Automatic attitude activation: Studies on processing and effects of alcohol advertisements and public service announcements

A two part investigation was conducted looking at how individuals process alcohol advertising and public service messages in automatic, pre-conscious ways. In study 1, participants were exposed to either (a) alcohol product advertisements, (b) alcohol PSAs featuring visual reference to alcohol use and positive affective appeals, (c) alcohol PSAs with no visual reference to alcohol use and negative affective appeals, or (d) non-alcohol product advertisements (control condition). Results suggest that the positively-valenced alcohol PSAs that show alcohol being consumed in the messages resulted in more positive automatically-activated evaluations of alcohol than exposure to the negatively-valenced PSAs with no visual reference to alcohol consumption, or the control advertisements. Thus, such messages may inadvertently automatically-activate positive evaluations of alcohol from memory. These effects increased the more individuals enjoyed the messages. These findings are concerning because once activated, these implicit evaluations were shown to predict increased willingness to participate in drinking games until the point of intoxication. Thus, study 1 suggests that developers of alcohol PSAs should be careful not to include cues that may automatically-activate positive evaluations of alcohol from memory. Study 2 used the same design as study 1, but used an alcohol memory association measure rather than an implicit attitude measure to address concerns about using existing implicit measures to assess priming effects of mediated messages. Results were mostly consistent with study 1 and suggest that existing implicit measures can be appropriately used to assess priming effects of messages.