The vividness effect: Elusive or illusory?

Abstract

In spite of the widespread use of vived messages by advertisers and other would-be persuaders, empirical research has generated little support for the vividness effect. The apparently common belief in the persuasive powers of vividness, coupled with this lack of supporting research, suggests the possibility that vividness has an illusory effect on judgments. Two studies are presented which investigated this hypothesis. Both operationalized vividness as concrete and colorful languge. In Study 1, subjects rated vivid messages as significantly more persuasive than the same messages presented in a less colorful manner, thus demonstrating the pervasiveness of belief in the vividness effect. Study 2 confirmed that this belief may be the result of an illusion. Vivid messages produced an effect on judgments of a message's general persuasiveness, but not on judgments of one's own persuasion or on measures of actual attitude change. Study 2 also examined two possible sources of this illusion: (1) people recall vivid communications better than nonvivid messages and infer that they and/or others have been persuaded, and (2) people believe that interesting, attention-getting communications are persuasive and consequently infer that they and/or others have been persuaded after being exposed to a vividly presented communication. Results show that people infer persuasion based on interest and attention rather than recall.