Vividness

Vividness Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication Vividness Patrick J. Ewell and Rosanna E. Guadagno Subject: Communication Theory, Health and Risk Communication, Media and Communication Policy Online Publication Date: Aug 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.315 Summary and Keywords According to Nisbett and Ross, “Information may be described as vivid, that is, as likely to attract and hold our attention and excite the imagination to the extent that it is (a) emotionally interesting, (b) concrete and imagery-provoking, and (c) proximate in a sen­ sory, temporal, or spatial way.” Despite a widespread belief held by scholars and practi­ tioners alike that vividness enhances persuasion, most early studies on this topic found weak or nonexistent vividness effects. To further understand this relationship, subse­ quent research focused on explaining these inconsistent findings. Taylor and Thompson explored the different ways that vividness has been operationalized across studies. Guadagno, Okdie, Sagarin, DeCoster, and Rhoads elucidated the conditions under which vividness enhances or detracts from persuasion. Generally, the extant literature suggests that vividness is an effective means of enhancing persuasion when the main point of a communication is the sole component made vivid. These findings caution against at­ tempts to persuade by increasing overall message vividness, because off-thesis or incon­ gruent vividness has the unintended and undercutting consequence of distracting influ­ ence targets from the point of the communication. This conclusion is based on the results of individual empirical studies as well as meta-analytic findings. Literature on shock ad­ vertising as a specialized case of vividness also exists. Future research on vividness might further delineate when, how, and why vividness sometimes enhances and sometimes de­ tracts from persuasion. Keywords: vividness, persuasion, social influence, shock advertising, advertising One of the best Super Bowl television commercials of all time featured cowboys crossing a prairie working tirelessly to herd … cats? The creators of this commercial amusingly brought to life this well-known idiom in such a literal manner that it likely still sticks in the minds of many viewers. Yet, even if viewers do remember this commercial, do they re­ member the company the commercial advertised? It was called EDS, short for Electronic Data Systems, a now-defunct company that was once located in Dallas and owned by the well-known Texan and one time U.S. presidential candidate, Ross Perot. While the EDS commercial did an excellent job giving the viewer a rich and interesting depiction of the Page 1 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness classic idiom “herding cats,” these vivid images did little to connect with the product that the commercial was promoting. In this way, the advertisement may not have been an ef­ fective persuasive attempt to sell the product (data and technology solutions). Thus, the ad was ineffective despite being so amusing. The herding cats EDS commercial serves not only as an example of vividness in a persuasive attempt but also to illustrate how vivid­ ness is often misused, which diminishes its effectiveness. The literature on the basic principles of vividness, how they relate to persuasion, and why this commercial missed its mark will be reviewed. Some of the extant literature that has established the conditions under which vividness is persuasive is presented. The case of shock advertising as a type of vividness is examined, and the current state of the field and potential directions for future research are explored. Key Definitions While vividness can have different meanings depending on the industry or discipline us­ ing the term, a commonly accepted definition from the sub-discipline of social psychology is used here: “Information may be described as vivid, that is, as likely to attract and hold our attention and excite the imagination to the extent that it is (a) emotionally interest­ ing, (b) concrete and imagery-provoking, and (c) proximate in a sensory, temporal, or spa­ tial way” (Nisbett & Ross, 1980, p. 45). Put more simply, vivid information triggers the mind to imagine in a rich and meaningful way by engaging people’s feelings, providing easy-to-imagine imagery, and instilling a perception of closeness with people by being re­ cent, close, or easy to detect. Illustrative of this, emerging social science evidence indi­ cates that certain facial expressions are more vivid than others; this explanation has been applied to understanding why people are faster at recognizing happy faces in crowds (e.g., Becker & Srinivasan, 2014). Social influence occurs when people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors change owing to pressure from others—both real and in their imaginations (Cialdini, 2009). Cialdini theo­ rizes that there are two primary types of social influence: persuasion—attitude or belief change—and compliance—behavior change. Social influence practitioners—the people who attempt to influence others to change their attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors—have uti­ lized the concept of vividness as a means of crafting more effective attempts at persua­ sion. These attempts use language designed to