Experiment 1

• Aim


  To see whether autobiographically-focused advertising could directly affect how consumers remember a prior childhood experience.
• Hypothesis:

  1. Images and events portrayed in advertisements will appear as part of a consumer’s reconstructed memory, regardless of whether or not the events had actually happened.
  2. If an advertisement causes imagining of a childhood experience, this imagination process will lead consumers to believe the ad-based experience actually happened to them as a child. (This is known as advertising inflation.)
• Research method/design: Laboratory experiment, independent measures design and questionnaires for data collection (self-report).
• The independent variable (IV) was whether the participant viewed a Disney advertisement or a non-Disney advertisement.
• The dependent variable (DV) was the difference between the scores given in Week 1 and Week 2 for the critical item in a questionnaire (shaking hands with a favourite TV character at a theme resort). A score of zero would indicate no memory change, a positive score a memory inflation and a negative score a memory deflation.
• Participants: 107 US undergraduates (64 females, 43 males) and participants received RPS credits.
• A questionnaire listing twenty childhood events (known as a Life-Events Inventory – LEI).  The target event was, ‘Meet and shake hands with a favourite TV character at a theme park’. This item appeared fourth on the list.
• Methods

  -      Disney resort advert

  -      A questionnaire rating the advert using attitude scales such as unfavourable/favourable

  -      A questionnaire rating on a scale of 0-100 of how involved they felt in the ad using empathy measures – “I got really involved in the feelings provoked by the ad”.

  -      Two distraction tasks

  -      Questionnaire about their personal memories of Disney.
• Procedure: Participants were randomly allocated to one of the two conditions (46 in the Disney ad condition and 51 in the non-Disney ad (control) condition).
• Week 1: Participants completed the Life events inventory questionnaire which asked them to rate each childhood event, on a line scale from 0 – 100 (where 0 = definitely no recall, 100 = definitely could recall the event before they were ten years old. The critical event ‘Met and shook hands with a favourite TV character at a theme resort’. Participants given other tasks to minimise the opportunity to discover the aim of the experiment and change their behaviour (demand characteristics).   
• Week 2 procedure

  1. Participants given either Disney or control advert

  2. Asked to visualise and imagine experiencing the advert

  3. 5 minutes to write down feelings and thoughts

  4. Rated advert using attitude and empathy measures

  5. 5 minute distraction task

  6. Experimenter from week 1 entered, said problem with Life Events Inventory, asked to complete again

  7. 15 minute second distraction task

  8. Third experimenter entered, asked to complete questionnaire on Disney World visits

  9. Asked about perceived aim to test for demand characteristics
• Participants were asked to try to visualise the advert and imagine themselves experiencing the situation described
• Participants rated the advert using the attitude scale and empathy measures
• There was a 5 minute distraction task
• The experimenter from week 1 entered and looked distraught, telling the participants that there had been a problem with the Life Events Inventory and asked them to complete it again
• A second distraction task was administered lasting 15 minutes
• A third experimenter entered asking the participants to complete another questionnaire asking if they had ever visited Disney World and if so to describe their memory of the event
• Participants were asked what they thought the aim of the experiment was to test for demand characteristics
• Results: Reactions to the adverts and participants personal experience of Disney World were rated by two independent judges who did not know the alternative hypothesis (no experimental bias). A correlation analysis showed inter-rater reliability to be 0.83. 
• Autobiographical advertising – Out of the 46 participants in the experimental group, 30 (65%) mentioned memories of Disney World, 34 (74%) mentioned that the ad caused them to imagine the experience. Even those who had not visited the park in the past were able to imagine the experience.                          
• Imagination inflation - Significantly more participants in the experimental group (90%) compared to the non-experimental group (47%) increased their scores from Week 1 to Week 2 in relation to their confidence that they had personally shaken hands with Mickey, at a Disney resort, when a child. 
• Disney memory: 34 participants from each group reported having visited a Disney park in the past. There were significantly more positive thoughts in the Disney ad condition than the non-Disney ad condition. There were no differences in the negative thoughts between the two conditions. More ad elements were used in the recall descriptions given by participants in the Disney ad condition than the non-Disney ad condition.    
• Demand Characteristics – no one was able to guess the aim of the experiment (to see if advertising could alter their childhood memories) therefore, not demand characteristics were found.