brand associations (see Figure 5). In contrast, compared to priming with the control or

baseline brand, priming with the humor brand did not slow down responses to

negative targets, indicating that humor did not reduce negative brand associations. In

two follow-up experiments using the same experimental paradigm we consistently

found that associating a brand with humor only increases positive brand associations

but does not decrease negative brand associations (Strick et al., 2009, Experiment 2

and 3). These results supported the hypothesis that repeated exposure of a brand in the

context of unrelated humor, while disguising the particular pairings, elicits an EC

effect. More specifically, it leads to more positive, not less negative, brand

associations.


The results of this experiment also show that the relative difference between

humor and control brands is due to the humorous cartoons being evaluated positively

rather than the non-humorous cartoons (i.e., cartoons with humor removed) being

evaluated negatively, as the control brands were evaluated similarly to a neutral

baseline. Moreover, while priming the humor brand speeded up responses to positive

targets, priming the control brand did not speed up responses to negative targets.

The specific effect of humor on positive brand associations while leaving

negative brand associations unaffected also confirmed our hypothesis that attitude

positivity and attitude negativity are independent and may respond differently to

experimental manipulations. Note that the lack of effect of humor on negative brand

associations is assumed to be limited to no-resistance situations such as this one, as


participants were not aware of being influenced. When resistance is high we

hypothesize that humor does affect negative brand associations (see next paragraph).

The results of this experiment provided initial evidence that humor can affect

brand attitudes through associative processing, but more evidence is needed to show

that unobtrusive pairing with humor corresponds with attitude change according to

Case 1 of Gawronski & Bodenhausen’s APE-model. This pattern is indicated when

the pairing with humor has a direct effect on implicit brand attitudes, when explicit

attitude change and behavioral consequences correspond with the implicit attitude

change, and are fully mediated by implicit attitude change. According to the APE-

model, this pattern is more likely to emerge if humor affects implicit brand attitudes

without contingency awareness. Two follow-up experiments were designed to

investigate these issues. Moreover, these experiments tested whether the positive

attitude change happens even when humor distracts attention. This would be indicated

when the humor brand is evaluated more positively than the control brand even if

explicit memory of the humor brand is poorer than that of the control brand.

A follow-up experiment used the same magazine procedure to pair products

with humorous or non-humorous cartoons. This time, however, a picture of a ballpoint

(or scissors) was paired with humor, while a picture of scissors (or a ballpoint) was

paired with non-humor (control condition). After leafing through the magazine and

performing a subsequent filler task, participants completed a surprise recognition task.

A series of 10 pictures was presented twice, in random order, including the two

pictures of the experimental products. To obscure which pictures were of interest,

three pictures that had also been repeatedly shown in the magazine served as fillers.

Five new (unseen) pictures completed the set of stimuli. Either before or after the


recognition task participants performed the evaluative priming task, using pictures of

the ballpoint, the scissors, and filler pictures as primes.

In line with our predictions, the recognition task showed that explicit

recognition of the humor product was on average poorer (69%) than explicit

recognition of the control product (85%). Analyses of the response latencies of the

trials in which the product was correctly identified indicated that the humor product

was also recognized slower than the control product. In line with the previous

experiment the response latencies of the evaluative priming task indicated that

priming with the humor product speeded up responses to positive target words

compared to priming with the control product, indicating positive attitude change.

Again, priming with the humor product did not slow down responses to negative

target words.

These results suggest that pairing a brand with humor, despite the distraction,

created positive brand attitudes. However, even though the humor product was

recognized less often than the control product, it was still recognized in more than half

of the trials. Therefore, it is possible that positive attitudes were only induced in

participants who were not distracted by humor. To rule out this possibility, we broke

down the analysis of the evaluative priming data for participants who did and did not

recognize the humor product. This analysis showed that the evaluative priming effect

did not depend on product recognition: a significant positive attitude change was

observed even for participants who did not (explicitly) recognize the humor product.

Although the level of contingency awareness was not directly measured in this study,

these data offer quite convincing support that implicit attitude change was established

without contingency awareness. After all, how can a person be aware of a pairing


between a product and particular stimuli without being aware of having seen the

product at all?