facilitate the generation of easily repre­ sented images, emotionally evocative phrases, and communication that emphasize simi­ larities between an influence target and agent (e.g., Degen, 1987). Vividness and Persuasion The effectiveness of vivid communications as a social influence technique may seem like a logical assumption, yet this has not been borne out in the social science literature (e.g., Taylor & Thompson, 1982). Some early studies, however, demonstrated such a link. For instance, Gregory, Cialdini, and Carpenter (1982) demonstrated that convincing potential Page 2 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness cable television subscribers to imagine themselves having such a subscription increased the likelihood that these participants (relative to control participants) would become sub­ scribers six months later. Inconsistent results from myriad studies had led researchers to conclude that vividness had null or, at best, illusory effects on judgements. In a qualitative review of the litera­ ture, Taylor and Thompson (1982) examined the results of 47 studies on the relationship between vividness and persuasion. For inclusion in the review, studies needed to have op­ erationalized vividness by incorporating at least one of the three parts of Nisbett and Ross’s (1980) previously stated definition of vividness. Taylor and Thompson’s review con­ cluded that across the extant research on vividness and persuasion, at its best, vivid con­ tent did little to increase persuasion, but that it likely had no effect whatsoever. The results of Taylor and Thompson’s (1982) review inspired other researchers to de­ nounce the effectiveness of vividness on persuasion. For example, Collins, Taylor, Wood, and Thompson (1988) suggested that: “vividly presented information has some effect on perceivers that is not persuasion but is nonetheless perceived to be persuasion” (p. 3). The evidence against the effectiveness of vividness on persuasion further mounted with the results a study conducted by Frey and Eagly (1993). In this study, participants were presented with either a pallid (also referred to as abstract, indicating no vivid elements present) or a vivid message on the issue of rising terrorism and were asked to pay full at­ tention to an argument or had their attention constrained. The results revealed that with full attention, vividness did not increase persuasion and when attention was constrained, vividness actually undermined the persuasion attempt (Frey & Eagly, 1993, Study 1). Thus, this early research yielded evidence that vivid information is not effective in en­ hancing persuasion and, depending on the circumstance, vividness can actively under­ mine persuasion. Despite this early work, the previously held industry belief that vividness was effective persisted, and the notion of vividness enhancing persuasion reemerged in a set of studies conducted by Smith and Shaffer (2000). Their work investigated how different types of vivid communications differentially affected persuasion. The vivid communications varied by the consistency between the topic of the persuasive communication and the features of the message made vivid. The authors referred to this idea as congruency in message pro­ cessing. In their first study, Smith and Shaffer demonstrated that if vivid content that was congruent with the message, participants recalled the arguments better than did partici­ pants in both the abstract and vivid incongruent conditions. A second study showed the same pattern of results with persuasion as the dependent variable. However, this was on­ ly the case when the communication featured strong (i.e., well-reasoned arguments). When the arguments were weak, there was no difference in persuasion between the dif­ ferent conditions. Thus, the results of Smith and Shaffer’s work demonstrated that a per­ suasive message was more effective if the argument was strong and the vivid imagery was congruent with the primary aspects of the persuasive argument. However, they also Page 3 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness found that when vivid imagery was incongruent with the central theme effectiveness was reduced regardless of argument strength. Examples of these findings can be found in mainstream advertisements. For instance, some readers may remember the classic public service announcement that aired on American television from 1971 to 1983 that portrayed a Native American with a single tear running down his face after witnessing the vivid image of a littered roadside The commercial was designed to prevent littering; however, as Cialdini (2003) explains, show­ ing the pervasiveness of littering behavior in American culture created a descriptive norm (i.e., that most people litter). This descriptive norm created an incongruency between the central message of the advertisement (i.e., that you should not litter) and the behavior of most of the people in the public service announcement. Therefore, as the results of Smith and Shaffer (2000) suggest, the vivid image of litter and littering was incongruent with the point of the message and actually resulted in increases in littering where the commer­ cial was aired (Cialdini, 2003). Thus, Smith and Shaffer’s (2000) work illustrated a critical aspect of vividness that helped explain part of the discrepancy between the