The impact of implicit theories on responses to problem-solving print advertisements

Abstract

Consumers may bring two implicit theories to bear on their interpretation of an advertisement: the theory that communications in general are intended to be informative and accurate and a domain-specific theory that ad claims are often exaggerated. The relative impact of these theories depends on both the ambiguity of the ad content and the motivation to think about its implications. Participants viewed ads describing the problem that a product purports to solve and the results of using it. When the ad's implications were ambiguous, participants interpreted the ad's literal implications in a way that was plausible but they were unmotivated to expend the additional effort required to invoke the theory that ad claims are exaggerated. Consequently, they evaluated the product favorably. When the product's literal implications were easy to construe, however, participants' implicit theory that ad claims are exaggerated had the predominant influence on their liking for the product. The relative impact of participants' implicit theories was influenced by both the cognitive load that participants experienced at the time they viewed the ad and by unobtrusively priming theory-related concepts before the ad was presented.