Just Like You Like It

I've noticed that for the most part when I watch TV shows or funny videos on the internet, the commercials that come up usually have someone really pretty or well known to deliver the message. Now, in order to be persuaded, there are several things that must be looked at: the source, the message, and the audience (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). For the sake of this particular blog, I'm going to look at the likeability variable of the source factor.

The likeability variable is pretty straight forward. It states that we are more easily persuaded when we like the spokesperson (or animal) that is presenting the information (Carnegie, 1936). The way we begin to like a person are simply through similarity and personal attractiveness (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2008).

So let's start with similarity. The first commercial that came to my mind was the Jack In The Box commercial for the 2 tacos for 99 cents. Immediately after I saw it, I was like..."wow, Jack really knows his target audience." He sets up a similarity between the driver ordering the tacos and anybody who has ever had the munchies.



On the flip side to likeability, we now have physical attractiveness. Being a gamer, when I saw this commercial on the internet for the differences between the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii it made me laugh quite a bit. Please keep in mind that I already had a Wii before I saw this video and got a PS3 way after this commercial came out (Also, I got it for the sake of having all three next gen systems in our living room--Matt's Xbox 360, Mary's Wii, and my PS3). This ad uses physical attraction to get more male gamers to buy the Wii over the PS3.



Overall, advertising execs know how to hook those who use the peripheral route to persuasion really well. People who use the peripheral route often evaluate a communication by using simple-minded heuristics (Chaiken, 1987).





Here are some other commercials and my guesses for the method of source/message delivery that I thought were neat, but didn't feel like including in the main write up.

(Physical Attraction) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
(Sneak Attack) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKmw8dKiWq4
(Similarity) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbsdlSpA2GU

References:

Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. New York: Pocket Books. (Reprinted in 1972).

Chaiken, S. (1987). The heuristic model of persuasion. In M. P. Zanna, J. M. Olson, & C. P. Herman (Eds.), Social influence:The Ontario symposium (Vol. 5, pp. 3-39). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2008). Perceiving Persons. In Social Psychology (7th ed., pp. 306-312). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T., (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.