ineffective­ ness of vividness in prior research and the ubiquitous use of vividness as a means of per­ suasion in industries such as marketing and advertising. Problematic Vividness Operationalizations A common theme in the various experimental operationalizations of vividness employed in the early literature is the notion that many of these manipulations make vivid or “vivify” information that is incongruent to the central argument of the persuasive message, there­ fore reducing or nullifying the effectiveness of a persuasive appeal (Guadagno, Rhoads, & Sagarin, 2011). The vividness operationalization employed by Reyes, Thompson, and Bow­ er (1980) serves as an example of this previous miscalculation. The researchers provided a simulated, “mock” jury with either a pallid or a vivid eyewitness account of a man ac­ cused of drunk driving. The materials described a man named Sanders who was allegedly drunk before leaving a party prior to his arrest. The pallid version of the eyewitness ac­ count read as follows: “On his way out the door, Sanders staggered against a serving ta­ ble, knocking a bowl to the floor.” The vivid version of the eyewitness account read as fol­ lows: “On his way out the door, Sanders staggered against a serving table, knocking a bowl of guacamole dip to the floor and splattering guacamole on the white shag carpet.” While the image of green guacamole spread all over a thick, white carpet is most certain­ ly a vivid image, the stain itself is not anymore relevant to the sobriety of the defendant than if he spilled water into a sink. This irrelevant information is incongruent to the cen­ tral argument (i.e., that he was drunk) and likely drew attention to the stain, therefore making the evidence less persuasive. Page 4 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness Personality and Vividness A series of studies conducted by Petrova and Cialdini (2005) further examined the effec­ tiveness and limits of vividness as a means of enhancing persuasion by manipulating the vividness of a product along with the vividness of the description and comparing those manipulations with a participant’s disposition toward using visual imagery—a personality characteristic that assess the extent to which people vary in their ability to easily imagine visual imagery (Marks, 1973). While the results across two studies revealed that vivid im­ agery could be used to increase the desirability of a product, two important distinctions were made. First, the authors found that vivid appeals were only effective in increasing product liking if the product itself was also vivid. In addition, participants who were high­ ly disposed toward using imagery were more strongly affected by vivid appeals. In either case—with a non-vivid product or with a low visual imagery participant—vividness in the persuasive appeal resulted in less persuasion and lower desire for the product. This work further demonstrates the nuance of using vividness in persuasion and again reinforces the notion that vividness only enhances persuasion when it is consistent with the main point of the persuasive appeal. More recent research examined imagery ability as an individual difference characteristic and its role in affecting young Chinese women’s attitudes toward HPV vaccinations (Yang & Guo, 2015). The results of this study revealed that vividness (operationalized via the use of a picture in the experimental condition) enhanced persuasion for participants low in imagery ability more so than for participants high in imagery ability. Furthermore, the authors reported that participants’ perceptions of the vividness of the persuasive commu­ nication they were exposed to varied more as a function of the participants’ differing lev­ els of imagery ability than with differences in the content of the actual messages. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that the effectiveness of vividness is at least par­ tially determined by personality differences with respect to the processing of visual im­ agery. Figural Vividness Is Key Guadagno, Rhoads, and Sagarin (2011) suggested that the key difference in effective vs. ineffective use of vividness to enhance persuasion is making vivid (or vivifying) the cen­ tral thesis of a persuasive appeal. These authors further suggest that the previous re­ search yielding inconsistent or null results incorporated examples that made vivid the ir­ relevant aspects of persuasive communications. The results of two studies supported their contention. Specifically, the authors developed persuasive communications that made vivid either the central thesis (which the authors called “on-argument” or “vivid fig­ ure”) or a tangential one (which the authors called “off argument” or “vivid ground”). In Study 1, the persuasiveness of an essay arguing that vitamin C reduces the need for sleep was assessed across four conditions: vivid figure, vivid ground, vivid figure+ground (making all aspects of the communication vivid), and abstract (a no vividness control). Page 5 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness The results revealed that the vivid figure condition was more persuasive than all three of the other conditions. Furthermore, each condition that contained vivid ground was more persuasive than the abstract condition. The second study found that these results were only