The effect of the emotion of awe on acceptance of pseudo-profound but nonsense marketing information

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The effect of the emotion of awe on

acceptance of pseudo-profound but nonsense

marketing information

by

Dominika Golabek

University of Groningen

Faculty of Economics and Business

Msc Marketing

Kometenstraat 44, 9742EE Groningen (+31) 0633489744

d.j.golabek@student.rug.nl Student number: S2857057

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Abstract

Emotions play a vital role in successful advertising campaigns. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that feelings have been of great interest for researchers and marketers. The goal of this study was to enrich the existing literature on emotions by focusing on one, academically underappreciated emotion i.e., awe. In particular, I wanted to examine the impact of awe on the acceptance of pseudo-profound marketing information. Based on prior literature findings, I predicted that after awe-evoking experience people would be more willing to accept nonsense advertising information. This relationship was hypothesized to be moderated by openness to experience and need for cognition. Although the results were insignificant, the study findings still can be used as guidelines for marketers and directions for future research.

Keywords: awe, nonsense, consumer behavior, message acceptance First supervisor: dr. Yannick Joye

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INTRODUCTION

Getting consumer attention in today’s world is a real challenge. In 1988 New York Times published an article which suggested that on average people are bombarded with 5000 advertising messages per day (Cowan, 1988). This number has been clearly exaggerated as later studies suggest, with the latest data implying that we are exposed to 360 ads per day (Nutley, 2014). Although this number is much lower than first thought, nobody can deny that marketers face a very difficult task of breaking through the advertising clutter. As Samuel Johnson (Johnson, Carter, Richardson, Talbot, 1825, p. 43) wrote “advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic”.

Indeed, in order to grasp audience’s attention, marketers have started using more sophisticated and sometimes even misleading techniques. For instance, the aforementioned sublime has become nowadays as important part of advertising as it is of artistic and literary realms. The technique is prominent especially in the context of nature-as-backdrop ads that portray the natural world as ideal (Corbett, 2002) e.g., touristic ads that display people on holidays watching phenomenal sunsets at mosquito-free lakes or enjoying perfect blue waters of oceans while sunbathing on deserted beaches. The depiction of the natural world as sublime is designed to stir people’s feelings, inspire awe and admiration. Sometimes marketers focus on evoking these feelings so much that standard communication rules and techniques e.g., explaining the purpose of a product or its attributes, are either omitted or highly exaggerated. The current research aims to answer the question to what extent people will accept these hyperbolic, pseudo-profound marketing claims when they are under the influence of positive emotions, in particular awe. This knowledge can be later used as a useful insight for researchers and marketers.

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4 advertising has many advantages such as being able to get consumer’s attention, enhancing information processing, leading to more positive judgments and higher message acceptance (e.g., Ray, 1977; Kroeber-Riel, 1979; Bower & Cohen, 1982 as discussed in Ray & Batra, 1983). Furthermore, while some researchers have investigated a comprehensive set of emotions (e.g., Ruth, Brunel & Otnes, 2002), most of the available research focuses on one or several feelings. Indeed, some of the emotions have received much more attention than others e.g., surprise (e.g., Derbaix & Vanhamme, 2003), guilt (e.g., Coulter & Pinto, 1995), embarrassment (e.g., Verbeke & Bagozzi, 2003) or anger (e.g., Bougie & Zeelenberg, 2003). Therefore, this study is going to enrich existing literature on emotions and its impact on information processing by taking into consideration an academically and managerially underappreciated emotion, i.e.,, awe.

In this paper, awe will be connected to pseudo-profound claims and I will investigate how awe affects the processing of those claims. The effectiveness of nonsense claims is best demonstrated by the popularity of Deepak Chopra’s quotes, who is famous for his vague, “woo-woo nonsense” (e.g.,, Shermer, 2010 cited in Pennycook et al., 2015). These impressively sounding but actually vacuous assertions can be a very effective advertising method since puffed claims are generally accepted and believed (Rotfeld & Rotzoll, 1980). This might be due to the fact that people usually accept incoming messages as a default option since it requires less mental effort from them (Gilbert, 1991; Fennis & Stroebe, 2015) or because they simply lack the cognitive abilities and resources to recognize a claim as fake and untrue (Sperber, 2010). Consequently, these findings might suggest that people would develop favorable attitudes towards this type of marketing messages no matter the circumstances.

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5 think that something is of high relevance (Sperber, 2010). Finally, awe increases tolerance for uncertainty (Heschel, 1976 discussed in Gordon, 2003) and elicits openness-to-experience leading to openness and acceptance of new information (Shiota et al., 2006).

All in all, the aim of this paper is to answer the research question: Does awe have a positive

impact on the acceptance of the pseudo-profound but nonsense marketing information?

For the study to have important managerial implications, I have decided to look at two intermediary processes that facilitate a final product acquisition (Fennis & Stroebe, 2015) i.e., attitudes (defined as an individual’s internal evaluation of an object (Mitchell & Olson, 2000)) and behavioral intention (i.e., motivation to perform a specific behavior). Both have been demonstrated to be good predictors of consumer behavior in theories such as theory of reasoned action or its extension i.e., theory of planned behavior (Fishbein, 1963 in Mitchell & Olson, 2000; Fennis & Stroebe, 2015) and therefore both will be used as dependent variables to measure message acceptance. Lastly, out of belief that this information might be useful to marketers, I also decided to take into account one more variable as the dependent variable i.e., willingness to pay.

