Humorous Threat Persuasion in Advertising: The Effects of Humor, Threat Intensity, and Issue Involvement

Emotional and Cognitive Responses to Nonhumorous and Humorous Threat Persuasion Public Service Advertisements

“…Past research has found individual differences in receptiveness to positive versus negative framing; low-involvement individuals responded more positively to positive framing, whereas high-involvement individuals responded more positively to negative framing (e.g., Cacioppo and Petty 1984;Block and Keller 1995;Donovan and Jalleh 1999;Yoon and Tinkham 2013). Based on the Study 2 findings that negative feelings (e.g., anger) and positive feelings (e.g., happiness) drive nonhumor and humor threat advertising persuasion, respectively, individuals of different involvement levels, via commitment, issue involvement, knowledge levels, and so on, are likely to react differently to the two types of threat persuasion appeal.…”

“…Second, as previously mentioned, there might be individual differences that influence receptivity to threat or humor appeals. An individual's involvement with the issue has been tested as a significant moderator to humorous threat persuasion messages (Yoon and Tinkham 2013), but further, traits such as intolerance for uncertainty (Carleton, Norton, and Asmundson 2007) and personal relevance of the threatening topic might have effects on an individual's processing of threat information. Need for humor (NFH; Cline, Altsech, and Kellaris 2003), need for cognition (NFC; Zhang 1996), and the degree to which an individual uses humor to cope with stress have been recognized as individual trait factors that might influence the persuasiveness of humorous messages.…”

“…These examples communicate some level of threat and the consequences of not complying with the suggestions, but they do so in a humorous way. Despite the industry recognition of the potential of humor to shape public opinion on these serious issues, empirical research focusing on the use of humor in threat persuasion remains scarce (for exceptions, see Conway and Dubé 2002;Lewis et al 2007;Yoon and Tinkham 2013). Most of our knowledge about humor effects in ads comes from the commercial advertising literature, and the application of these findings to threat persuasion has been questioned in the past (Monahan 1995).…”

Humour in the graphic advertising of Spain’s General Directorate of Traffic (1960-2009)

“…Yoon and Tinkham (2013) also supported this argument and analysed the effectiveness of humour and its relation with the nature of the advertised product, the degree of information of the message and the degree of involvement between consumer and the advertised product. The authors considered that humour can be a threat to the understanding of the ad depending on the degree of seriousness of the message and the type of consumer.…”

“…As stated in the introduction to this work, several studies have examined humour in advertising to determine whether its presence benefits or hurts advertisers' intentions in relation to consumers: Lynch and Hartman (1968), Sternthal and Craig (1973), Kelly and Solomon (1975), Weinberger and Gulas (1992), Alden, Mukherjee and Hoyer (2000), Chan (2011), Yoon and Tinkham (2013) Catalá Pérez (2008), Rodríguez Rosique and Provencio Garrigós, (2012. Based on the contributions of Weinberger and Gulas (1992), the decline in the use of humour during the time period studied may be due to the fact that the relation between the nature of the advertiser, the GDT, and the characteristics of the activity of this institution, have changed significantly during the period of study.…”