the case when arguments were strong. When weak arguments were employed, focus­ ing influence targets on the central thesis of the persuasive communication significantly decreased persuasion. Thus, vivid figure only enhances persuasion when the arguments utilized are high in quality. When coupled with weak arguments, vivid figure focuses influ­ ence targets on the deficiencies of the poor-quality arguments. Thus, these results added to the growing body of evidence indicating that vividness can enhance persuasion under the right circumstances. Guadagno and colleagues (Guadagno, Okdie, Sagarin, DeCoster, & Rhoads, 2010) further examined figural vividness in the first meta-analysis on this topic. Specifically, the au­ thors tested this hypothesis meta-analytically by examining the object(s) made vivid and calculating effect sizes comparing vivid vs. pallid persuasive communications. They fur­ ther assessed whether the vivid communications in their sample employed vivid figure, vivid ground, or a combination of the two on a continuous measure ranging from 1 = “completely vivid ground” to 9 = “completely vivid figure” with the scale midpoint of 5 la­ beled “equal.” The results revealed that, across effect sizes, there was a small but signifi­ cant effect of vividness on persuasion. The authors then examined whether figural vivid­ ness moderated the effect of vividness on persuasion by performing a meta-regression with the continuous measure of figural vividness as the effect size measures. The impact of figural vividness interacted with the type of dependent measure such that figural vivid­ ness was a significant predictor of the relationship between vividness and persuasion when the dependent variable was an attitude or behavior, but not when the dependent variable was a belief, behavioral intention, or juror decision. Thus, these results support­ ed the predictions with an interesting caveat: the type of dependent measure matters. Vividness and Mediated Communication Bailey et al. (2015) examined the effectiveness of vividness through an immersive virtual environment to determine whether simulation of a shower could influence participants to­ ward energy consumption behaviors (e.g., changing shower length and temperature). Vividness was operationalized as 3D pieces of coals that accumulated as participants took a virtual shower. In the non-vivid condition, the feedback on energy consumption was text-only. Results revealed that participants in the vivid condition set their shower tem­ peratures lower, thereby reducing energy consumption. These results are among the first to examine whether vividness is persuasive in communication modalities other than writ­ ten form. While additional studies are needed to further strengthen scholars’ understand­ ing of vividness as it manifests via mediated communication, the preliminary evidence suggests that vividness works similarly when translated to a 3D virtual environment. Page 6 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness Shockvertising Shock advertising, also known as “shockvertising,” refers to an advertisement that “delib­ erately rather than inadvertently startles and offends its audience by violating norms for social values and personal ideals” (Dahl, Frankenberger, & Manchanda, 2003, p. 269). A google.com image search will reveal many examples of shockvertising, such as an adver­ tisement featuring an adult seal clubbing a human infant to raise awareness for the hu­ mane treatment of baby seals and an ad from the clothing company Benetton featuring a priest and a nun kissing passionately. While the idea that shocking imagery grabs people’s attention seems like common sense, does it then follow that these ads are effective in swaying people to change? Shockvertis­ ing is conceptually similar to fear appeals, which have long been shown to be effective in influencing others to change their attitudes and behaviors only when the fear appeal is coupled with concrete steps an influence target can take to avoid the negative conse­ quence featured in the appeal (see Tannenbaum et al., 2015). The empirical evidence on shockvertising is more limited. For instance, Manchanda, Dahl, and Frankenberger (2002) conducted two studies in which they compared persuasive appeals that utilized shock, fear, or information as a means of influencing people to agree with an HIV/AIDs prevention message. In their first study, the authors found that the shock appeal in­ creased attention paid to and recall for the persuasive message relative to the fear and informational appeals. The shock appeal was also perceived as a violation of social norms. In their second study, the authors specifically examined message agreement and found that both shock and fear appeals were equally and significantly more persuasive than the information appeal. A more recent study examined the effectiveness of shock advertising by comparing it in two industries: nonprofit and for profit (Parry, Jones, Stern, & Robinson, 2013). In their study, the authors found that shock advertising was evaluated as more permissible in the nonprofit sector. Thus, the authors suggest that shockvertising will be more effective when the cause is prosocial and nonprofit. Examples of these causes include reducing an­ imal cruelty and stopping child abuse. These authors also suggested that shock