Taking the aforementioned evidence into consideration, I would suggest that awe will lead to increased acceptance of nonsense, pseudo-profound messages i.e., people will have more positive attitudes toward products, they will be more likely to buy them and finally, they will be more likely to pay more for them. The study is exceptional in its discipline as, to my knowledge, it has not been researched yet. The results will extend research on awe and message processing. Also they will be a very useful insight for marketers who are looking for ways to increase sales by increasing effectiveness of their communication messages.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

To understand the influence of awe on the acceptance of pseudo-profound nonsense, one should first comprehend how emotions influence attitudes in general, how awe affects information processing and finally, how nonsense messages are perceived. Therefore, the structure of this section follows this way of thinking.

There is a vast literature that explains how emotions impact people’s attitudes and behaviors. First and foremost, Bower and Cohen (1982) demonstrated that people’s judgments are automatically and without awareness influenced by how they feel at the moment. In their study, they concluded that emotions and moods may lead to more positive judgments of advertised messages because they prime inference rules that favor these positive appraisals. Furthermore, positive emotions have been proven to influence purchase intentions and willingness to spend more money (e.g., Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn & Nesdale, 1994; Bigné, Mattila, & Andreu, 2008). As shown in another study, emotional state of consumers influences the way they evaluate products, services or experiences even if it has nothing to do with the product (Howard & Gengler, 2001). Furthermore, positive emotions have been demonstrated to increase integrative and flexible ways of thinking and openness to information (Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987). Finally, emotions reduce counter arguing and facilitate persuasion (Festinger & Maccoby, 1964), making a recipient process a message mindlessly and accept it uncritically (Chanowitz & Langer, 1981).

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Awe

The origins of “awe” reach back to the 13th

century when it was associated with the sense of “fright” and “terror”. In the past the concept was perceived strictly from the religious perspective as “the fear of the Lord” and “mysterium tremendum” (Tix, 2015). Contemporary definitions of awe use discoveries of three other disciplines i.e., philosophy, sociology and psychology. In philosophy awe was related to states resembling sublime experience (beauty, astonishment, reverence and respect). Edmund Burke (1757/1990 discussed in Keltner & Haidt, 2003) in his work on sublime experience discussed two properties of stimuli that are likely to cause this type of experience, namely power (i.e., dwelling on great objects) and obscurity (prominent in case of objects that the mind has problem grasping). This knowledge had a big impact on Keltner and Haidt’s (2003) treatment of awe, as discussed later in the section. Sociology, instead, placed awe in the context of social order and charismatic leaders. Especially, Max Weber (1978), and Emil Durkheim (1887/1972 discussed in Keltner & Haidt, 2003) emphasized the role of powerful emotions in transforming masses and postulated that one charismatic person can inspire awe and encourage self-sacrificing issues. Finally, the psychological perspective focused more on peak experiences and admiration. The features of the former, as discovered by Abraham Maslow (1964), are e.g., disorientation in space and time, feeling passive, receptive and humble. The latter is a close relative of awe and it was described by McDougall (1910) as a multipart of “wonder” and “power”, feeling of submissiveness and negative self-feeling. Admiration, however, differs from awe in two aspects: firstly, in comparison with awe, it relates to the accommodation of witnessing extraordinary human talents, skills and abilities rather than objects and secondly, the size or social power vastness is not that essential for admiration as it is for awe (as discussed in Keltner & Haidt, 2003).

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8 so stimulating that it can change the course of life in profound and permanent ways (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). As for the physical markers, awe is associated with one variant of aesthetic chills, goosebumps (Grewe, Kopiez, & Altenmüller, 2009) and is also frequently accompanied by raised inner eyebrows, widened eyes and slightly drop-awed mouth (Shiota, Campos & Keltner, 2003). The most widely used characterization of awe has been offered by Keltner and Haidt (2003) who perceive awe as an emotional response that arises from a strikingly vast stimulus and facilitate attempts at accommodation. These two features are the most important appraisals related to awe. Vastness refers to anything much larger than the self’s ordinary level of experience and frame of reference, not only in physical but also in social size e.g., fame authority, prestige (Keltner and Haidt, 2003). Need for accommodation refers to the process of adjusting mental structures to new incoming experience (Shiota, Keltner & Mossman, 2007) and is activated when existing knowledge structures are not sufficient. Awe challenges mental structures, encompasses difficulty in comprehension and induces the feeling of confusion and wonder. When a person is not able to understand incoming information, feeling awe can be a terrifying experience. However, it can also be an enlightening one i.e., when one’s mental structures successfully expand and accommodate truths never known before.

Due to the fact that it is difficult to distinguish the feeling from other emotions such as surprise, wonder or admiration, existing literature on awe is scarce. Studies either focus on the positive influence of awe on people’s values and prosocial behaviors or they examine the relationship between awe and people’s personality traits and attitudes.

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9 The second stream of research helps to understand the effects of awe on attitudes and behaviors and therefore, it is more useful when it comes to examining the relationship between awe and information processing. There are a few important findings that might suggest that people will be more likely to accept incoming information in a state of awe.

