Persuasion Knowledge: Lay People's and Researchers' Beliefs about the Psychology of Advertising

What do lay people believe about the psychology of advertising and persuasion? How similar are the beliefs of lay people to those of consumer researchers? In this study we explore the content of people's conceptions of how television advertising influences its audience. The findings suggest that lay people and researchers share many basic beliefs about the psychology of persuasion but also indicate some dissimilarities in these groups' persuasion knowledge. We discuss what the findings imply about the existence of cultural folk knowledge and its effect on persuasion. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.