increases fear but as with the early research on fear appeals, if a shockvertisement is not coupled with concrete steps to ameliorate an influence target’s fear of negative consequences, shock will generally be ineffective in influencing people to change their attitudes and be­ havior. Taken together, the extant research on shockvertising suggests that it may grab a target’s attention but is unlikely to influence people. Limitations and Suggested Research Vividness is effective in enhancing a persuasive communication when the central thesis of the message is made vivid and the dependent measure is an attitude or behavior. Con­ versely, if a message is made vivid by adding elements that are incongruent or irrelevant to the primary argument of the message, these elements distract from the message’s pri­ Page 7 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness mary point, thereby reducing persuasion. Irrelevant vivification may evoke the processing of extraneous elements, causing incoming persuasive messages to be attended to by an influence target’s internal cognitive structures that are unrelated or even counterproduc­ tive to persuasion. Emotionally charged discursions and detailed descriptions that are in­ congruent to the primary message or not appropriately applied to the main argument ap­ pear to only harm a message’s effectiveness. In addition, vivid appeals are more effective when coupled with a vivid product or on someone who is naturally inclined to use im­ agery and are less effective in the opposite situations. Finally, these nuances of vividness also have relevance to the use of shockvertising, which can be seen as a subtype of vivid­ ness that involves social norm violation. However, thus far, the empirical evidence sug­ gests that, while shockvertising is a commonly used industry practice, it’s effectiveness as a persuasive tool is weak at best. Furthermore, this review of the literature on vividness revealed no existing research re­ garding the relationship between implicit associations (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) and vividness. Thus, future research should investigate what impact vividness may have on changing implicit attitudes. Similarly, little work has examined what role vivid­ ness plays within the framework of dual process models: the Elaboration Likelihood Mod­ el (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1984) and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM; Chaiken, 1980; Chen & Chaiken, 1999). Though there is evidence (Frey & Eagly, 1993; Guadagno, Rhoads, & Sagarin, 2011) suggesting that vividness can diminish central processing of a persuasive message, this effect may be attenuated when the vividness is applied to cen­ tral or systematic components of the persuasive communication. Another aspect not fully addressed is whether the communication mode used for persua­ sion affects the extent to which vivid information is persuasive. Many of the studies re­ viewed persuasive communications made vivid either by coupling images with the mes­ sage or using the written word to vivify the message. Beyond that, there appears to be no research on the vividness and persuasion relation that examines whether the communica­ tion mode used to enhance vividness differentially affects persuasion. For instance, in­ creasing the vividness of figural objects may be more effective if the communication mode enhances the topic vividness by providing visual vividness (e.g., such as in a virtual environment; see Blascovich et al., 2002). In addition, there is evidence to suggest that when a communicator is more salient (e.g., face-to-face) peripheral processing is facilitat­ ed, whereas when the communicator is less salient (e.g., email, written text) central pro­ cessing is facilitated (Chaiken & Eagly, 1983; Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Vividness may bolster persuasion where those receiving the message can easily imagine the communica­ tor. Similarly, research by Broemer (2004) suggests that these findings may also be mod­ erated by personal relevance, ease of imagination, and message framing. Future research should examine these questions. In summary, the extant literature on vividness supports the notion that vividness general­ ly enhances persuasion to change people’s attitudes and behavior. Making the central point of a persuasive communication vivid has been found to generally be more effective relative to non-vivid arguments or ones that make vivid cursory details. Thus, the litera­ Page 8 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness ture presented suggests that the successful vividness manipulations are ones that pair this on-thesis vividness with strong, well-reasoned arguments. Scholars and practitioners who choose to do otherwise may also find themselves herding cats. Further Reading Petrova, P. K., & Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Evoking the imagination as a strategy of influence. In C. P. Haugtvedt, P. M. Herr, F. R. Kardes, C. P. Haugtvedt, P. M. Herr, & F. R. Kardes (Eds.), Handbook of consumer psychology (pp. 505–523). New York: Taylor & Francis Group. References Bailey, J. O., Bailenson, J. N., Flora, J., Armel, K. C., Voelker, D., & Reeves, B. (2015). The impact of vivid messages on reducing energy consumption related to hot water use. Envi­ ronment and Behavior, 47(5), 570–592. Becker, D. V., & Srinivasan, N. (2014). The vividness of the happy face. