Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002): Advertising and Memory

Why investigate advertising and childhood memories?

An advert can do more than provide information about a product. It can encourage someone to think back to a happy childhood experience and associate those feelings with a brand. This is autobiographical advertising: advertising that draws on memories of a person’s own past.

Braun, Ellis and Loftus’s 2002 study, Make my memory: How advertising can change our memories of the past, investigated whether this could also change what people believed had happened to them as children. Their research belongs to the cognitive area of psychology because it examines mental processes, particularly remembering and imagining.

The explanation comes from reconstructive memory. Remembering is not simply replaying a perfect recording: people rebuild the past, and later information can become part of that reconstruction. An advert may act as a cue to recall an experience, but it may also encourage someone to imagine details. As childhood memories fade, it can become harder to distinguish what was experienced from what was suggested or imagined.

The researchers predicted that elements of an advert would appear in participants’ reconstructed memories. They also predicted imagination inflation: imagining an advertised childhood experience would increase confidence that it had really happened. They tested these ideas in two experiments.

Experiment 1: could a Disney advert change beliefs about the past?

The first experiment aimed to investigate whether autobiographical advertising could influence how people remembered childhood experiences, making their memories more consistent with the advert.

It was a laboratory experiment with an independent measures design. Different participants saw either a Disney autobiographical advert or a non-Disney control advert; each participant took part in only one condition. The type of advert was the independent variable.

The sample consisted of 107 undergraduates: 64 females and 43 males, from a Midwestern university in the USA. They received course credit for taking part.

A central measure was the Life-Events Inventory (LEI), a questionnaire listing 20 childhood events. The fourth item was the target event: ‘Met and shook hands with a favourite TV character at a theme park.’ Participants’ ratings indicated their belief that events had happened to them.

Following the procedure and measuring change

In Week 1, participants were randomly assigned to the advertising conditions and completed the LEI and attitude questionnaires. Distraction tasks helped conceal the connection between the initial questions and the later advertising task.

In Week 2, participants viewed their assigned advert. The advertising task involved imagining the scene and writing about their feelings. They also rated their attitudes towards the advert and their involvement in it. Following a distraction task, they completed the LEI again.

The dependent variable was the change between Week 1 and Week 2 in the target-item score. A positive change indicated increased confidence that the childhood event happened, called memory inflation; zero indicated no change; a negative change indicated memory deflation.

Measuring change matters because the researchers were not simply comparing what the groups believed after an advert. They were examining whether those beliefs had shifted from their earlier levels.

Experiment 1: what changed?

Of the 46 participants in the Disney experimental group, 30 (65%) mentioned memories of Disney World and 34 (74%) said the advert caused them to imagine the experience. Even participants who had not visited the park could imagine being there.

The main result concerned confidence about having shaken hands with Mickey at a Disney resort as a child. 90% of the Disney group increased their confidence, compared with 47% of the control group. This supports the prediction that autobiographical advertising could increase belief in a childhood experience. However, the increase in the control group shows that confidence could also change without the Disney autobiographical advert.

Thirty-four participants in each group reported a previous visit to a Disney park. The Disney-advert group expressed significantly more positive thoughts, although the groups did not differ in negative thoughts. Participants in the Disney condition also included more elements from the advert in their recollections. This is important evidence for reconstruction: information encountered in the advert appeared in later descriptions of the past.

Two independent judges coded participants’ written responses without knowing the experimental hypotheses. Their inter-rater reliability was 0.83, indicating strong agreement. No participant correctly identified the experiment’s purpose, so the researchers found no evidence of demand-characteristic effects from participants guessing its aim.

Experiment 2: could advertising suggest an impossible experience?

Experiment 1 left a difficulty: meeting Mickey at a Disney resort was possible, so some participants’ increased confidence might concern something that really happened. Experiment 2 tested a stronger question: could false information in an advert increase belief in an impossible childhood event?

The sample was 167 psychology undergraduates: 104 females and 63 males, from a Western university in the USA. They received course credit. The same basic procedure was used, with separate groups receiving one of three Disney adverts:

• Bugs Bunny: an autobiographical advert suggesting a childhood handshake with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. This was treated as impossible because Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, not a Disney character.
• Ariel: an autobiographical advert suggesting a childhood handshake with Ariel, the Little Mermaid. This was impossible for the specified childhood period because Ariel had not been introduced as a Disney character when these participants were under ten.
• Control: a non-autobiographical Disney advert providing information rather than encouraging personal childhood recollection.

