Priming skepticism: Unintended consequences of one‐sided persuasion knowledge access

Abstract

Scholars have historically assumed that consumers' persuasion knowledge is invariably linked to skepticism about advertising and marketing. As a result, studies have often used skepticism-focused stimuli to prompt persuasion knowledge access. However, as originally conceptualized, persuasion knowledge also includes an understanding of persuasion tactics that are trusted and believed, which suggests that accessing persuasion knowledge does not necessarily make consumers more skeptical. In this paper, we propose that, for at least some persuasion knowledge research questions, skepticism-focused interventions may be too "one-sided" because they bias participants to consider only the skeptical side of persuasion knowledge. The purpose of the present research is to test whether the "one-sided" persuasion knowledge interventions that are used in persuasion knowledge research encourage skepticism more than balanced interventions that focus consumers on the negative and positive motives that may underlie persuasive communication. Across three experiments with three distinct subject pools and over 2,500 participants, we demonstrate that one-sided versus balanced manipulations of persuasion knowledge can have differential effects on consumer skepticism. This is an important finding because skepticism-focused operationalizations are frequently employed in persuasion knowledge research.

“Wasn't Even on My Radar”: Increasing Parental Mediation of Influencer Marketing Behaviors in 35 Minutes with a Brief Theory of Planned Behavior Informed Online Randomized Controlled Intervention

“…The largest recent improvement was the establishment of online marketing disclosure policies to address process unfairness, such as not understanding the selling intent of certain media (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2005;De Jans et al, 2017;De Pauw et al, 2019). While they have their merits, it is clear that to only increase process fairness (i.e., awareness of the selling intent) is not enough to diminish undesirable outcomes because young consumers also need the knowledge and the skills to counter the effects of young consumer marketing that lead to undesirable outcomes (De Pauw et al, 2019;Isaac & Grayson, 2019;Jung & Heo, 2019;Youn & Shin, 2019). In the latter area, there also have been recent activities.…”

“…In sum, marketing disclosures promote fairness but the effect size is conditional on different factors. While marketing disclosure research has its merits, it is clear that it is only one of the components to solve the fairness problem because the fairness constructs are also conditional on young consumers persuasion and marketing knowledge and their ability and motivation to apply it (De Pauw et al, 2019;Isaac & Grayson, 2019;Jung & Heo, 2019;Youn & Shin, 2019). To establish a broad understanding about what factors impact marketing fairness related to the interaction between influencer marketing and young consumer marketing, it is vital to review the findings related to the role of knowledge, ability and motivation.…”

“…Disclosures have their merits, but also shortcomings. In particular, increased process fairness (i.e., awareness of the selling intent) appears not to be enough to diminish undesirable outcomes because young consumers also need the knowledge and the skills to counter the undesirable effects resulting from marketing exposures (De Pauw et al, 2019;Isaac & Grayson, 2019;Jung & Heo, 2019;Youn & Shin, 2019). In intervention research targeting the increase of knowledge and skills of children, the largest yet comparatively small trend are school-based interventions (De Jans et al, 2019;Nelson, 2016;O'Rourke et al, 2019;Truman & Elliott, 2019).…”

“…In contrast, parent-targeted interventions that increase the parental intentions to engage in behaviors that increase marketing-related knowledge and the skills of children before middle adulthood do not have these shortcomings and, as a result, can be considerably more important for researchers and policymakers (De Pauw et al, 2019;Isaac & Grayson, 2019;Jung & Heo, 2019;Youn & Shin, 2019). Compared to school-based interventions, parents have more opportunities and time to influence the media diet directly and educate them with higher frequency and higher context-specificity by daily discussing the marketing their children actually engage with (Chen & Shi, 2019;Lin et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2017).…”

A Sign of Trust? The value of source attribution in accolade claims

“…Of course, the positive effects of source attribution are likely to be contingent on the third-party entity itself being familiar and credible to consumers and might not hold if the third-party is unknown or considered non-credible. Indeed, Isaac and Grayson (2020) recently showed that consumer ratings differed when an accolade was attributed to a reputable news source (i.e., BBC) as compared to a disreputable tabloid (i.e., TMZ). It is reasonable to assume that high source attribution will only boost evaluations when the source is itself considered credible.…”