Are longer advertising slogans more dangerous? The influence of the length of ad slogans on drivers\u2019 attention and motor behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to verify whether slogans displayed on roadside advertisements created a distraction for drivers. In order to explain the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, Study 1 examined the impact of slogan length on attentional processing efficiency. Study 2 investigated the relationship between the length of the slogan and the motor behavior of respondents driving a car simulator. We assumed that slogan length would decrease the drivers’ task performance in both studies. Study 1 was conducted on a group of 70 participants, who completed a modified version of the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan et al. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(3), 340–347, 2002). The task consisted of visual ads intended to distract respondents from the primary task. Reaction times were significantly longer when ads had longer slogans compared to shorter slogans. Study 2, involving a car simulator, was conducted on a group of 53 drivers performing a task of driving in a convoy. Participants were shown billboards with ads at the roadside in random order (two pairs of corresponding ads with short and long text on it). Participants’ driving performance decreased when longer slogans were presented in comparison to the short-slogan condition. In conclusion, we interpret the results of Study 1 to indicate that longer slogan leads to a greater load of attentional processing. This subsequently leads to a reduction of the processing efficiency within attentional systems and further increases the amount of time to resist the irrelevant stimulus. A consequence of this, as shown in Study 2 using a car simulator, is a decrease in cognitive resources necessary for safe driving and therefore worse performance on a driving task.