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Affective Antecedents of the Perceived Effectiveness of Antidrug Advertisements: An Analysis of Adolescents’ Momentary and Retrospective Evaluations

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Abstract

Perceived message effectiveness is often used as a diagnostic tool to determine whether a health message is likely to be successful or needs modification before use in an intervention. Yet, published research on the antecedents of perceived effectiveness is scarce and, consequently, little is known about why a message is perceived to be effective or ineffective. The present study’s aim was to identify and test the affective antecedents of perceived effectiveness of antidrug television messages in a sample of 190 adolescents in the 15–19 year age range. Factor-analytical tests of retrospective message evaluation items suggested two dimensions of perceived effectiveness, one that contained items such as convincingness whereas the other contained pleasantness items. Using retrospective data as well as real time valence and arousal ratings, we found that arousal underlies perceived convincingness and valence underlies perceived pleasantness. The results indicated activation of appetitive and defensive motivational systems, which suggests a clear motivational component to the concept of perceived message effectiveness.

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Notes

  1. Prior experiences with marijuana, an illicit substance, conceivably affect judgments not only of ads that target marijuana but ads that target other illicit substances as well. A multivariate analysis of variance confirmed that at least in our data prior marijuana use (users, non-users) and the ad’s target drug (marijuana, other) did not interact to explain ad evaluations (η2 ≤ .003). However, the generalizability of this result is limited to our sample and pool of ads, and the possibility remains that experiences unique to marijuana use can produce judgments of anti-marijuana ads that do not generalize to ads that target other substances.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SJMC, University of Minnesota, 111 Murphy Hall, 206 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Marco C. Yzer, Kathleen D. Vohs, Monica Luciana, Bruce N. Cuthbert & Angus W. MacDonald III

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  1. Marco C. Yzer
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  2. Kathleen D. Vohs
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  3. Monica Luciana
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  4. Bruce N. Cuthbert
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  5. Angus W. MacDonald III
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Correspondence to Marco C. Yzer.

Additional information

Preparation of this article was supported by Grant 1R21DA024430-01 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.

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Yzer, M.C., Vohs, K.D., Luciana, M. et al. Affective Antecedents of the Perceived Effectiveness of Antidrug Advertisements: An Analysis of Adolescents’ Momentary and Retrospective Evaluations. Prev Sci 12, 278–288 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-011-0212-y

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