Motivational Appeal, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Attributed Efficacy of Advertising Illustrations

The influence of incongruity intolerance levels on people's aesthetic evaluation of two categories of visual images was examined. This study used advertising illustrations that prominently activated one of two opposing perceptual processes: amodal completion, which involves the application and confirmation of already consolidated mental schemata, or perceptual contradiction, which highlights their conspicuous non-confirmation, thus generating incongruity experience. Forty young adults were divided into two subgroups: 20 very incongruity intolerant subjects and 20 very incongruity tolerant ones; both genders were equally represented. Incongruity intolerance levels were assessed with a specific quick visual procedure, the Building Inclination Test (Bonaiuto, Giannini, & Bonaiuto, 1989). Thirty-two advertising illustrations were selected from current magazines,16 clearly based on amodal completion of objects, characters and environments and 16 on contradiction processes. In a double blind design, participants evaluated each illustration on aesthetic, structural, and physiognomic aspects, using 11-point scales. Scale orientation, scale order, and illustration order were counterbalanced. An interaction between image category and level of incongruity intolerance was obtained on aesthetic appreciation. Incongruity very intolerant persons deeply disliked the contradiction images, and appreciated the completion ones. On the other hand, incongruity very tolerant persons showed the exact opposite aesthetic tastes. Positive relationships were found between aesthetic scores and scores of attributed efficacy or convincing power for each category of advertising illustrations. Because advertising experts consider users' aesthetic appraisal as a component of the objective efficacy of messages, we speculate that individual differences contribute to the contrasting effects of messages when the illustration diffusion is large and it is viewed by a heterogeneous population.