Did clickbait crack the code on virality?

Although clickbait is a ubiquitous tactic in digital media, we challenge the popular belief that clickbait systematically leads to enhanced sharing of online content on social media. Using the Persuasion Knowledge Model, we predict that clickbait tactics may be perceived by some readers as a manipulative attempt, leading to source derogation where the publisher may be perceived as less competent and trustworthy. This, in turn, may reduce some readers' intention to share content. Using a controlled experiment, we confirm that high-emotional headlines are shared more and show evidence that clickbait often leads to inferences of manipulative intent and source derogation. We then use a well-known secondary data set containing 19,386 articles from 27 leading online publishers. We supplement it with Twitter share data, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and additional control variables. We confirm that, on average, clickbait articles elicit far fewer shares than non-clickbait articles. Our results are stable, with large effect sizes even after controlling for endogenous selection. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-021-00830-x.

Beyond contingency awareness: the role of influence awareness in resisting conditioned attitudes.

Evaluative conditioning procedures change people's evaluations of stimuli that are paired with pleasant or unpleasant items. To test whether influence awareness allows people to resist such persuasive attempts, we conducted three experiments. In the first two experiments featuring low levels of influence awareness (N1 = 96, N2 = 93) we manipulated the degree of control people have in expressing their attitudes, by providing participants in one condition with the option to "pass" rather than respond, when they felt influenced in their evaluations of conditioned stimuli. In the third experiment (N3 = 240) we manipulated the level of influence awareness by using a warning instruction similar to the one found in prior controllability studies, while giving everyone the option to pass the evaluation when they felt influenced. All studies found that participants often failed to use the skip option to exert control over conditioned preferences. In some cases, this may be because participants failed to notice the pairings, but in most cases because participants lacked awareness that the pairings could influence them. Even when explicitly warned that the pairings could influence them, participants seemed to believe that they were not vulnerable to such effects.

How Age and Disclosures of Sponsored Influencer Videos Affect Adolescents' Knowledge of Persuasion and Persuasion.

This study examines the effects of age (early versus middle adolescence) combined with the content of disclosures for sponsoring in online influencer videos on adolescents' knowledge of persuasion and on persuasion. An experiment was conducted among a sample of 406 adolescents (167 early adolescents aged 12-14 years, mean age 12.85, SD = 0.14, 53% female; and 239 middle adolescents, aged 15-16 years, mean age 14.36, SD = 0.13, 59% female). The results show that early adolescents need extensive information (disclosure of advertising and of its intent) to activate their knowledge of persuasion regarding sponsored influencer videos, whereas middle adolescents' knowledge of persuasion is activated by disclosure of advertising alone. This indicates that early adolescents' knowledge of persuasion is less well developed and that their information processing is more limited than that of middle adolescents. Moreover, only middle adolescents showed more negative brand and influencer attitudes in response to the disclosure. Interestingly, purchase intention remains unaffected by the disclosure for all adolescents. These findings add to the research on adolescence as they show that adolescents' responses to influencer marketing are a function of their developmental stage in combination with disclosure content. As such, this study has implications for theory on persuasion among adolescents and for regulations aiming to empower adolescents to deal with online sponsored influencer videos.

This is Advertising! Effects of Disclosing Television Brand Placement on Adolescents.

As heavy media users, adolescents are frequently exposed to embedded advertising formats such as brand placements. Because this may lead to unwitting persuasion, regulations prescribe disclosure of brand placements. This study aimed to increase our understanding of the effects of disclosing television brand placements and disclosure duration on adolescents' persuasion knowledge (i.e., recognition of brand placement as being advertising, understanding that brand placement has a persuasive intent and critical attitude toward brand placement) and brand responses (i.e., brand memory and brand attitude). To do so, an earlier study that was conducted among adults was replicated among adolescents aged 13-17 years (N = 221, 44 % female). The present study shows that brand placement disclosure had limited effects on adolescents' persuasion knowledge as it only affected adolescents' understanding of persuasive intent, did not mitigate persuasion, but did increase brand memory. These findings suggest that brand placement disclosure has fundamentally different effects on adolescents than on adults: the disclosures had less effects on activating persuasion knowledge and mitigating persuasion among adolescents than among adults. Implications for advertising disclosure regulation and consequences for advertisers are discussed.

Effects of Disclosing Sponsored Content in Blogs: How the Use of Resistance Strategies Mediates Effects on Persuasion.

