When Images and Words Don'T Agree, Images Win: the Shielding Effect of Imagination on Attitude Change

This study proposes that imagery-provoking product descriptions, compared to pallid ones (e.g., ratings of a product), lead to attitudes that are more resistant to opposing analytically-presented information. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a study in which participants were presented with two conflicting pieces of information about a product. A significant primacy effect was found when the first evaluation was imagery-provoking and the second analytically-presented but not when both evaluations were presented in an analytical format. This effect appeared to be mediated by the greater amount of cognitive elaboration generated by the imagery-provoking message.