A final question of this experiment concerned the correspondence of implicit

and explicit attitude change. In the final part op the experiment participants were

asked to indicate their preference for one or the other product. The pictures of the

scissors and ballpoint were presented on the computer screen, and below them a

bipolar 7-point scale was presented with the question “Which of these products would

you rather take home?” with scale anchors 1 (definitely the scissors), 4 (equally

gladly), and 7 (definitely the ballpoint). Irrespective of which product was paired with

humor, participants had a higher relative preference for the humor product. Hence,

explicit attitude change corresponded with implicit attitude change. Furthermore, a

mediation analysis revealed that explicit product preference was fully mediated by

positive product associations (see Figure 6). These findings are fully in line with the

idea that pairing with humor changes associative processing on which reflective

judgments, such as this preference measure, are partly based.


Another experiment in this line of research (Strick et al., 2009, Experiment 3)

replicated the effects of humor pairing on distraction and implicit attitude chance

using the same pairing procedure, recognition task, and evaluative priming task, this

time using again novel but truly existing energy drink brands: Enorm and Energy

Slammers. Depending on counterbalance conditions either Enorm or Energy

Slammers was paired with humor (and the other brand paired with non-humor) in the

magazine. We replaced the explicit attitude measure by a measure of overt choice

behavior. After leafing through the magazine, and completing the recognition task and

evaluative priming task in private lab cubicles, participants were led to believe that


the experiment aimed to investigate the influence of energy drink consumption on

reaction times. They were escorted to a different room where a stack of Enorm and

Energy Slammers cans (in equal numbers) was presented. The experimenter asked the

participants to take three sips of energy drink, allegedly to measure its effect on

reaction times on a following task. The brand chosen to sip from represented our

measure of brand choice. After sipping from the energy drink, the participants were

escorted back to their private cubicles to complete another reaction time task to lend

credibility to the coverstory.

As expected, participants were significantly more likely to choose the energy

drink brand that was unobtrusively paired with humor than the control brand (see

Figure 7). Similar to the findings on explicit attitudes, overt brand choice was in line

with, and fully mediated by, positive brand associations. Once more, negative brand

associations were not affected by the humor pairings and did not predict brand choice.


The results of the last three experiments are fully in line with the hypothesis

that repeated parings of a novel low involvement brand with unrelated humorous

stimuli affects product attitudes through Case 1 associative processing (Gawronski &

Bodenhausen, 2006). Pairing a product with humor directly affected implicit attitude

change. Explicit attitude change and behavioral choice corresponded with, and were

fully mediated by, implicit attitude change. The attitude change among participants

that lacked brand awareness indicated that the implicit attitude change did not depend

on contingency awareness.

Furthermore, the results supported the assumption that attitude positivity and

attitude negativity are separate by showing that humor affected positive brand

associations without affecting negative brand associations. These results contradict


the classic idea that attitude positivity and negativity are endpoints of the same bipolar

scale (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Norris et al., 2010). One could ask why is it relevant to

disentangle the measurement of attitude positivity and negativity. Although there are

several advantages (on which we elaborate in the discussion), one of them became

clear to us in the experiments just reviewed: by disentangling these attitude

dimensions we uncovered a psychological mechanisms that otherwise would have

remained hidden. That is, only changes in positive, not negative brand associations

mediated brand choice. Without separating positive and negative brand associations,

we would not have found the hypothesized mediation effect of implicit attitude

change on explicit attitude change and behavioral choice.

The experiments reviewed so far improved our understanding of the role of

humor in the development of positive brand associations. However, they have not

addressed the impact of humor on negative brand associations. We proposed that

resistance is an important source of negative brand associations, and we hypothesized

that the negative emotion elicited by resistance forms negative brand associations

(Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; De Houwer, et al., 2001). Although we found that

distraction does not interfere with the formation of positive brand associations, we

hypothesized that it does interfere with the formation of negative brand associations.

We will explain these hypotheses below.

Distraction Prevents Negative Attitude Change

The scientific study of advertising has focused mainly on the ways to make

products and issues more desirable (e.g., Perloff, 2003). Only recently, persuasion

researchers have become interested in persuading consumers by reducing their ability

or motivation to resist attitude change (for a review, see Knowles & Linn, 2004).