Firstly, awe is associated with openness to experience and extraversion (Shiota, Keltner & John, 2006). Moreover, as demonstrated by Shiota et al. (2007) awe-prone people have lower need for cognitive closure. The knowledge that awe may trigger a sense of uncertainty (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014) and individuals low on need for cognitive closure have greater tolerance for ambiguity, implies that awe should lead to increased acceptance of new incoming information. Secondly, awe makes people open to mystery and spirituality (Bonner & Friedman, 2011; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). Sperber (2010) looked at the example of religion and implied that the existence of mystery is more significant than its actual content. Moreover, this sense of mystery is an important component in the information processing context because usually in the existence of mystery, people’s failure to grasp suggests them that something is of high relevance and therefore they tend to interpret it in the expected direction (Sperber, 2010).

Finally, awe creates the feeling of smallness and freezing behavior. As demonstrated in the study of Joye & Dewitte (2016) awe-evoking monumental architecture leads to immobility, decreases response time and creates a state of passiveness. When passive, people are not motivated to process the incoming information which may invite them to rely on the heuristics. One of the examples of these heuristics, as discussed earlier, is the people’s bias to uncritically accept all messages, even nonsense ones, because people do not expect others to create irrelevant messages on purpose.

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Nonsense

Nonsense claims and slogans are everywhere. Politics, marketers or even academics are using vagueness and ambiguity to give their messages a meaningful tone (Pennycook et al., 2015) and influence people’s minds. Very often their pseudo-profound statements have a correct syntactic structure and they are not trivial (Pfattheicher & Schindler, 2016). Although at first glance they are not very different from the writing of many philosophers, they do differ. Philosophers’ passages are hard to understand but the difficulty pertains not to the expression but to the content, and not to the rhetorical device but to the sophisticated thinking (Sperber, 2010).

To understand the concept, a scarce literature on nonsense refers to the work of Pennycook et al. (2015) on pseudo-profound bullshit who define it as “strongly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous” (p.549). The authors discovered that some people are more receptive to bullshit claims than others i.e., those who have an uncritically open mind, lower cognitive ability (verbal, fluid, intelligence and numeracy), are less reflective and more prone to ontological confusions are more likely to accept pseudo-profound claims. Pennycook et al. (2015) methodology has been criticized by Dalton (2016) who stated that their paper has one major drawback. Sentences randomly generated by computer have been perceived as bullshit from the beginning and they were not pretested or based on the impact on respondent’s evaluation. Therefore, the sentences could have been subjectively assessed as profound and provide wisdom to the subjects. In their reply, the authors referred to the definition of bullshit offered by Frankfurt (2009) which state that everything depends on the intentions of the person writing the statement and even bullshit that is perceived as profound by some people is still bullshit (Pennycook et al., 2016). Also, it is worth mentioning here that Pennycook et al. (2015) distinguish between bullshit and nonsense. Technically speaking, bullshit is not merely nonsense. For the sentence to be bullshit, it should be created to convey some sort of meaning. Owing to my intentions, pseudo-profound sentences created for the purpose of this study can be therefore perceived as both nonsense and bullshit. This allows me to refer to some of the scarce but informative literature on the concept of bullshit as well.

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11 Cowley, 2006; Goldberg & Hartwick, 1990). I believe that this effect will stay the same for nonsense claims and that this advertising technique will be even more powerful when combined with awe. There are a few literature findings that describe why both puffed and bullshit messages are generally believed which I believe will also explain why people should be more likely to accept nonsense claims in a state of awe.

First of all, as Sperber (2010) wrote “all too often, what readers do is judge profound what they have failed to grasp” (p.583). Indeed, people tend to uncritically accept information, even when they do not understand certain elements (Fennis & Stroebe, 2015). Furthermore, in the context of puffed claims, lack of ability to recognize claims as puffed leads to their acceptance (Shimp & Preston, 1981). As a result, since both awe and nonsense challenge mental structures and cause difficulties in comprehension, people’s failure to grasp should lead to higher acceptance.

Another reason why people might accept nonsense claims is that the way they process the incoming information is subject to mistakes. For instance, a default option for people in the beginning of their comprehension process is to label all claims as true and only at later stages evaluate them differently (Cowley, 2006; Gilbert, Krull & Malone, 1990). Furthermore, even though a person later recognizes this incoming information as false, first opinions that something is true might still have impact on memory and decision making. This is due to the fact that people are not good at rejecting, ignoring and failing to believe what they have already comprehended (Bjork, 1972; Schul and Burnstein, 1985; Wyer and Budesheim, 1987 as discussed in Cowley, 2006).

Moreover, various literature findings suggest that people have a high tendency to rely on heuristics and label incoming information as true simply because it requires less cognitive effort (a phenomenon called “truth effect”). They also expect that what they hear or read is designed to carry some sufficient information that is worth their attention and does not require too much unnecessary comprehension efforts, therefore they simply decide to accept it (Fennis & Stroebe, 2015).

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12 Valdesolo, & Graham, 2014; Laurin, Kay, & Moscovitch, 2008; Schwartzberg & Janoff-Bulman, 1991). These motivations make them spot order and patterns where there are none (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008; Valdesolo, & Graham, 2014).

To conclude, the existing literature on awe and nonsense has led me to the following hypotheses.

H1a: Awe (versus other positive emotions) has a positive impact on the attitude toward the product.

H1b: Awe (versus other positive emotions) has a positive impact on the purchase intention. H1c: Awe (versus other positive emotions) has a positive impact on the willingness to pay.

H2a: High (versus low) level of nonsense has a positive impact on the attitude toward the product.

H2b: High (versus low) level of nonsense has a positive impact on the purchase intention. H2b: High (versus low) level of nonsense has a positive impact on the willingness to pay.

H3a: Awe (versus other positive emotions) leads to increased positive attitude toward the product in the context of high level of nonsense versus low level of nonsense.

