Question by Anthony Campos on Jan 25, 2015
Q. The survey that you used from the article "Does Brand Attitude Moderate the Persuasiveness of Humor in Advertising' comes very close to what I may need. First of all, do you have any opinion on the idea of matching two-sidedness with various intensities of humor (aggressive humor, no humor, and mild humor)? Finally, can you help me by allowing me permission and sending me the survey that you used or anything else that may help?
I do not see a relationship between humor intensity and message two-sidedness. This however does not mean that one does not exist and could not be justified from a theoretical perspective. Perhaps if you articulated your theory, I could try to give you my take on it.
More importantly, though, I am not convinced that mild humor and aggressive humor is a manipulation of humor intensity. Aggressive humor seems to be a type of humor rather than being more intense humor. So, you would be well served if you first defined conceptually what you mean by humor intensity. One way would be to simply define it as consumer perception of humorousness being more or less extreme. This way you could use different humor manipulations and perhaps use replicates of the different types of humor to rule out the type of humor confound that I just noted.
Regarding the survey I used, I am afraid I no longer have it on file. You realize that the paper you are referring to was published over 20 years ago and, unfortunately, with many changes in the computers I have used, as I have moved schools,.. I no longer have it with me. The questionnaire I used in terms of the specifics of the items is reported in detail in the paper, including the sequence in which the questions appeared. As such, you should be able to reconstruct the survey fairly easily. Good luck.