Resistance is a form of self-regulation that needs focused attention and therefore


depends on processing motivation and ability (e.g., Wheeler, Briñol, & Hermann,

2007; Wood, Rhodes, & Biek, 1995). There is ample empirical evidence showing that

resistance to persuasion is undermined by distraction (e.g., Festinger & Maccoby,

1964; Haaland & Venkatesan, 1968; Petty & Brock, 1981). If humor distracts, and

distraction is a good strategy to counter resistance, then humor should be a good

strategy to reduce resistance.

Some previous studies indeed indicated that humor counters negative

responses to persuasive messages. Cline and Kellaris (1999) showed that humor in ads

is especially effective when ads feature weak rather than strong arguments, suggesting

that humor can interrupt the critical processing of arguments. Nabi and colleagues

(2007) showed that humor can distract from counterarguing a monologue delivered by

a political comedian. In research by Skalski et al. (2009) perceivers reported less

psychological reactance to a public service announcement when it was presented with

humor. Finally, two meta-analyses on humor and persuasion found that humor

decreases the level of negative affect and negative cognitions related to ads (Eisend,

2009, 2011).

Although these previous studies showed that humor reduces negative

responses while consumers are processing persuasive messages, none of them

examined whether humor can prevent the formation of negative brand associations.

As we were interested in modelling the effect of humor on associative processing

according to the APE-model, and wanted to test our predictions regarding the role of

distraction in the formation of negative brand associations, we set out to test how

distraction and humor affect positive and negative brand associations.

We did this in Strick, Holland, Van Baaren, and Van Knippenberg (2012,

Experiment 2). To manipulate distraction and positive affect separately, we used


humorous, positive, and neutral (control) texts as in Strick et al. (2010b), but added a

fourth type of text: brainteasers (i.e., riddles or simple math problems such as “If 6

apples weight 900 grams, 8 apples weigh… 1200 grams”). According to pilot testing

these texts fitted a 2 x 2 taxonomy of distraction and positive affect, with humorous

texts being distracting/positive, positive texts being non-distracting/positive,

brainteasers being distracting/neutral, and control texts being non-distracting/neutral.

This stimulus set allowed us to separately test the role of distraction and positive

affect on brand associations. The brand stimuli were pictures of 12 novel peppermint

brands taken from Strick, Holland, and Van Knippenberg (2008).

Half of the participants were exposed to a resistance manipulation that

combined several sources of resistance. They received a description of the study,

which explained that the experiment was conducted in collaboration with a big food

manufacturer. This manufacturer was introduced as a money-grubber, who often

turned to illegitimate means such as clandestine advertising to make money

(distrusted source, Knowles & Linn, 2004), and who thinks that students are easy

targets to manipulate (susceptibility, Sagarin, Cialdini, Rice, & Serna, 2002). The

experiment allegedly tested the latter assumption (forewarning, Wood & Quinn,

2003). Participants in the control condition received an equally long description that

explained that the experiment tested the effect of stimulus colors and design on ease

of processing.

After the resistance or control manipulation, 3 brands were paired with five

different humorous (i.e., distracting/positive) texts, 3 other brands were paired with

five non-distracting/positive texts, 3 other brands were paired with five brainteasers

(i.e., distracting/neutral texts), and the last 3 brands were paired with five non-

distracting/neutral texts, for a total of 60 pairing trials. We paired the stimuli by


presenting them next to each other in the centre of the computer screen. After the

learning phase, we measured distraction with the surprise recognition task and brand

associations with the evaluative priming task, similar to Strick et al. (2009).

This time we also included a contingency awareness test after the evaluative

priming task. The task was designed after the four-picture recognition test procedure

by Walther and Nagengast (2006). Participants were presented one-by-one with the

peppermint brands in their original size on the left side of the screen with four texts on

the right. The instruction beforehand asked participants to select the text that had been

paired with the brand. One of these texts was the correct text, a second text was of the

same valence as the correct text but differed on distraction, a third text was of a

different valence as the correct text but the same on distraction, and the fourth text

was of a different valence and also differed on distraction. The contingency awareness

test included 60 trials.

