Affective cues in persuasion: An assessment of causal mediation

This experiment examined the mediating role of affective cues in persuasion. College students were exposed to advertisements that contained or did not contain affective cues in the form of humor, and that contained or did not contain information about the advertised product. As intended the affective cues were found to influence attitudes toward the advertisement (A_ad), while the productrelevant information was found to influence attitudes toward the advertised product (A_b). By manipulating A_ad and A_b independently, it was possible to test for the causal mediation of one attitude on the other. The results showed that A_b had a significant mediating (p<.05) effect on A_ad, but that A_ad did not significantly mediate A_b.