Discuss One or More Explanations for the Effectiveness of Television in Persuasion

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Television uses persuasion in advertising. A key way it does this is through classical conditioning (CC.) In CC, a positive image, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is associated with the attitude object, also known as the neutral stimulus (NS) so that the attitude object eventually produces a response, the conditioned response (CR) which is the same as the unconditioned response (UCR), which is the response to the UCS. An example of this is in the Andrex advert. The customer has an “I want one” response to the cute dog (UCR) and learns to associate the dog (UCS) with the toilet roll (NS.) This results in the NS producing the CR, which is the same “I want one” feeling about the toilet paper as it did the dog (UCR.) Another way that advertisers use persuasion is thought classical conditioning music. This has been used in many TV adverts, such as the drumming gorilla advert used to advertise Cadbury’s, and has been proven to be a very successful persuasive technique in TV advertising. Gorn looked at how classical conditioning can be used in advertising. He gathered two groups of students and both were shown a slideshow of pens. In one group, American music was played and in the other, Hindi music was played. After the experiment, the students were given the opportunity to take pens. 75% of the people in the American group took a pen they saw in the presentation, whereas only 25% of the group with the Hindi music took a pen they saw in the presentation. This study however was only conducted in America, and therefore it cannot be generalised to other parts of the world. However, the response to the music in other parts of the world would vary. For example, if the experiment was conducted in India, the Hindi music may create a more positive response, and the percentage of people who took a pen at the end may be different. And the experiment could easily be replicated

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