H3b: Awe (versus other positive emotions) leads to increased purchase intention in the context of high level of nonsense versus low level of nonsense.

H3c: Awe (versus other positive emotions) leads to increased willingness to pay in the context of high level of nonsense versus low level of nonsense.

Moderating variables

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Need for cognition

Need for cognition (NFC) is primarily a motivational factor. It is perceived to be important for marketers deciding on the type, amount and exposure frequency of the promotional material since it shows differences in people’s chronic tendencies to engage in effortful thinking needed to change attitudes (Haugtvedt & Cacioppo, 1992). High NFC individuals enjoy thinking, complex tasks and they tend to process ad arguments more extensively and more spontaneously. In turn low NFC people avoid effortful cognitive work based on the merits of the arguments and they are more susceptible to the influence of peripheral cues (Cacioppo, & Petty, 1982/1984 as discussed in Haugtvedt & Cacioppo, 1992). In the past NFC has been mostly examined in the context of the elaboration likelihood model as it has been proven to significantly influence persuasion processes (Underwood & Shaughnessy, 1975 followed in Zhang & Buda, 1999).

Motivation, ability and opportunity to process information have an impact on the degree of involvement (Hoyer & MacInnis, 2007). It has also been discovered that there is a positive relationship between NFC (one of the determinants of motivation) and the amount of cognitive effort assigned to advertising messages. Moreover, merely the perception of the message complexity can already impact one’s individual level of processing. People high in NFC are more motivated to process messages that are perceived to be complex rather than simple and the opposite is true for people low in their NFC (Petty & Evans, 2009). For instance, since most ads are relatively short and thus do not require too much cognitive effort, marketers can assume that even low NFC subjects will be motivated to process the message. At the same time, increasing the frequency of exposure may lead to diminished processing motivation of high NFC (Haugtvedt & Cacioppo, 1992).

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H4: Need for cognition negatively moderates the relationship between message nonsense level and its acceptance.

Openness to experience

Another factor that might moderate the relationship between awe and acceptance of pseudo-profound messages is openness to experience (OPE). Openness to experience is one of the “Big Five” personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and has the biggest impact in the field of aesthetics, creativity and the arts (Shiota et al., 2006). This is due to the fact that people high in OPE are believed to be more imaginative, emphatic, curious, enjoy aesthetic experiences more and lastly, live more creative lives. People low in OPE are more conventional, practical, down-to-earth and they easily attach to the familiar (McCrae & Costa, 1991; Kaufman, 2013; Nettle, 2009; Swami & Furnham, 2014 in Shiota et al., 2006). According to the discoveries of Costa and McCrae (1991), OPE correlates with positive and negative affects suggesting that people are able to experience both positive and negative events more intensely which is related to their deeper scope of awareness and the need for experience examination.

The researchers discovered that regularly experiencing awe is associated with openness to experience and extraversion (Shiota et al., 2006). People high in OPE have higher tolerance for ambiguity, emotional ambivalence and perceptual synesthesia (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Moreover, awe-prone people (the ones who experience awe on a regular basis) are more comfortable assimilating novel information with the existing mental schemes (Shiota et al., 2007). The aforementioned findings made me believe that people high in OPE should be less likely to engage in effortful information processing and thus they should evaluate the pseudo-profound message more favorably.

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METHODOLOGY

Design and participants

To test the hypotheses, a self-administered digital survey was conducted. This particular type of data collection was chosen because of its vast array of advantages such as cost and time-efficiency (Wright, 2005) or ease of distribution. The study had a 3 x 2 between-subjects design. There were two independent variables i.e., emotional state (awe vs. amusement vs. neutral) and level of nonsense (high vs. low) and three dependent variables i.e., attitude toward the product, purchase intention and willingness to pay. I have decided to choose amusement as a comparison feeling for two reasons. First, it is a common method for evoking general positivity (Algoe & Haidt, 2009) and second, it has been used in the past research as a positive emotion that contrasts the effects of awe (e.g., Valdesolo & Graham, 2014; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012).

The questionnaire was created using the online survey platform Qualtrics. A link to the survey was placed on various social media channels and student forums. Snowball sampling was used for data collection i.e., participants could re-share the survey among members of their social networks. Two hundred and eleven respondents took the survey. However, only 146 were eventually taken into consideration for the analysis (96 females; age: M = 25.97, SD = 4.73).

Materials

Manipulation of awe. The stimuli of this study were three different three-minute videos: in the

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Manipulation of the extremity of the message. For the manipulation of the level of nonsense, six

slogans were prepared, three for each condition (high vs. low nonsense content). They were designed with the help of a website http://wisdomofchopra.com/ which has been used in past studies on bullshit (e.g., Pennycook et al., 2015). This online quote generator creates statements that have an appropriate syntactic structure but lack meaning. The quotations are randomly put together from Deepak Chopra’s tweets who is famous for his nonsense wisdoms.

In order to give the participants the feeling that they were exposed to real marketing messages, slogans were put on the product images. There were two nonsense conditions: low and high nonsense. In both conditions participants were randomly exposed to three colorful pictures displaying a smoothie, a smartphone or a unisex watch with either high or low nonsense messages on them. The choice of product was deliberate. I wanted to take products that would vary in price and relevance. The images were found on the Internet.