This article presents two studies examining the effects of disclosing online native advertising (i.e., sponsored content in blogs) on people's brand attitude and purchase intentions. To investigate the mechanisms underlying these effects, we integrated resistance theories with the persuasion knowledge model. We theorize that disclosures activate people's persuasion knowledge, which in turn evokes resistance strategies that people use to cope with the persuasion attempt made in the blog. We tested our predications with two experiments (N = 118 and N = 134). We found that participants indeed activated persuasion knowledge in response to disclosures, after which they used both cognitive (counterarguing) and affective (negative affect) resistance strategies to decrease persuasion. The obtained insights do not only advance our theoretical understanding of how disclosures of sponsored blogs affect persuasion but also provide valuable insights for legislators, advertisers, and bloggers.

Information gaps in persuasion knowledge: The discourse regarding the Covid-19 vaccination.

Persuasion knowledge is personal knowledge about persuasion attempts that has an effect on the way people respond to these attempts. Persuasion attempts are made to effectively handling the Covid-19 pandemic, which is dependent on high public compliance with vaccination programs. Drawing on the idea of persuasion knowledge, we aimed at elaborating the various categories of perceived information gaps experienced by vaccine hesitants during the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. At the beginning of 2021 we conducted 20 in-depth interviews with Israelis who had decided not to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Analysis of the interviews revealed three main categories of information gaps experienced by the interviewees: missing information, manipulated information, and discrepant information. We analyzed how these are associated with distrust and may impair the persuasion efforts of governments and health authorities. Perceived information gaps, as part of persuasion knowledge, may increase negative responses, and therefore constitute an important factor in persuasion campaigns.

Research on the negative effect of product scarcity appeals on the purchase intention of green products and its mechanism.

Studies have shown that product scarcity appeals affect consumers' perceived scarcity, willingness to pay, and other responses, and that scarcity appeal has the potential to cause consumers to pay higher attention to the product. However, there is a lack of research on the psychological responses of consumers to scarcity appeal from the perspective of perceived green washing. In this paper, three experiments are conducted to demonstrate the impact of product scarcity appeals on consumers' purchase intentions. The research shows that when green products use product scarcity appeals as a strategy, consumers' purchase intentions are affected, but consumers' information processing about the product is the most important determinant. Perceived green washing mediates the negative effect of product scarcity appeals on green product purchase intentions. And impression management motives moderate the negative effect of product scarcity appeals on green product purchase intentions. The findings of the study not only help companies to effectively adopt the right advertising strategies to improve their marketing effectiveness, but also help them to explore the market for green products.

Recognizing and Trusting Persuasion Agents: Attitudes Bias Trustworthiness Judgments, but not Persuasion Detection.

People rely on intuitive knowledge about persuasion to cope with persuasion attempts motivated by self-interest. Because this knowledge associates persuasive intent with low trustworthiness, identifying the communicator as an agent with ulterior motives tends to reduce trust in the communicator. Three studies suggest that the extent to which people call on this association to assess a persuasion agent depends on whether the agent's message challenges or reinforces their prior attitudes. Challenged attitudes motivate people to use the negative association between persuasive intent and trustworthiness, whereas reinforced attitudes lead people to neglect it. However, prior attitudes do not affect people's capacity to detect cues of ulterior motives and develop an awareness of the persuasive intent. Thus, recipients of persuasive messages that support their prior beliefs trust persuasion agents despite being aware of the agents' ulterior motives. This seems to be a byproduct of people's motivation to preserve a sense of self-integrity.