Our expectations for the positive brand associations were similar to Strick et

al. (2009). Pairing a brand with humor should create positive brand associations but

should leave negative brand associations unaffected. This effect on positive brand

associations was expected to be similar for brands paired with humor (i.e,

distracting/positive) and non-distracting/positive texts as they are equally positive and

this effect was found to be independent of distraction in our previous studies.

Moreover, we assumed that positive brand associations would be equally formed in

the resistance and control condition. Assuming that resistance is a source of purely

negative affect that is unrelated to positive affect, we expected resistance to impact

negative brand associations only, but to leave the forming of positive brand

associations unaffected.


Our expectations for the negative brand associations were different. We

expected our induction of resistance to create negative brand associations. However,

these negative brand associations were expected only in the non-distracting conditions

(non-distracting/positive and non-distracting/neutral conditions). As distraction

reduces resistance, we expected less negative brand associations in the humorous (i.e,

distracting/positive) and brainteasers (i.e., distracting/neutral) conditions. Moreover,

we expected the reduction in negative brand associations to be mediated by

distraction, which would be indicated by lower brand recognition.

The recognition data replicated previous findings and showed no differences

between the resistance and control conditions: in both conditions, pairing brands with

distracting texts (both humor and brainteasers) impaired brand recognition. In line

with our predictions, the evaluative priming data showed that resistant and control

participants also reacted similarly to the pairing of brands with positive texts (both

humor and non-distracting/positive texts): it led to enhanced positive brand

associations.

In contrast, and as expected, resistant and control participants reacted

differently to the pairing of brands with distracting versus non-distracting texts (see

Figure 8). Compared to the control participants, resistant participants showed

increased negativity towards brands associated with non-distracting texts (both non-

distracting/positive as non-distracting/neutral texts), indicating that resistance led to

negative brand associations when no distraction was provided. Crucially, these

differences between the resistance and control condition were not observed for brands

associated with distracting texts (both humorous texts and brainteasers), suggesting

that distraction prevented the formation of negative brand associations. Additional

analyses supported the hypothesis that distraction mediated the relation between


resistance and the prevention of negative brand associations: the more the humorous

texts and brainteasers distracted from brands (indicated by a lower brand recognition

score), the better they prevented negative brand associations.


The contingency awareness test showed that on average participants assigned

28% brands to the correct text, which was marginally better than chance. Crucially,

individual differences in contingency awareness did not correlate significantly with

the formation of positive or negative brand associations. Stahl et al. (2009) recently

found that EC effects correlated with awareness of the valence of the paired stimuli

rather than to awareness of the specific stimuli. We also calculated the extent to which

participants were valence aware, that is, to what extent they were aware that brands

were paired with positive (humorous or positive non-humorous) texts or neutral

(brainteasers or neutral) texts. Valence awareness was on average 52%; not different

from chance level. Individual differences in valence awareness did not correlate with

the strength of positive or negative brand associations.

The results of this experiment confirm various aspects of our associative

processing model of humorous advertising. First, replicating the previous

experiments, association of a brand with humor led to the formation of positive brand

associations. Second, association of a brand with humor prevented the formation of

negative brand associations otherwise formed by resistance. Third, the level of

distraction during attitude formation mediated the relation between humor and the

prevention of negative brand associations. The results also provided more conclusive

support for the hypothesis that humor affects brand attitudes without contingency

awareness.


In a follow-up study (Strick et al., 2012, Experiment 3) we found a similar

pattern of results when we measured, instead of manipulated, participants’ resistance

level, and included this as a continuous factor to the analyses. This provides an

important extension to the previous experiment because research demonstrates clear

individual differences in the tendency to react with resistance to influence (Briñol,

Rucker, Tormala, & Petty, 2004). Another aim of this experiment was to investigate

whether the preventive effect of distraction on brand negativity would generalize to

overt brand preference. Although we found evaluative priming results in the previous

experiment, it is important to show that these basic cognitive processes also affect

overt consumer behavior (Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007).

All participants received an instruction that was less offensive than the

resistance manipulation of the previous experiment. It simply informed participants

that the experiment aimed to change the participants’ opinions about products through

conditioning, just like in advertisements. Because this instruction included only a

single resistance manipulation (forewarning of being influenced, Wood & Quinn,

2003) we expected considerable resistance in some participants, but less in others.