The quotations - randomly generated by the website - were adjusted so they made sense with the presented product. For instance, the quote “True identity is a modality of unparalleled timelessness” was transformed into “When true identity is a modality of unparalleled timelessness” for high nonsense condition and “unparalleled timelessness” for low nonsense condition. Later, it was put on the image of the watch. The pictures participants were exposed to in low versus high nonsense condition are displayed in Figure 2 and 3 correspondingly.

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Figure 3. Ads displayed in high nonsense condition

Measures

Mood measurements. Participants had to rate how they felt at that moment by sliding a scale

ranging from 0 (the worst ever) to 100 (the best ever) before and after watching a condition specific video. The scale was taken from the study of Sherman et al. (2009).

Emotion measurement. I measured different emotional states i.e., anger, awe, disgust, fear, pride,

sadness, and happiness while watching the video. The points on a scale varied from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely). The items were taken from Piff et al., 2015.

Smallness measurement. In addition, respondents had to indicate how small they had felt while

watching the video (7 point scale from 1 (not at all true) to 7 (very true)). Questions were: “I felt small or insignificant”, “I felt the presence of something greater than myself”, “I felt part of some greater entity” and “I felt like I was in the presence of something grand”. The goal of these sentences was to measure to what degree they felt awe during the video (Huta & Ryan, 2010; Shiota et al., 2007 followed in Piff et al., 2015). A smallness index was created (Cronbach's α = .94) by averaging three latter questions. The first item was not taken into consideration due to slightly lower Cronbach’s alpha (α = .92).

Attitude toward the product. I measured people’s attitudes towards three products (i.e.,, a

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19 agree with these sentences on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The scale was reliable and has been previously validated in other studies (e.g., Kempf & Smith, 1998; Jiang & Benbasat, 2007). For all products Cronbach’s alpha was above 0.7 (smoothie α = 0.94; phone α = 0.93; watch α = 0.96) which allowed me to combine the items for each of the product into a new variable.

Purchase intention. To measure purchase intention of the products, a single-item question was

used. On a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) participants had to indicate to what extent they agree with the sentence “I would consider buying this product”. The question has been used in many studies before (e.g., Lynch, Kent & Srinivasan, 2001; Grewal et al., 1998). Reliability analysis showed that items measuring attitudes and purchase intention for all the products turned out to be highly correlated (smoothie attitude and intention α = .94, phone attitude and intention α = .89, watch attitude and intention α = .95). Therefore for each product a new variable called “acceptance” was created by averaging the attitudes and purchase intention items of this specific product.

Willingness to pay. The willingness to pay was measured with two one-item open questions

checking the maximum and minimum price people would pay for the product. Questions were: “Above which price would you definitely not buy the product, because you can’t afford it or because you didn’t think it was worth the money?” and “Below which price would you say you would not buy the product because you would start to suspect the quality?” The amount of money had to be written down in euros. The questions were taken from the study of Marbeau (1987).

Openness to experience. To measure openness to experience I adopted the scale from John and

Srivastava (1999). Participants had to indicate to what extent they see themselves as someone who e.g., “Is original, comes up with new ideas”, “Is curious about many different things” and “Has an active imagination”. The sentences were assessed on a scale from 1 (very untrue of me) to 7 (very true of me). Cronbach’s alpha was above 0.7 (α = 0.78) which allowed me to create a new variable by taking average of items for the specific construct.

Need for cognition. Need for cognition was measured using the scale from Cacioppo and Petty

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20 (very untrue of me) to 7 (very true of me). Sample sentences were “I would prefer complex to simple problems” and “I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours”. Scale reliability was above 0.7 (α = 0.78) and therefore, I was able to combine the items into a new variable.

Procedure

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RESULTS

In the following chapter, the results of my quantitative research are presented. First, I describe how the data set was prepared for the analysis. Then I shortly describe the sample. This is followed by the presentation of manipulation check results. Finally, in order to find the relationships suggested in the literature review, the hypotheses are tested. All results are analyzed with a confidence level of 95% i.e., significance level equal to or lower than p = .05.

Data preparation and descriptive statistics

Two hundred and eleven respondents took the survey. However, only 136 were eventually taken into consideration for further analysis (90 females; Mage = 25.90, SD = 0.48). 50 respondents

(23.7%) dropped out before watching the video or answering all the questions. The remaining 25 respondents were eliminated because they did not answer the attention question correctly which suggested they did not read the instructions carefully and therefore, their answers might not have been reliable. Before manipulation, participants’ had to rate their mood. On average, people were in a good mood (Mmood = 63.21, SD = 18.22; range from 22 to 100).

Through randomization participants were assigned to one of the six conditions: neutral condition with normal advertising messages (N = 20), neutral condition with nonsense advertising messages (N = 20), amusement condition with normal advertising messages (N=24), amusement with nonsense advertising messages (N = 24), awe condition with normal advertising messages (N = 25) and finally, awe condition with nonsense advertising messages (N = 23). Each condition had at least 20 participants as suggested by Hair, Black, Babin and Anderson (2009). This allowed me to proceed with further analysis.

Manipulation checks

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22 means and standard deviations of experienced level of smallness for different emotional conditions.

Table 1

Level of experienced smallness across different emotional conditions

Emotion M SD

Neutral 2.08 1.45

Amusement 2.16 1.22

Awe 4.89 1.48

These results were confirmed by another one-way ANOVA in which emotional condition was taken as the independent variable and listed emotions (e.g., anger, awe, disgust, fear, sadness and happiness) were taken as the dependent variables. There was a statistically significant effect of emotional condition on awe. Planned contrasts revealed that participants experienced more awe in the awe condition than in the neutral and amusement conditions (p < .05) and more amusement in the amusement compared to the awe and neutral conditions (p < .05). Other differences in emotional responses that emerged across conditions are presented in Table 2.

