Who or What to Believe: Trust and the Differential Persuasiveness of Human and Anthropomorphized Messengers

Abstract

Participants in three studies read advertisements in which messages were delivered either by people or by anthropomorphized agents—specifically, “talking” products. The results indicate that people low in interpersonal trust are more persuaded by anthropomorphized messengers than by human spokespeople because low trusters are more attentive to the nature of the messenger and believe that humans, more than partial humans (i.e., anthropomorphized agents), lack goodwill. People high in interpersonal trust are less attentive about who is trying to persuade them and so respond similarly to human and anthropomorphized messengers. However, when prompted to be attentive, they are more persuaded by human spokespeople than by anthropomorphized messengers due to their belief that humans, more than partial humans, act with goodwill. Under conditions in which attentiveness is low for all consumers, high and low trusters alike are unaffected by the nature of persuasion agents. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for advertisers considering the use of anthropomorphized “spokespeople.”

Humanizing brands: When brands seem to be like me, part of me, and in a relationship with me

“…Some studies have induced anthropomorphism of a brand through visual cues; for example, by making the brand's features resemble a human face (e.g., Hur, Koo, & Hofmann, 2015; Kim, Chen, & Zhang, 2016) or body (e.g., Kim & McGill, 2011; Touré‐Tillery & McGill, 2015) or by representing it as an avatar (Nowak & Rauh, 2005). Depicting a set of soda bottles as a “product family” induces greater tendencies to anthropomorphize compared to describing them as a “product line” (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007, study 2).…”

“…Sociality motivations may increase these tendencies. For example, describing the brand in human relationship terms (e.g., “the brand is a great ally”) or using closeness‐implying pronouns (e.g., “we” versus “you and the brand”) when describing the brand can enhance anthropomorphic tendencies (Sela, Wheeler, & Sarial‐Abi, 2012; Touré‐Tillery & McGill, 2015).…”

“…People who have low trust in companies are more likely to trust non‐anthropomorphized brands than anthropomorphized ones (Eskine & Locander, 2014), perhaps because the anthropomorphized brand looks more human and hence seems less trustworthy than the non‐anthropomorphized brand. Yet, people who generally regard others as untrustworthy tended to evaluate peripherally processed marketing messages more positively and attribute more goodwill to the brand when the message comes from anthropomorphized vs. human messengers (Touré‐Tillery & McGill, 2015). Perhaps this is so because the anthropomorphized brand looks “less human” in comparison with the human spokesperson.…”

Collaborer, coopérer et co-créer en recherche

“…Bien entendu, ils ne travaillaient pas seuls et ne prétendraient pas l'être. Mais les héros ou héroïnes humanisent certains des concepts les plus obscurs de notre culture en permettant au grand public comme à la communauté scientifique d'associer un nom et un visage aux découvertes et d'humaniser la science (Highfield, 2012 ;Touré-Tillery & McGill, 2015). Le dernier exemple en date qui rejoint cette analyse est celui de la chercheuse Katie Bouman, qui nous a permis de contempler un trou noir en postant sur les réseaux sociaux une photo de son émotion lors de la découverte de l'image d'un trou noir.…”

The 3 C's of anthropomorphism: Connection, comprehension, and competition

“…A majority of the research in anthropomorphism has contrasted the effect of anthropomorphizing a nonhuman entity like a product or brand with the effect of the same entity when it is not anthropomorphized. An interesting departure from this is research by Touré‐Tillery and McGill () that juxtaposes anthropomorphized entities with actual humans by studying the extent to which human versus anthropomorphized messengers are seen as trustworthy in the context of ad‐message persuasiveness. People who are dispositionally low in interpersonal trust consider humans to be ill‐intentioned and are generally skeptical of them.…”