After the instruction, participants entered the pairing phase. Distraction and

positive affect were this time manipulated using pictorial stimuli instead of texts (for

representative examples of the stimuli see Figure 9). We used 15 humorous (i.e.,

distracting/positive) pictures, 15 non-distracting/positive pictures (taken from the

International Affective Picture System [IAPS, Lang, Bradley, Cuthbert, 2001] 15

distracting/neutral pictures (i.e., neutral IAPS pictures with brainteasers), and 15 non-

distracting/neutral pictures. Examples of the pictures can be seen in Figure 9. The

brand stimuli were pictures of 4 novel energy drink brands. Each brand was paired

with all pictures of a single category, resulting in 60 pairing trials.



After the pairing phase and a subsequent 3-min filler task, overt brand

preference was measured using a coupon choice task (Bushman, 2005; Strahan,

Spencer, & Zanna, 2002). Participants were asked to imagine that the producer of the

energy drink brands offered them a total of eight discount coupons each worth 50

eurocents. They could spend the coupons on the four brands, and they were asked to

indicate how many coupons they would like to spend on each brand.

Next, participants indicated their level of resistance by answering the questions

“During the first part of this experiment, to what extent did you feel resistant to be

influenced?” on a seven-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). This

indicated considerable variance in resistance, M = 3.39 (SD = 1.58). Finally,

contingency awareness was measured using an adapted version the four-picture

recognition test. This time, participants were informed that the brands had been

systematically paired with one of four categories of pictures (humorous pictures; non-

humorous positive pictures; brainteasers; neutral pictures) and were asked to assign

each brand to the correct category.

The results of the coupon choice task indicated, as expected, that the

participants overall spent more coupons on brands paired with positive pictures. This

effect was uncorrelated with the level of resistance. Furthermore, as expected, the

level of self-reported resistance did correlate with a higher preference for brands

paired with distracting pictures (i.e., humor and brainteasers) relative to brands

associated with non-distracting pictures (i.e., non-humorous positive and neutral

pictures). This result is in line with the hypothesis that distraction prevents negative

brand associations. Most importantly, we found evidence that these stimulus pairings

affect overt brand preference in a similar way as they affect brand associations.


In the contingency awareness test participants assigned 19% of the brands to

the correct pictures, which did not differ from chance level. Contingency awareness

did not correlate with the level of reported resistance, nor with the EC effect,

providing additional evidence that humor affected brand preference without

contingency awareness.

These results suggest that adding some distraction in real persuasion

situations, which we propose usually involve some level of resistance, may enhance

the effectiveness of ads. In a set of field experiments (Strick, Veling, Van Baaren, &

Holland, 2012, Experiment 3), we tested the effects of distraction and positive affect

in a field setting. We set up a one-week flyer campaign aimed at recruiting

participants for our psychology lab, and used humorous cartoons and brainteasers as

distracters. To manipulate distraction and positive affect, we created four alternative

versions of flyers using the 2 x 2 taxonomy of distraction and positive affect. The

humorous (i.e., distracting/positive) version featured a humorous cartoon. The three

control conditions were constructed by replacing the caption of the cartoon by a non-

distracting/positive caption, a distracting/neutral caption (i.e., a brainteaser), or a non-

distracting/neutral caption. Also mentioned on the flyers in capital letters was a

request to bring the flyer to the lab when the person decided to participate. This

request was needed to count the number of participants recruited by each type of flyer.

Each day of the week a new set of flyers was used that featured different cartoons and

control versions.

The effectiveness of each flyer was determined by calculating the percentage

of participants that were recruited through each type of flyer. During the week of the

flyer campaign, we asked each and every participant who entered the lab if she was

recruited on the basis of a flyer. If the answer was yes, she was asked to hand over the


particular flyer. If she forgot to bring it, she was shown examples of the four types of

flyers that were used on that particular day, and was asked to indicate which flyer she

had had.