Table 2

Mean Scores for Self-Reported Emotional States

Neutral Amusement Awe F p

Amusement 1.88 (1.18)b 4.00 (1.62)a 2.85 (1.64)a,b 21.75 0.00 Anger 1.6 (1.19) 1.21 (0.50) 1.30 (0.77) 2.53 0.08 Awe 1.68 (1.02) 2.00 (1.41) 4.38 (1.94)a.b 42.62 0.00 Disgust 1.28 (0.68) 1.38 (0.70) 1.23 (0.88) 0.46 0.64 Fear 1.2 (0.52) 1.19 (0.49) 1.94 (1.40)a.b 10.17 0.00 Sadness 1.43 (0.98) 1.35 (0.73) 1.42 (0.90) 0.09 0.91 Happiness 2.03 (1.31)b 3.75 (1.60)a 3.48 (1.70)a 15.10 0.00

Note: a These means are significantly different from those in the neutral condition (p < .05). b These means are significantly different from those in the amusement condition (p < .05)

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23 of homogeneity of variance was met. The analysis discovered significant impact of emotional condition on mood F(2,132) = 6.22, p = .003. There were significant differences in mood between the neutral (M = 60.55, SD = 1.84) and awe conditions (M = 68.29, SD = 1.68, p = .007) and the neutral and amusement conditions (M = 68.28, SD = 1.68, p = .007). The difference between the awe and amusement conditions was not significant (p > .05). Compared to the neutral condition the biggest impact on mood increase had the video evoking the feeling of awe.

Main hypotheses testing

The aim of the research was to examine the impact of emotional condition and nonsense level on the acceptance of marketing messages. In order to test the hypotheses, multiple two-way ANOVAs were conducted. Emotional condition and level of nonsense were taken as the independent variables and products acceptance and willingness to pay as the dependent variables. Because of the non-normal distribution of continuous variables i.e., willingness to pay for different products, these variables were log transformed.

Awe

The first group of hypotheses predicted that emotional condition (i.e., awe vs. amusement vs. neutral) would positively influence the dependent variables i.e., products acceptance and willingness to pay. Two-way ANOVA showed that the main effect of emotional conditions was not significant for almost all dependent variables and products with the exception of the watch. The watch acceptance differed

significantly across three conditions

F(2,130) = 3.95, p = .02. A Tukey post

hoc test revealed that in the awe condition participants displayed higher acceptance toward the watch than those in both the neutral (p = .009) and amusement conditions (p = .04) as displayed in Figure 4.

Detailed results for all other products can be found in Table 3. This table presents means and standard deviations for each emotional condition, F-statistic and p-value for each test. The statistics for WTP are given in a transformed form. Tests results, means and standard deviations

0 1 2 3 4 5

Neutral Amusement Awe

M

ea

ns

Emotional condition Watch acceptance

Figure 4. Estimated marginal means for watch

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24 for untransformed variables can be found in Appendix A. Hypotheses 1a, 1b, 1c were not supported and have to be rejected.

Table 3

Overview of two-way ANOVA results showing the main effect of emotional condition on products acceptance and willingness to pay

Note: The asterisk indicates a significant test at the p < 0.05 level

Nonsense

The second group of hypotheses predicted that the level of nonsense (i.e., low and high nonsense) would positively influence products acceptance and willingness to pay. A two-way analysis of variance demonstrated insignificant differences for the main effect of nonsense level and the dependent variables. The results are presented in Table 4. The statistics for WTP are given in a transformed form. The tests results for untransformed variables can be found in Appendix B. Hypotheses 2a, 2b, 2c were not supported.

Table 4

Two-way ANOVA results showing the main effect of nonsense condition on products acceptance and willingness to pay

Normal Nonsense F p Acceptance Smoothie 5.07 (1.23) 4.87 (1.31) 0.54 0.75 Phone 4.09 (1.26) 3.90 (1.28) 0.69 0.41 Watch 3.64 (1.57) 4.00 (1.54) 2.07 0.15 WTP Max Smoothie 0.60 (0.16) 0.58 (0.17) 0.62 0.43 Phone 2.46 (0.36) 2.39 (0.33) 1.28 0.26 Watch 1.77 (0.59) 1.83 (0.51) 0.39 0.53 WTP Min Smoothie 0.33 (0.15) 0.35 (0.25) 0.29 0.60 Phone 2.02 (0.49) 1.89 (0.51) 2.05 0.16 Watch 1. 26 (0.55) 1.27 (0.50) 0.00 0.98

Neutral Amusement Awe F p

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25

Interaction between awe and nonsense

The third group of hypotheses predicted that in a state of awe people would be more likely to accept nonsense messages. Two-way ANOVAs showed insignificant results for acceptance of individual products and products in general (see Table 5 for results).

Table 5

Two-way ANOVA results showing the interaction effect of emotional and nonsense conditions on products acceptance and willingness to pay

F P Acceptance Smoothie 0.25 0.78 Phone 0.17 0.84 Watch 2.54 0.08 WTP Max Smoothie 1.21 0.3 Phone 0.38 0.69 Watch 5.49 0.01* WTP Min Smoothie 0.37 0.69 Phone 0.3 0.74 Watch 3.5 0.03*

Note: The asterisk indicates a significant test at the p < 0.05 level

Hypothesis 3c predicted that awe would lead to increased willingness to pay in the context of nonsense advertising claims. As presented in Table 5, the interaction effects for all the products and prices were insignificant with the exception of maximum and minimum price people would be willing to pay for the watch.