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3), 189–194. Blascovich, J., Loomis, J., Beall, A., Swinth, K., Hoyt, C., & Bailenson, J. (2002). Immersive virtual environment technology: Not just another research tool for social psychology. Psy­ chological Inquiry, 13, 103–124. Broemer, P. (2004). Ease of imagination moderates reactions to differently framed health messages. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34(2), 103–119. Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 752. Chaiken, S., & Eagly, A. H. (1983). Communication modality as a determinant of persua­ sion: The role of communicator salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 241. Chen, S., & Chaiken, S. (1999). The heuristic-systematic model in its broader context. Dual-Process Theories in Social Psychology, 15, 73–96. Cialdini, R. B. (2003). Crafting normative messages to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 105–109. Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: Science and practice (5th ed.). New York: Allyn & Bacon. Collins, R. L., Taylor, S. E., Wood, J. V., & Thompson, S. C. (1988). The vividness effect: Elusive or illusory? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 1–18. Page 9 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness Dahl, D. W., Frankenberger, K. D., & Manchanda, R. V. (2003). Does it pay to shock? Reac­ tions to shocking and nonshocking advertising content among university students. Journal of Advertising Research, 43(3), 268–280. Degen, C. (1987). Communicators’ guide to marketing. Salem, WI: Sheffield. Frey, K. P., & Eagly, A. H. (1993). Vividness can undermine the persuasiveness of mes­ sages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 32–44. Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differ­ ences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464–1480. Gregory, W. L., Cialdini, R. B., & Carpenter, K. (1982). Self-relevant scenarios as media­ tors of likelihood estimates and compliance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 89–99. Guadagno, R. E., & Cialdini, R. B. (2002). Online persuasion: An examination of gender differences in computer-mediated interpersonal influence. Group Dynamics: Theory, Re­ search, and Practice, 6(1), 38. Guadagno, R. E., Okdie, B. M., Sagarin, B. J., DeCoster, J., & Rhoads, K. V. L. (2010, Janu­ ary). A meta-analysis on the impact of vividness on persuasion. Poster presented at the annual meeting for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Las Vegas, NV. Guadagno, R. E., Rhoads, K. V. L., & Sagarin, B. S. (2011). Figural vividness and persua­ sion: Capturing the “elusive” vividness effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 626–638. Manchanda, R. V., Dahl, D. W., & Frankenberger, K. D. (2002). Shocking ads! Do they Work? In S. M. Broniarczyk & K. Nakamoto (Eds.), Advances in consumer research (Vol. 29, pp. 230–231). Valdosta, GA: Association for Consumer Research. Marks, D. F. (1973). Visual imagery in the recall of pictures. British Journal of Psychology, 64, 17–24. Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Parry, S., Jones, R., Stern, P., & Robinson, M. (2013). “Shockvertising”: An exploratory in­ vestigation into attitudinal variations and emotional reactions to shock advertising. Jour­ nal of Consumer Behaviour, 12(2), 112–121. Petrova, P., & Cialdini, R. B. (2005). Fluency of consumption imagery and the backfire ef­ fects of imagery appeals. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(3), 442–452. Page 10 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019 Vividness Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral approaches to persuasion. Journal of Person­ ality and Social Psychology, 46, 69–81. Pollack, J. (2015, February 4). The Super Bowl top 50 ad countdown: 10–1 Ad Age picks the best of the big game spots over its half-century history. Advertising Age. Reyes, R., Thompson, W., & Bower, G. (1980). Judgmental biases resulting from differing availabilities of arguments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 2–12. Smith, S. M., & Shaffer, D. R. (2000). Vividness can undermine or enhance message pro­ cessing: The moderating role of vividness congruency. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 769–779. Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albar­ racín, D. (2015). Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theo­ ries. Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 1178. Taylor, S. E., & Thompson, S. C. (1982). Stalking the elusive “vividness” effect. Psychologi­ cal Review, 89, 155–181. Yang, F., & Guo, S. (2015). The moderating effect of imagery ability on perceived vivid­ ness: the case of HPV vaccine advertising in China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 8(2), 177–195. Patrick J. Ewell Department of Psychology, Kenyon College Rosanna E. Guadagno School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication, The University of Texas at Austin Page 11 of 11 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, COMMUNICATION (oxfordre.com/communication). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Pri­ vacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: Stanford University; date: 14 June 2019