As expected, the flyers with a humorous (i.e., positive/distracting) cartoon

attracted the most participants to the lab: 13% of the participants during the campaign

week was recruited through a humorous flyer. After followed the distracting/neutral

(8%) condition, the non-distracting/positive (6%) condition, and finally the non-

distracting/neutral (6%) condition. Statistical analyses indicated that both distraction

and positive affect contributed to the success rate of the flyers. These results

corroborate the idea that both distraction and positive affect in humor can boost ad

effectivenss in real advertising situations. Distraction decreases attitude negativity,

and positive affect increases attitude positivity.

Discussion

The aim of the present article was to present a model that explains the effects

of repeated exposures to humorous advertising on positive and negative brand

associations and brand choice. We reviewed a research program of multiple lab and

field experiments that support the various premises of the model. In short, the

predictions of our model on associative processes in humorous advertising can be

summarized as a two-step process: First, the inherent incongruity in humor draws

attention to ads as a whole, but within the ad attention is selectively drawn to humor,

which comes at the expense of attention for the advertised brand, leading to impaired

explicit brand memory. This impairment of explicit brand memory does not

necessarily harm persuasion, because a) humor does not impair implicit brand

memory, which is a better predictor of persuasion than explicit brand memory; and b)

distraction prevents the formation of negative brand associations otherwise formed by


potential resistance. Second, the positive emotion engendered by humor increases

positive brand associations. Both the strength of the positive and negative brand

associations, in turn, guide subsequent spontaneous brand choice. Thus, humor

promotes brand choice because it forestalls the development of negative brand

associations due to its distractive properties, and engenders positive brand

associations due to its positive emotional outcomes.

Merits of the Model to Research on Humor in Advertising

Marketing research typically considers humor a peripheral cue in advertising,

which implies that its effects on brand attitudes are only weak and short-lived.

Instead, we tested the hypothesis that humor can function as a positive stimulus in an

associative process. We showed that repeated pairing of a brand with humor leads to a

direct implicit attitude change, which likely denotes a change in the underlying

associative structure of the brand attitude. This implies that humor may have a more

long-term effect on brand attitudes than previously assumed. Changes in the

associative structure of attitudes are generally more stable than attitude changes

without changes in associative structure (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). Indeed,

some researchers concluded that EC effects are resistant to extinction (De Houwer et

al., 2001) and show spectacular stability over time (Baeyens, Crombez, Van den

Bergh, & Eelen, 1988; Levey & Martin, 1975). Note, however, that we cannot draw

strong conclusions about the long-term effect, as we have not tested it in our

experiments.

The stability of the attitude change is not only important to determine its long-

term effects, but also to determine its possible effects on behavioral choice. After all,

ads can only affect brand choices if the attitude change lasts until the consumer

actually steps into a store. It was our prediction that repeated pairings of a brand with


humor forms brand associations that guide behavioral choice. Indeed, our experiments

showed that the pairing with humor stimulated behavioral choice in various situations.

Marketing research generally concluded that brand-unrelated humor is not persuasive

on a behavioral level. Hence, a principal contribution of our research is in

demonstrating that the persuasive impact of humor was previously underestimated.

The contrast between conclusions drawn in marketing research and in our own

work can also be explained by using a more disguised experimental approach. One

difference was that the purpose of the research to investigate advertising was usually

quite obvious in marketing studies. Under such circumstances research participants

are likely to pay more-than-usual attention to the ads and discount the impact of

irrelevant affective cues such as humor as irrelevant to their judgments. This was less

likely in our studies because we often disguised the true purpose of the study.

Furthermore, marketing research on humor in advertising relied exclusively on self-

report measures to assess attitudes and purchase intentions. Explicit and implicit

attitudes may be dissociated (e.g., Gawronski & Strack, 2004; Nosek, 2005; Olson &

Fazio, 2006). This suggests that solely relying on explicit attitude changes may lead to

premature and sometimes erroneous conclusions.