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26 As for the minimum price, simple main effects analysis illustrated that emotional condition had significant influence on minimum price people would be willing to pay for the watch only if they were exposed to normal messages, (F(2,130) = 3.33, p = .04). Normal messages led to higher minimum price in the awe condition as compared to the amusement condition. The differences between the awe and neutral condition were not significant (p = .21). Figure 5 presents the results for log transformed values. Due to the fact that results for log transformed values slightly differ from the untransformed ones, Appendix C presents the graph for the untransformed values.

Figure 5. The effect of interaction between emotional and nonsense conditions on maximum and

minimum willingness to pay for the watch

To conclude, owing to the fact that most of the results were insignificant and interaction effects for maximum and minimum price for the watch displayed the relationship opposite to what was expected, hypotheses 3a, 3b, 3c were not supported and have to be rejected.

Moderating impact of openness to experience and need for cognition

To test for the moderating influence of OPE and NFC on the main relationships, moderation analyses using the SPSS-macro PROCESS developed by Hayes (2013) were performed.

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27 Hypothesis 5 predicted that openness to experience would positively moderate the relationship between emotional condition and message acceptance. In order to investigate this effect, moderation analysis was run using Model 1 by Hayes (2013). Products acceptance, max and min WTP were entered as the dependent variables, emotional condition was taken as the independent variable and openness to experience as the moderator. The interaction of the possible moderator on the relationship between emotional conditions was not significant across all variables with the exception of maximum price people would be willing to pay for the phone and the watch. Therefore, the results of moderation analyses presented in Table 6 are given for these two products only. See Appendix E for results for all other products.

Table 6

Regression table showing the moderating influence of openness to experience on the relationship between emotional condition and maximum and minimum willingness to pay for the phone and watch

Dependent variable: Max WTP for the phone

b SE t p

Constant 338.23 28.90 11.70 0.00

OPE 12.34 29.80 0.41 0.68

Neutral condition* 12.15 42.41 0.29 0.77

Amusement condition* -32.29 40.44 -0.80 0.43

Neutral condition x OPE -111.26 46.74 -2.30 0.02

Amusement condition x OPE 23.44 42.93 0.55 0.59

Dependent variable: Max WTP for the watch

b SE t p

Constant 100.56 16.21 6.20 0.00

OPE 8.71 16.72 0.52 0.60

Neutral condition* 10.19 23.80 0.43 0.67

Amusement condition* 3.51 22.69 0.15 0.88

Neutral condition x OPE -72.63 26.22 -2.77 0.01

Amusement condition x OPE 1.63 24.09 0.07 0.95

Note: The asterisk indicates a dummy coded categorical variable with awe condition as a reference point

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28 As for the maximum price people would be willing to pay for the watch, further analysis of conditional effects again demonstrated that only for people with low OPE, awe (versus neutral condition) had significant impact on max price for the watch, b = 77.21, t(123) = 2.30, p = .02. The effect was not significant for people with medium OPE (b = 10.19, t(125) = .43, p = .67) and high OPE (b = -56.82, t(125) = -1.66, p = .10). This is also depicted in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The conditional effect of emotional condition on maximum price for the phone and

watch at different levels of openness to experience

As illustrated in Figure 6, similar patterns emerged for both products. First, at low values of OPE, the price was higher in the neutral condition compared to the awe and amusement conditions Finally, when OPE increased, the maximum price people would be willing to pay for the phone and watch in the neutral condition decreased. Although insignificant, a converse pattern was visible for the awe and amusement conditions i.e., higher OPE resulted in slightly higher prices assigned to the products.

Correlations

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29 willing to pay higher minimum price for the smoothie. Also, smallness was significantly and positively related to smoothie and watch acceptance and maximum and minimum prices people would be willing to pay for the these products i.e., the more people experienced smallness, the better they evaluated these products and the more they were willing to pay for them. In addition, the analysis revealed that the higher products acceptance, the higher maximum and minimum price people would be willing to pay for them e.g., the higher the smoothie acceptance, the higher maximum and minimum price someone would be willing to pay for it. Also, maximum and minimum prices for all the products were significantly and positively correlated i.e., the higher maximum price someone was willing to pay for a certain product, the higher minimum price they would be willing to pay. Finally, NFC significantly and positively correlated with OPE and minimum price for the phone.

Table 7

Correlation Matrix of the different Independent and Dependent Variables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1. Awe 2. Smallness .70** 3. Smoothie Acceptance .14** .23** 4. Phone Acceptance 0.11 0.09 0.14 5. Watch Acceptance .34** .37** .22* .22* 6. Smoothie Max. WTP 0.08 .25** .37** .17* .24** 7. Smoothie Min. WTP .24** .31** 0.11* .18* .18* .48** 8. Phone Max. WTP 0.06 0.06 .18* .33** 0.04 .29** 0.16 9. Phone Min. WTP 0.13 0.15 0.14 .23** 0.07 0.13 .39** .60** 10. Watch Min. WTP 0.1 .18* .21* 0.1 .47** .40** .29** .29** .19* 11. Watch. Max WTP 0.15 .30** 0.1 0.01 .37** .27** .39** 0.13 .38** .75** 12. OPE -0.05 -0.03 0.00 -0.01 0.10 0.00 -0.06 0.00 0.09 -0.02 0.01 13. NFC 0.20 0.07 -0.02 -0.07 0.05 -0.07 0.05 0.06 .225* 0.07 0.17 .31*

