Visual aesthetics in advertising

According to the processing fluency theory (Reber et al., 2004), fluently processed stimuli are preferred to more challenging stimuli. This contradicts Giora et al.’s (2004) Optimal Innovation Hypothesis, that predicts a preference for more challenging, optimally innovative stimuli. Hekkert et al.’s dual process model would explain both theories: Familiar stimuli would be preferred after short exposure, whereas optimally innovative stimuli would be preferred after longer exposure. An experiment was done to examine the effect of exposure time (20ms vs. 1000ms) on the aesthetic response to either familiar or optimally innovative advertising images. The results showed a higher aesthetic response to optimally innovative images regardless of exposure time. This study therefore did not support Reber et al.’s fluency theory nor Hekkert et al.’s assumption that two opposing mechanisms are at work at different exposure times.