Limitations of our Research

We have mentioned that our model is only relevant to advertising novel, low

involvement products and brand-unrelated humor. A fourth limitation of our model is

that we always paired the brands with different humorous stimuli instead of repeating

the same humor. This limits the relevance of our model for humorous ads campaigns

that repeat the same humorous ad over and over again. Because our model proposes

that the distracting effect of humor is based on incongruity-resolution, it is likely that

the distraction declines with repeated exposures to the same joke. Moreover, with


repeated exposures the funniness of the joke likely wears off and no longer produces

positive attitude changes (see Gelb & Zinkhan, 1985; Zinkhan & Gelb, 1990). This

implies that a frequent change of creative copy within a humorous ad campaign is

preferred to repeating of the same ad over and over again. Note that the former is

preferred over the latter also for other reasons. Research shows that associating a

brand with different stimuli that evoke a similar affective response leads to a direct

brand-affect association whereas associating a brand repeatedly with the same

affective stimulus leads to an indirect brand-affect association via the brand-stimulus

association (Sweldens et al., 2010). Direct brand-affect associations are more robust

than indirect brand-affect associations because they are resilient to factors that weaken

the brand-stimulus association (e.g., memory decay, changes in stimulus evaluation).

Our research mirrored previous research by showing that the pairing of a brand

with unrelated humor led to generally poorer brand memory. It is likely that this effect

on explicit memory is moderated by the brand-relatedness of humor. Indeed,

marketing studies imply that humor’s attention-gaining property can facilitate recall

of the brand when the humor is linked to the brand. For example, Krishnan and

Chakravarti (2003) demonstrated that humor that is relevant to the brand claims

positively influences memory for brand claims. In contrast, when humor was

unrelated to the brand it was more likely to impair brand recall. In the latter case, all

people generally recalled was the funny storyline of the ad.

Suggestions for Future Research

Brand-related humor likely supports brand recall better than brand-unrelated

humor. Future research, however, should investigate whether brand-related humor is

also more persuasive than brand-unrelated humor. We regard this conclusion not self-

evident. The assumption among marketing researchers and practitioners that brand


recall predicts persuasion is longstanding and pervasive, but recent research and

theorizing suggests they are actually uncorrelated (Heath & Feldwick, 2008; Heath &

Nairn, 2005; Till & Baack, 2005). What differs between related and unrelated humor,

however, is that related humor provides information that can be rationally linked to

the advertised brand, and therefore may serve as a rational argument in propositional

reasoning (Gawronksi & Bodenhausen, 2006). This implies that a pairing with related

humor could evoke a direct explicit attitude change depending on a subjective

assessment of the strength of the humor as an issue-relevant argument. If the humor

(in combination with other considered propositional information) is accepted as a

valid reason to like the brand, this should lead to a direct (positive) explicit attitude

change. However, if the humor is rejected as a valid reason to like the brand, a direct

explicit attitude change fails.

It is important to note that the possible direct effect of related humor on

explicit brand attitudes does not necessarily change the associative process we

assumed in our model. According to the APE-model, associative and propositional

processes take place concurrently and may have similar or dissociated outcomes,

depending on the circumstances. The positive associative process described in our

model does not depend on the outcome of the propositional process, but on the

presence or absence of positive affective stimulus that provides a basis for the EC

effect. Thus, as long as the humor itself evokes positive affect it provides a basis for

presumed associative process.

Another question that should be answered in future research is whether

humorous ads could affect deliberate consumer choices through the proposed

associative process. Deliberate choices are characterized by explicit thoughts about

the true merits of a brand rather than the reliance on automatic evaluations, which


reduces the change that implicit attitudes directly guide behavior (Fazio & Towles-

Schwen, 1999). However, there is reason to believe that forming positive brand

associations may affect deliberate decisions indirectly. As explained before, the APE-

model proposes that explicit attitude changes may follow from implicit attitude

changes when a person accepts the propositional implication of the implicit attitude.

Research on persuasion has shown that positive primary responses to stimuli can bias

the direction of critical thought (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994). Furthermore,

consumers sometimes consider their affective reactions to brands as a valid argument

in the decision process (Darke, Chattopadhyay, Ashworth, 2006). Indeed, recent

research shows that affective responses to brands quite pervasively affect decisions,

even if consumers are highly motivated to make accurate decisions, and even when

conflicting factual brand information is presented (Dempsey & Mitchell, 2010).

