Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Sexy and Humorous Content in Advertisements

Abstract

Sexy and humorous content increase attention and memory for television advertising. This paper suggests that different biological mechanisms underlie their similar effects. Results show that sexy content elicits immediate appetitive activation and increased resource allocation. Humorous content elicits an incongruity/mismatch orienting response followed by an increase in appetitive activation, resulting in increased resource allocation and memory for the humorous ads. More resources are allocated to ads with an overall unpleasant compared to pleasant tone and the addition of sexy and humorous content to unpleasant compared to pleasant ads results in better memory.

Keywords:

• Sex
• Humor
• Motivation
• Processing
• Limited capacity
• Advertising