The effect of background music in television commercials: belief and attitude formation
Date
2001
Authors
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Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
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Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
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Department
Haverford College. Department of Psychology
Type
Thesis
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Award
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
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Access Restrictions
Haverford users only
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Identifier
Abstract
Advertisers often use music to persuade viewers of television commercials. Previous research has shown that emotional reactions to the background music of ads are influential in attitude formation at levels of low cognitive processing. In addition, music used in films can affect viewer's interpretations of scenes and inferences about a character's actions, motivations, and personality, thereby suggesting that music can act as a schematic framework for cognitive processing. The present study investigated whether music within ads exerts a similar effect by influencing attitudes toward products and the beliefs that are formed. Subjects engaged in different likelihoods of elaborative processing were asked to view three ads that were either paired with familiar, unfamiliar, or no music. Afterwards, they were asked to rate the ads on a bipolar adjective scale with dimensions categorized by purchase intentions, favorableness, and cognitive assessment. Subjects were also asked to recall the selling points, the setting, and the mood of the characters in the ad. Finally, they were given two recognition tasks assessing the memory of the items and verbal statements in the ad. Results indicated that music did influence belief and attitude formation at levels where both careful analysis of presented ad arguments and causal emotional associations are likely to occur. However, the results were not consistent across all conditions; they varied by the pairing of the ad and background music. Therefore, the fit of the music and ad was attributed to be crucial for determining the extent of music's influence on cognition and attitude.