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There is an increase in the level of obesity in developed and developing countries. According to Friedman from the Atlantic, obesity has spread to places from developed countries to developing countries. As it is increasing, psychologists are studying contributed factors. One of the appealing reasons for unhealthy food to people is the type of advertisements. The study “Are Self-endorsed Advertisements Unhealthy Food More Effective Than Friend-Endorsed Advertisements?” compares the success of self-advertised fast food and friend-advertised fast food that the participants are exposed to explain why people continue to consume unhealthy products even though they are aware that it is harmful to their bodies.
According to Simonson, self-justification is “when people tend to defend their behavior and use the available information as supporting evidence to gratify their desires.” Self-justification evolves from cognitive dissonance. Thus, stronger justification is needed for unhealthy food because the strengthened association between self and the product would result in cognitive dissonance because of the negative results on their body image. People who are exposed to self-endorsed advertisements would self-justify the advertised products more strongly than people who are exposed to friend-endorsed products since their self-justifications are stronger for themselves rather than their friends. Thus, the hypothesis of the study is that “the people who are exposed to the self-endorsed advertisement will have a more positive attitude towards the advertised products than the people who are exposed to friend-advertised products due to their self-justifications” (Choi, Kim, Sung, & Yu, 2017, p.1074). The independent variable is the type of advertisements, self-endorsed or friend-endorsed. The dependent variable is the success rate of the endorsement.
To conduct the study, 186 students at a university in South Korea were recruited. 61% were men and 39% were women. The average age was 23 years. A dedicated area for the experiment was prepared along with the shooting and display equipment to record the advertising image using the participants’ pictures. The students were told that they could only participate if they form a pair with a friend. After they signed the participation consent form, students were informed that the purpose of the study was to evaluate advertising programs tentatively proposed for a new product that would soon be launched. In the self-endorsed environment, participants were shown three advertisements, each of which included their own picture, and in the friend-endorsed condition, they were shown three advertisements, each of which included their friend’s picture. All participants were asked to select the advertisement that they preferred the most out of the three advertisements. After choosing their preferred advertising image, participants answered items about their perception of the healthiness of and their attitude toward the product. Finally, participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they self-justified the product (Choi, Kim, Sung, & Yu, 2017, p.1075).
In conclusion, the result agreed with the hypothesis. The students who were shown the self-endorsed advertising for unhealthy food judged the product more favorably than the participants who were exposed to the friend-endorsed advertising of the same product. The research question was answered; the self-endorsed advertisements for unhealthy food were more effective than the friend-endorsed advertisements.
This study relates to psychology due to the self-reference effect, cognitive dissonance, and self-justification. Self-referencing is a cognitive process that people use to understand new information by associating self-relevant stimulus information with information stored in their memory (Debevec & Romeo, 1992). Through self-referencing, the information in advertising and oneself correlation can strengthen, thus, allowing the consumers to produce a positive reaction to the advertised product. Rather self-referencing causes an enthusiastic perception, this experiment demonstrates that self-justification led to self-referencing which overcame the cognitive dissonance. Although people are conscious of fast food which results in cognitive dissonance, by justifying themselves, they produce a positive attitude toward unhealthy products.
Regarding the study, I think that it is easy to change self-referencing. Since self-referencing is using stored information to understand new information, it can change one’s view if the persuasion is strong. By studying self-referencing, producers will understand the demographic of their consumers better, thus, creating more demand for products and increasing their profits. I also realize the importance of cognitive dissonance. For a person to experience cognitive dissonance, their thoughts must be contradictory with one another. To make it go away, one of the thoughts must be changed, resulting in self-justification. Through self-justification, one undermines the cons to parallel both thoughts, preventing dissonance cognitive. The relationship between self-referencing, cognitive dissonance, and self-justification is triangle shaped. Each one has an impact on another, causing different results if one is altered.
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