Smartphone Users' Persuasion Knowledge in the Context of Consumer mHealth Apps: Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Persuasion knowledge, commonly referred to as advertising literacy, is a cognitive dimension that embraces recognition of advertising, its source and audience, and understanding of advertisers' persuasive and selling intents as well as tactics. There is little understanding of users' awareness of organizations that develop or sponsor mobile health (mHealth) apps, especially in light of personal data privacy. Persuasion knowledge or recognition of a supporting organization's presence, characteristics, competencies, intents, and persuasion tactics are crucial to investigate because app users have the right to know about entities that support apps and make informed decisions about app usage. The abundance of free consumer mHealth apps, especially those in the area of fitness, often makes it difficult for users to identify apps' dual purposes, which may be related to not only helping the public manage health but also promoting the supporting organization itself and collecting users' information for further consumer targeting by third parties. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate smartphone users' awareness of mHealth apps' affiliations with 3 different types of supporting organizations (commercial, government, and nonprofit); differences in users' persuasion knowledge and mHealth app quality and credibility evaluations related to each of the 3 organization types; and users' coping mechanisms for dealing with personal information management within consumer mHealth apps. METHODS: In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 smartphone users from a local community in midwestern United States. Interviews were thematically analyzed using inductive and deductive approaches. RESULTS: Participants indicated that their awareness of and interest in mHealth app-supporting organizations were secondary to the app's health management functions. After being probed, participants showed a high level of persuasion knowledge regarding the types of app-supporting organizations and their promotional intents. They thought that commercial companies sponsored mHealth apps mostly as entertainment tools, whereas noncommercial entities sponsored mHealth apps for users' education. They assigned self-promotional motives to commercial organizations; however, they associated commercial mHealth apps with good quality and functioning. Noncommercial entities were perceived as more credible. Participants were concerned about losing control over personal information within mHealth apps supported by different organizations. They used alternative digital identities to protect themselves from privacy invasion and advertising spam. They were willing to trade some personal information for high-quality commercial mHealth apps. There was a sense of fatalism in discussing privacy risks linked to mHealth app usage, and some participants did not perceive the risks to be serious. CONCLUSIONS: The discussion of and recommendations for the safe and ethical use of mHealth apps associated with organizations' promotional strategies and personal data protection are provided to ensure users' awareness of and enhanced control over digitalized personal information flows. The theoretical implications are discussed in the context of the Persuasion Knowledge Model and dual-processing theories.

The Influence of the Inconsistent Color Presentation of the Original Price and Sale Price on Purchase Likelihood.

Retailers like to use different colors to present the sale price and original price when they are presenting a promotion price. How does the inconsistent color presentation of the prices influence consumers' purchase likelihood? The extant research does not consider this question. This article will address this question. Drawing on incongruence theory and the persuasion knowledge model (PKM), this article proposes that when the color of the sale price is inconsistent (vs. consistent) with that of the original price, consumers show less preference for the sale price. The reason is that consumers perceive the price as being less trustworthy, which leads to a lower purchase likelihood. Furthermore, this effect is affected by the brand awareness of products. Specifically, when products are less-known brands, the inconsistent (vs. consistent) colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a lower purchase likelihood. In contrast, when products are well-known brands, the inconsistent (vs. consistent) colors of the sale price and original price will lead to a high purchase likelihood. In this article, four studies are used to verify these hypotheses, and implications of theory and practice of the present research are discussed.

Testing the Effectiveness of a Disclosure in Activating Children's Advertising Literacy in the Context of Embedded Advertising in Vlogs.

Watching vlogs of social media influencers has become a favorite pastime for children and adolescents. For advertisers, vlogs are an excellent way to reach young viewers. As such, vlogs have become a powerful marketing tool. However, for children and adolescents it is often unclear whether a vlog contains advertising, which raises questions regarding the fairness and transparency of this type of advertising. If children do not recognize the commercial intent of in-vlog advertising, then they are unlikely to activate their advertising literacy, which may serve as a critical coping mechanism. The aim of this study was to investigate if a sponsorship disclosure stimulates children and adolescents' (7-16 years old) to activate their advertising literacy when exposed to embedded advertising in vlogs and, subsequently, if advertising literacy activation is related to children's brand attitude. Furthermore, we investigated whether the relation between exposure to a sponsorship disclosure and advertising literacy activation was moderated by children's dispositional advertising literacy and their age. An innovative aspect of the current study is that advertising literacy activation was measured in two ways: with a self-reported questionnaire and via an indirect measurement task (Advertising Literacy Activation Task). The results showed that the children who were exposed to a sponsorship disclosure did not activate their advertising literacy to a higher extent than the children who were not exposed to such a disclosure. This might be because of the high prominence of the brand in the vlog; thus children may not have needed the disclosure to realize that the vlog was sponsored and accordingly activate their advertising literacy. The results also showed that stronger attitudinal advertising literacy activation led to a more negative brand attitude. Interestingly, this effect was only found when attitudinal advertising literacy was assessed with a questionnaire and not when it was assessed with the indirect measurement task. Thus, children who were more critical toward the in-vlog advertisement through self-reporting also had a more negative brand attitude. This suggests that direct and indirect measurements of advertising literacy activation reveal different processes through which children make sense of, and are affected by, advertising.

Disclosing Influencer Marketing on YouTube to Children: The Moderating Role of Para-Social Relationship.