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30

DISCUSSION

Based on the existing literature on the topic of awe (Shiota et al., 2006; Bonner & Friedman, 2011; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012; Valdesolo & Graham, 2014; Sperber, 2010; Joye & Dewitte, 2016) and nonsense (e.g., Rotfeld & Rotzoll, 1980; Cowley, 2006; Goldberg & Hartwick, 1990; Fennis & Stroebe, 2015; Shimp & Preston, 1981) I hypothesized that after awe-evoking experience, people would be more likely to accept nonsense advertising slogans and this would translate into higher attitudes, purchase intentions and willingness to pay.

Unfortunately, none of the main predicted relationships were found. Moreover, owing to the fact that there were no visible and fixed patterns in the acceptance of messages across different conditions and products, it is hard to discover the reasons why anticipated relationships were not found. For instance, the study demonstrated insignificant impact of emotional conditions on the acceptance of all products with the exception of the watch. Furthermore, the differences in the watch acceptance were significant only between the awe and neutral conditions but not between the awe and amusement conditions. Finally, after an awe-evoking experience, people assigned higher maximum and minimum prices for the watch only when they were exposed to low compared to high nonsense messages.

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31 would be willing to pay for the watch after an awe-evoking experience, were higher for low instead of high nonsense messages.

Another reason for the lack of significant results might be the fact that existing literature implies that awe leads to decreasing materialistic tendencies and increasing preferences for experiential goods (Rudd et al. 2012; Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota et al., 2006; Shiota et al. 2007; Griskevicius et al.; 2010; Tian, 2015). This would explain why awe should not lead to an increase in attitudes towards any product generally.

Last but not least, I believe that the study was subject to many shortcomings that might have led to insignificant results. The next section will name a few and suggest how the research could be improved in the future.

Limitations and recommendations for the future research

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32 education status of the participants and should ask people whether they participated in another study like this in order to check whether it had any impact on how they performed.

Thirdly, the emotion manipulation, although demonstrated to be successful, still leaves room for improvement. It is hard to evaluate to what extent participants actually paid attention to the displayed videos. While watching the video, they could e.g., watch TV, listen to the radio or talk to their friends and therefore, it might not have had any impact on their attitudes. As a result, the future research could be conducted in the laboratory settings to make sure respondents watch the material carefully. Moreover, future research could also examine whether the results stay the same depending on the way the emotion was evoked i.e., through scenarios (Griskevicius et al., 2010), slideshow (Joye & Bolderdijk, 2014) or video presentation (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014). Fourth, the products that I have decided to use in the study could have had a big impact on the responses. I wanted to see whether the relationship will be true across different product categories and brands. In two out of three pictures, participants could see a brand name. Therefore, they already could have had a fixed attitude toward a brand which resulted in them answering the questions in relation with their personal experience with a product rather than evaluating in on the spot. Future research should take that into consideration and either choose the product pictures without visible brand names or control for the product involvement.

Finally, the choice of fonts used for the slogans could also have an impact on their acceptance as demonstrated in previous research (e.g., Juni & Gross, 2008; Pillai, Katsikeas& Presi, 2012). Future researchers should carefully choose the fonts or even test between different types to make sure they do not have any impact on the final results.

Managerial implications

The research was conducted to test the acceptance of pseudo-profound messages in the state of awe. Significant results could have had many important implications for marketers.

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33 popular feelings such as warmth, happiness, joy (e.g., Aaker et al., 1986; Stern, 1990). Moreover, the findings would be a proof that in a state of awe people are more likely to evaluate nonsense messages more favorably and believe whatever they are told. It is worth mentioning here that for some people, the technique if proven true, could be perceived as controversial as it would lead to unethical behaviors i.e., manipulation of the consumer’s emotion in order to gain brand differentiation. Especially that existing literature on unethical branding suggests that although consumers are nowadays more conscious about ethical behavior, this does not necessarily translate into their purchasing behavior that favors ethical and punish unethical companies (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001). Therefore, the final decision whether and to what extent the company should exploit the technique, would depend on firms’ values and beliefs. I believe that the high-profile brands that truly care about their customers should and would use the tool with caution. In addition, I wanted to prove that the predicted relationships would be consistent across various product categories. Although, most of the results were insignificant, there were some small differences between products which lead to one important lesson that can be learned from this research. What works for one product category, will not necessarily work in the context of others. Nowadays, marketers try evoking awe while advertising a variety of different products, ranging from FMCGs such as energetic drinks (e.g., RedBull), through camera equipment (e.g., GoPro) to cars (e.g., Volvo Truck). Although, at first it might seem as an effective technique for all, in some cases people actually might want to see and hear about the product attributes and specifications (Areni, 2002) and therefore, they will be more critical towards nonsense advertising messages as it was demonstrated on the example of the maximum and minimum prices people would be willing to pay for the watch. Moreover, as significant correlation between NFC and minimum price people would be willing to pay for the phone shows, individual differences between people will also have impact on the technique effectiveness.

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34 country the passengers are flying to. This would lead to more positive mood during the trip, more positive flight experience and consequently, choosing the same airlines in the future.

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35

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The effect of the emotion of awe on acceptance of pseudo-profound but nonsense marketing information