Effects of Visual Advertising on Self-Referencing and Empathy Towards Health Conditions

In regards to advertising, advertisers seek to not only draw the viewer’s attention, but also to allow the viewer to connect with the product. However, a major obstacle in affecting a viewer’s connection with a product is the existing prejudices a viewer may have. A way to resolve this obstacle is by increasing empathy and self-referencing. This study looks at whether presenting a typical user in an advertisement can bring about such feelings of empathy and self-referencing. Participants view an advertisement for an anti-depressant medication with either a typical user or a plain color background. After viewing the advertisement participants take a survey assessing self-referencing, empathy, social distance, and behavior towards depression in response to the advertisement viewed. The results of the study find that presenting a typical user in an ad is beneficial in inducing self-referencing over presenting a plain background. However, the advertisement did not encourage empathy or whether or not someone would buy the product. With all these things in mind, including the typical user in the advertisement is found to be beneficial but may not have long lasting effects. VISUAL ADVERTISING ON SELF-REFERENCING AND EMPATHY ! 3 Effects of Visual Advertising on Self-Referencing and Empathy Towards Health Conditions When creating advertisements, it is not only important to draw the viewer’s attention, but also to allow the viewer to connect with the product. However, a major obstacle in affecting a viewer’s connection with a product is the existing prejudices a viewer may have. These stereotypes and assumptions affect attitudes towards many disabilities and social issues. According to Fine and Asch (1988), five assumptions are often made about disabilities: (a) disabilities are located solely in biology, (b) problems of the disabled are due to disabilityproduced impairment, (c) disabled persons are “victims”, (d) disability is central to a disabled person’s self-concept, and (e) having a disability goes hand-in-hand with needing help and support. Issues like attitudes towards physical disabilities, mental illness, or perceived differences in abilities between sexes, etc. can be affected by prejudice. When individuals are prejudiced, the information presented to them is processed differently. As outlined by Forester, Higgins, and Werth (2004), individuals that are prejudiced produce a self-defense threat response when presented with information incongruent with their beliefs. These inconsistencies can be dealt with by either being ignored or by resolving the inconsistency with logical fallacies. In the case of the second option, increasing attention during encoding produces better memory of incongruent information. These defense mechanisms are important in advertising because they can affect the impact of the message. Advertisers look to not only attract the audience’s attention, but also to empathize or relate to some aspect of the product. In addition, these prejudices have real life consequences. Stigma towards individuals with disabilities involves status loss, structural discriminaVISUAL ADVERTISING ON SELF-REFERENCING AND EMPATHY ! 4 tion, and affects the efforts of people to cope with stigma due to untoward consequences (Link & Phelan, 2001). Increasing empathy is a way to address stigma towards individuals with disabilities. Because of this, it is important for advertisers to understand what methods can be used to reduce stigma and increase empathy. One way to increase empathy is through self-referencing. Self-referencing can allow the viewer to connect with the product in the advertisement by encouraging empathy and understanding. It has also been found that the more an individual self-referenced an ad or product, the more positive their feelings were expected to be (Debevec & Romeo, 1992). Self-referencing can be induced in a few ways. For one, it can be induced by using second person language (e.g. words like “you” instead of “I”). Another potential way to encourage self-referencing is by employing an image of a person or typical user in the advertisement. Advertisers will often display a character relatable to the target audience in order to connect the viewer to a product that will fit into their own lifestyle. However, it is unclear the extent that a character will encourage these feelings. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of including a visual of a person in an advertisement on reducing stigma and increasing empathy and self-referencing towards the disability as a whole.