The effect of severe imagery in advertising on charitable behavior and the moderating role of social closeness

The present paper systematically investigated the effectiveness of utilizing severe or disgusting, imagery, and the moderating effect of social closeness within non-profit health charity advertising appeals. Across three experiments, we found an interaction effect, whereby donations increased when severe images were shown, but only when high social closeness was also highlighted. Conversely, severe imagery reduced donations in the low social closeness condition, when participants were not prompted to think of their family. Despite the popularity of using severe imagery within charity advertising, our findings suggest that severe images should be used with caution in health charity marketing. Investigating the underlying mechanisms, we found that empathy (disgust) underlies the increase (decrease) of donation when severe imagery was used in a high (low) social closeness condition. Furthermore, we ruled out anger and perceived responsibility as competing moderators for these effects to verify whether other positive and negative emotions had similar effects.