subtle ways in which disgust can influence our purchasing behavior

Whether it’s a hungry child in a war zone or a polar bear on a shrinking ice raft, we’re all familiar with the shocking images in advertising. Companies use them to confront us with difficult emotions or to go against societal norms to get our attention. For example, Dettol once created an advertisement for its hygiene products that depicted a bloodied hand in front of a man’s body with a knife through his chest, next to the words “When regular soap just doesn’t work”.

Such techniques are known as ‘shockvertising’, and so they are there is no shortage of examples. In one recent paperwe explore the subtle ways powerful negative images influence consumers. The goal is often to grab attention and fight through the advertising clutter, and while such images grab our attention, the effects can be more nuanced than marketers realize.

Until now, research into the phenomenon has mainly focused on whether it works or not. In an attention-driven marketing landscape, it can be an attractive idea to use shock to force consumers to notice campaigns (acting as a kind of override switch). But there could be a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Disgust is not a single emotion

We wanted to understand not only the impact of shockvertising, but also how strong and shocking images affect those who see it. Does it make any difference to the viewer’s emotional response whether an image is? morally disgusting, rather than frightening or physically repulsive? And how much of that reaction would they be aware of?

There is currently a disconnect between what we understand about the nature of disgust and how marketers deal with it. In the world of psychology, disgust is seen as a complex and varied phenomenon, but marketers typically do not look at the different types of disgust.

Psychologists identify several types of disgust, each of which evokes a range of behavioral, physiological, and psychological responses. Disgust can be physical, as when we react to spoiled food or bodily fluids, or moral, as when we feel outraged by behavior such as racism or violence. Some researchers further distinguish between types of disgust and link them to feelings of threat to different parts of our social, moral, and physical safety.

How disgust sends us to unconscious spending

According to our research, ideas that threaten a person’s self-image can influence his or her behavior at a subconscious level. Our sense of self is fairly stable over time, and we are motivated to maintain the factors that protect our sense of identity—things like control, self-esteem, and a sense of belonging. If something happens that destabilizes us, we will take steps to regain our psychological balance.

For example, if someone has had a bad day at work that threatens his or her sense of status or power, he or she wants to feel better about himself or herself. One response is to purchase or display products that symbolize status or power, such as luxury products. This temporarily strengthens the sense of self, even though it is not necessarily a conscious process.

The same urge to regulate our sense of self can come into play when a disgusting or disturbing image invades our consciousness. Images of physical disgust can threaten our sense of personal control and power. And one of the ways we can fix this is through consumption.

Different types of disgust, different spending decisions

The team’s research examined how respondents changed their behavior after viewing disgust-inducing stimuli in laboratory and online studies.

Based on previous research, the prediction was that morally disgusting stimuli would create a sense of disruption of shared moral norms and reduce feelings of belonging, resulting in behaviors that could restore a sense of belonging and relationships – such as donating to charity or helping others. In contrast, physically disgusting stimuli were predicted to threaten a person’s sense of power and control, resulting in compensatory consumption behavior to restore feelings of power, such as engaging in conspicuous status consumption.

These predictions were confirmed in eight experiments conducted using in-person and online testing environments. The participants were exposed to written, graphic, and video-based stimuli designed to generate disgust responses or neutral responses. Later, participants completed a second study in which their behavior was assessed for compensatory or prosocial, helping activities. A meta-analysis was then conducted on the collected results.

The results show that, compared to a control group (neutral stimuli), the study participants exposed to the moral disgust stimuli showed a significant tendency to donate more to charities and help others in a later study. For the physical disgust group, the trend was toward favoring larger brand logos and other symbols of conspicuous consumption. Thus, different types of disgust have qualitatively different effects on self-concept.

Subtle effects

The study did not determine whether there is a strong causal relationship between the types of shock advertising material and consumer responses; it’s not a matter of pulling a lever and getting a predictable result. On the contrary, there may be additional subtle effects that marketers need to consider when using shockvertising tactics that attract attention. While such images may attract attention by arousing extreme emotions, they may also have other effects on self-concept that may work for the market or may not necessarily be desirable.

For marketers, the research shows that strong images must be carefully selected depending on the type of behavior publishers hope to induce. The research also highlights that strong and emotional content may have behavioral effects that have not yet been discovered. Therefore, strong or repugnant images should generally be used with caution.