Date of Award

Summer 8-1-2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Thomas J. Johnson

Second Advisor

Veanne N. Anderson

Abstract

Alcohol expectancies appear to be the crux of alcohol advertisement effectiveness. Research has supported the notion that alcohol expectancies predict future drinking, but the expectancies must be activated by cues before they can influence drinking. Alcohol ads are one possible cue. The extent to which ads activate these expectancies could predict the extent to which drinking is influenced. One way to test this idea was to vary participants' attention to alcohol ads, thus varying expectancy activation. This study also examined whether or not critical thinking could undo the influence of activated expectancies. Four conditions were created for the study: control, distracter, expectancy enhancement, and critical thinking. The distracter, expectancy enhancement and critical thinking groups all viewed alcohol ads, while the control group viewed non-alcohol ads. While watching alcohol ads, the distracter group focused on a random number, the expectancy enhancement group focused on the positive aspects, and the critical thinking group focused on debunking the ads. Afterwards, they were given a decisional balance task in which they generated the benefits and drawbacks of drinking and the benefits and drawbacks of not drinking. Participants completed an expectancy measure, a memory test, and rated the ads on realism. It was hypothesized that as groups pay more attention to the alcohol advertisements, they would report more benefits of drinking alcohol. Additionally, groups that thought critically about the advertisements would generate less positive reasons for drinking. Consistent with the hypothesis, as groups paid more attention to the advertisements they listed more benefits of drinking alcohol. However, although critical thinking did decrease participants' ratings of realism of the ads, critical thinking towards the ads did not significantly decrease their ability to generate benefits of drinking.

Download

Share

COinS