Applying appraisal theory to visual metaphors in advertising

Visual metaphors are omnipresent in advertising. An intriguing aspect in research on visual metaphor is the relation between cognitive processing and experiencing pleasurable feelings. Visual metaphors may beexplained by captions (i.e., verbal anchoring, Phillips, 2000), which affects comprehension and pleasure. A higher level of anchoring results in more comprehension, but in less pleasure (Phillips, 2000; McQuarrie & Phillips, 2005). Although this result aligns with Berlyne’s inverted U-curve, an alternative perspective can be found in Silvia’s appraisal theory (2005) which suggests that emotions arise from subjective appraisals of events. Moreover, different emotions are brought about by different groups of evaluations (i.e., appraisal structures). Interest, for example, has two appraisals: one of something as new or complex and one about the ability to comprehend the new, complex thing (Silvia, 2005, 2006). Van Enschot and Van Hooijdonk (in prep) indicated that this appraisal structure also applies to aesthetic pleasure. This finding is followed up on by an experiment (n= 113) in which we manipulated the stimuli’s novelty (i.e., visual metaphor versus straightforward visual) and coping potential (i.e., explanatory caption versus non-explanatory caption). Our DVs were aesthetic pleasure and felt fluency. Mixed model analyses indicated that both visual types with an explanatory caption were felt as fluent. However, aesthetic pleasure was highest for visual metaphors with explanatory captions. This suggests that the appraisal structure of pleasure is comparable to the one for interest. Finally, the results also align with Berlyne’s inverted U-curve.