Watching online videos is becoming an important part of children's media diets. Children particularly like content that is specifically created for YouTube by YouTube personalities. Because these personalities have a large reach and are considered likeable and credible, they have become social media influencers. For advertisers, these influencers are an interesting channel to reach youth. Therefore, influencers often embed persuasive sponsored messages in their videos to earn money. However, there are concerns about this practice because it is not always clear when a video includes advertising. Therefore, in several countries, guidelines have been developed that state that sponsoring in influencer videos should be disclosed as such. Until now, little is known about the effects of disclosures for influencer videos on children and the boundary conditions for such effects. Therefore, we investigated the effects of a disclosure of sponsored influencer videos on children's advertising literacy. Additionally, we examined the consequences of the disclosure for children's responses to the brand, advertised product, and video. We also included the para-social relationship (PSR) that children experience with an influencer as a possible boundary condition for disclosure effects on persuasion. Our experiment amongst children between 8 and 12 years old showed that, when children correctly recalled the disclosure, the disclosure increased their recognition of advertising, and understanding of selling and persuasive intent. Moreover, advertising literacy evoked by the disclosure affected persuasion: The disclosure enhanced brand memory through ad recognition, but also decreased advertised product desire through understanding the selling intent of the video. Furthermore, the PSR of children with the influencer proved to be a boundary condition for disclosure effects on brand attitudes. Only for those children who experienced moderate to low PSRs with the influencer, the disclosure resulted in less positive brand attitudes through understanding selling intent. For children who experienced a strong PSR with the influencer, the understanding that the content had a selling intent did not affect their brand attitudes. These findings show that a disclosure (if noticed and remembered) can be an effective tool to achieve transparency, but also influences the persuasive outcomes of influencer marketing in online videos.

Tricks of the Trade: Motivating Sales Agents to Con Older Adults.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: Financial fraud is estimated to cost consumers approximately $50 billion annually. To examine how new hires are trained to engage in fraud, this study analyzed a sales training transcript from Alliance for Mature Americans (Alliance). In 1996, Alliance was charged with using deception and misrepresentation to sell more than $200 million worth of living trusts and annuities to 10,000 older adults in California. DESIGN AND METHODS: Transcribed recordings from a 2-day Alliance sales training seminar were analyzed using NVivo10, coded inductively, and examined to identify emergent themes. RESULTS: Predominant themes were as follows: (a) indoctrination using incentives and neutralization techniques and (b) training on persuasion tactics targeted at older adults. Findings suggest that sales training focuses on establishing the company's legitimacy, normalizing unethical sales practices, and refining trainees' knowledge about how to influence older consumers. IMPLICATIONS: Predatory and fraudulent businesses peddling ill-suited products threaten the economic security of older Americans. Improved insights into sales manipulation strategies can guide the development of protective policies including educational approaches to help older adults detect scams and resist purchasing fraudulent products.

The asymmetrical force of persuasive knowledge across the positive-negative divide.

In two experimental studies we explore to what extent the general effects of positive and negative framing also apply to positive and negative persuasion. Our results reveal that negative persuasion induces substantially higher levels of skepticism and awareness of being subjected to a persuasion attempt. Furthermore, we demonstrate that in positive persuasion, more claims lead to stronger persuasion, while in negative persuasion, the numerosity of claims carries no significant effect. We interpret this finding along the lines of a satiety-model of persuasion. Finally, using diluted, or low strength claims in a persuasion attempt, we reveal a significant interaction between dispositional reactance and dilution of claims on persuasion knowledge. The interaction states that diluted claims increase the awareness of being subjected to a persuasion attempt, but only for those with a high dispositional level of reactance.

The influence of advertising on compulsive buying - The role of persuasion knowledge.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The growing concern over compulsive buying (CB) among consumers has led to vast amount of research examining the antecedents of this maladaptive behaviour. The focus of previous research was, however, mainly on examining the internal, psychological factors contributing to CB. The current research, on the other hand, sheds light on one of the external triggers which can possibly stimulate CB, namely advertising. METHODS: An online survey has been conducted to identify the attitudes and scepticism towards advertising as well as ad avoidance and persuasion knowledge among a sample of 582 Belgian consumers. Furthermore, all participants were screened with regard to compulsive buying tendencies. RESULTS: This research provides evidence that positive attitudes towards advertising can lead to CB. An important factor in this relation is persuasion knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: The study results lead to the conclusion that people higher in persuasion knowledge dispose less positive attitudes towards advertising which can subsequently prevent them from engaging in CB. Moreover high scores on scepticism towards advertising and ad avoidance among Belgian consumers in our sample point to a need for advertisers to modify their practices in order to gain more trust from consumers. This study also shows that advertising in particular attracts and seems to affect an already disadvantaged group of people - namely compulsive buyers.