Along these lines, sprinkling an issue-irrelevant joke here and there may

increase a person’s or a brand’s appeal. Political campaigns, for example, may benefit

from this as politicians displaying a good sense of humor are liked more and are

considered more competent (Martin, 2007), and positive personality estimates have a

significant impact on election outcomes (e.g., Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004; Todorov,

Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). It seems reasonable to assume, however, that

issue-relevant humor has a greater impact on political voting than issue-irrelevant

humor. A number of scientific studies have concluded that relevant humor in speeches

of political officials can serve as a powerful rhetorical tool (e.g., Meyer, 1990; Speier,

1998; Stewart, 2011). Moreover, research shows that – especially in the U.S. –

relevant humor has a profound influence on the perceptions of politics through

politically flavored late night comedy shows (Kloer & Jubera, 2000; Young, 2008).

For example, the widespread cynical joke about President Nixon “Would you buy a


used car from this man?”, which is said to have greatly hurt his 1960 election

campaign (Janus, 1981), was so powerful because it made an actual point (i.e., that

Nixon was untrustworthy).

Concluding Remarks

Although this article deals with the effects of humor in advertising, we would

like to encourage the study of associative processes in other domains of consumer

research as well. In the past decade the study of consumer behavior has witnessed

increasing attention to the possibility that various automatic and implicit processes

drive consumption behavior. Yet, the empirical work on advertising is still dominated

by explicit approaches, in which participants are intentionally evaluating the

persuasiveness of ads. This experimental approach is not representative for the way in

which consumers process ads and brands in daily life. In many cases, the impact of

ads is not based on effortful reasoning. Furthermore, people are often unable to

introspect how advertising influences their attitudes and behavior.

Although consumers invest minimal attention to ads, and are generally

somewhat sceptical about them, they may still be influenced. Advertising often

influences consumers “underneath the radar” by consistently placing their brands in

the context of pleasant, happy, exciting, or indeed humorous experiences. These

associative processes may influence people without them being aware of it.

Considering that much of the associative process in advertising goes by unnoticed,

marketing researchers should combine explicit research methods with implicit

measures and behavioural observations.


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Footnotes

1According to the APE model, Case 1 could also emerge when humor leads to

a change of pattern activation of pre-existing brand associations, but this explanation

is precluded by our use of novel brands that, by definition, lack pre-existing brand

associations.

2 We reasoned that ad recall was a necessary condition for product recall.

Indeed, it was never that case that participants could recall the product without

recalling the ad.


Table 1

Average Viewing Times of Texts and Percentages of Brand Recognition as a Function

of Text Type in Strick et al. (2010a) Experiment 1

Text Type Viewing Time in ms Brand Recognition in %

Control 4345a (555) 83c (38)

Positive 4284 a (502) 88c (33)

Humor 4933b (588) 64d (48)

Note. SD in parentheses. Means that do not share subscripts differ within columns at p

< .05.


Figure 1. Schematic representation of the effect of humor in ads on brand associations

and choice.


Figure 2. Percentage of recalled ads and products in Hansen et al. (2009, Study 1).


Figure 3. Illustration of a brand-humor pairing presented in the eye tracker in Strick et

al. (2010a, Experiment 1).


Figure 4. Illustration of the pairing of a brand with humor and non-humor in the

“magazine paradigm” used in Strick et al. (2009, Experiments 1-3).


Figure 5. Mean reaction times in evaluative priming task to positive and negative

target words after priming with the humor brand, control brand, or baseline brand in

Strick et al. (2009, Experiment 1). Error bars represent standard errors of the means.


Figure 6. Path analyses illustrating the mediating role of positive product associations

on the relation between humor pairing and product choice (Strick et al., 2009,

Experiment 2). The parenthetic numbers represent the relation between humor pairing

and product choice before controlling for positive product associations. * p < .05


Figure 7. Number of times the Enorm and Energy Slammers brands were chosen in

the Enorm-humor and Energy Slammers-humor conditions (Strick et al., 2009,

Experiment 3).


Figure 8. Mean reaction times in evaluative priming task to negative target words

after priming with brands associated with distracting or non-distracting texts in the

resistance and control condition (Strick et al., 2012, Experiment 2). Error bars

represent standard errors of the means.


Figure 9. Examples of the stimuli used to manipulate distraction and positive affect in

Strick et al., 2012 (Experiment 3).

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