Using Disney adverts in all three conditions helped distinguish the effects of autobiographical content from simply seeing the Disney brand.

The two autobiographical adverts were more involving than the informational advert. Confidence that participants had shaken hands with a cartoon character increased in all three groups, but a greater proportion increased in the autobiographical conditions: 78% for Bugs Bunny, 76% for Ariel and 62% for the control.

What do the experiments show?

Braun and colleagues concluded that autobiographical advertising can influence how people remember the past and make them more confident that an advertised childhood experience happened. Suggesting impossible events can also increase belief in those experiences, supporting the possibility of false or distorted memories.

Together, the experiments support reconstructive memory theory. The first showed that advert details could become part of later recollections; the second showed that increased confidence need not correspond to a possible childhood experience. Nevertheless, an increase in questionnaire confidence is not automatically evidence of a detailed recollection. The strongest cautious conclusion is that advertising can alter beliefs and confidence about the past.

Evaluating the evidence: control and reliability

A strength is the experimental comparison between advertising conditions. Recording beliefs before and after exposure allowed the researchers to measure change. In Experiment 2, the informational Disney control also helped separate autobiographical suggestion from the influence of the brand itself. These features strengthen the argument that autobiographical content contributed to the changes.

Independent measures avoided participants seeing several adverts and comparing the conditions, which might reveal the aim. However, different groups may differ in their existing memories or susceptibility to suggestion. Random allocation in Experiment 1 reduced this risk but could not guarantee identical groups.

The judges’ agreement of 0.83 strengthens confidence in the consistency of the coding. Their lack of knowledge of the hypotheses also reduced the risk of coding responses to fit the predictions. Agreement between judges does not, however, establish that participants’ reported childhood experiences were true.

Evaluating the evidence: everyday relevance and participants

The laboratory advertising task had limited ecological validity. Participants deliberately attended to an advert, imagined its scene and completed questionnaires. Everyday viewers may pay much less attention and are not usually instructed to imagine an experience. The study therefore shows what advertising can do under these conditions, rather than proving that ordinary advertising always has the same effect.

Both samples consisted of US undergraduates, with psychology students used in Experiment 2. People of other ages, educational backgrounds or cultures may have different childhood experiences and familiarity with Disney. This limits generalisation beyond the people studied.

There is also an ethical concern: suggesting false childhood experiences could leave participants with misleading beliefs about their own lives. Concealing the true aim helped reduce demand characteristics, but limited their ability to give fully informed consent. A thorough debrief would be important to explain the misleading suggestions and reduce possible harm.

Reaching a balanced judgement

No participant correctly guessed the purpose of Experiment 1, which weakens a demand-characteristics explanation. It does not rule it out completely: participants might still respond to perceived expectations without identifying the exact hypothesis.

Overall, the controlled comparisons, advert details in recollections and impossible-event conditions provide useful support for reconstructive memory. The artificial task, restricted samples and reliance on self-reported confidence mean the findings should not be treated as proof that all consumers develop vivid false memories whenever they see nostalgic advertising.

Purpose and predictions

Braun, Ellis and Loftus (2002): tested whether autobiographical advertising changes childhood memories.

Predictions: advert details enter reconstructed memories; imagining an advertised event increases belief that it happened.

Experiment 1

• Method: laboratory experiment; independent measures; questionnaires.
• Sample: 107 US undergraduates, 64 females and 43 males; course credit.
• IV: Disney autobiographical advert or non-Disney advert.
• DV: Week 1–Week 2 change in the LEI target-item score.
• Materials: 20-event LEI; fourth item concerned meeting and shaking hands with a favourite TV character at a theme park.
• Procedure: initial questionnaires → one week later, advert and imagination/response task → advert ratings and distraction → repeat LEI.
• Results: confidence increased in 90% Disney versus 47% control. Of 46 Disney participants, 65% mentioned memories and 74% reported imagining the experience. More advert elements appeared in their recollections.
• Coding: two judges unaware of hypotheses; reliability 0.83. No participant correctly identified the aim.

Experiment 2

Sample: 167 US psychology undergraduates, 104 females and 63 males; same basic procedure.