Digital Body Disturbances in Advertising: Attraction or Repulsion?

Abstract

In advertising, the digital manipulation of the human body involves removing, adding, distorting, replacing, or disfiguring body parts, creating a unique form of schema violation. Such manipulations—termed body disturbance (BD)—are generally designed to attract attention, underscore message content, and inject humor. Based on our lifetime of exposure to the human body’s appearance, properties, and capabilities, our schema is well established, and the disfiguring or distorting of the human body can elicit strong emotional and physiological reactions. This two-part study shows that BD functions similarly to other types of schema violations in terms of its attractive force, rendering such ads as more intriguing, entertaining, and humorous, thus leading to greater eye fixation and elaboration. Yet unlike most schema violations in advertising, BD ads evoke more aversive reactions compared to non-BD ads, resulting in lower ad and brand liking and offering no advantage in terms of greater recall of ad copy, brand logo, brand name, or product type. Further results and implications for advertisers are discussed.