Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Health Commun. 2012;17(9):1068-80. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2011.650833. Epub 2012 May 31.
This study investigated whether unfamiliar characters are as effective as familiar characters in stimulating children's affective responses toward healthy foods. In particular, the authors investigated whether an unfamiliar character which is congruent with a product can be as effective as a familiar character. The authors tested 2 types of character-product congruence: conceptual congruence (on the basis of a familiar link), and perceptual congruence (on the basis of color similarity). In a repeated measures design, 166 children (4-6 years old) were exposed to a picture of a carrot combined randomly with 5 different types of character: an (incongruent) familiar character and four unfamiliar characters varying in character-product congruence (i.e., both conceptually and perceptually congruent, conceptual only, perceptual only, and incongruent). The authors measured children's automatic affective responses toward these character-product combinations using a time-constrained task, and elaborate affective responses using a nonconstrained task. Results revealed that the conceptually congruent unfamiliar characters were just as effective as the familiar character in increasing children's automatic affective responses. However, the familiar character triggered the most positive elaborate affective responses. Results are explained in light of processing fluency and parasocial relationship theories.
本研究旨在探究陌生字符是否与熟悉字符一样能有效激发儿童对健康食品的情感反应。特别是，作者研究了一个与产品一致的陌生字符是否能像熟悉字符一样有效。作者测试了两种类型的字符-产品一致性：概念一致性（基于熟悉的联系）和感知一致性（基于颜色相似性）。在一项重复测量设计中，166 名（4-6 岁）儿童随机接触到胡萝卜的图片，并与 5 种不同类型的字符结合：一个（不一致的）熟悉字符和四个在字符-产品一致性上有所不同的陌生字符（即概念上和感知上一致、仅概念上一致、仅感知上一致和不一致）。作者使用限时任务测量了儿童对这些字符-产品组合的自动情感反应，并使用非限时任务详细测量了情感反应。结果表明，概念上一致的陌生字符与熟悉字符一样能有效增加儿童的自动情感反应。然而，熟悉字符引发了最积极的详细情感反应。结果根据加工流畅性和准社会关系理论进行了解释。
