Feeling and Liking Responses to Television Programs: An Examination of Two Explanations for Media-Context Effects

This research empirically examined how the feelings elicited by television programs and the liking of television programs affected viewers' evaluations of commercials. Subjects' feelings were manipulated by viewing a positive, negative, or neutral emotion-eliciting program while program liking was controlled statistically. Viewers' liking of programs positively influenced attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand, with the effect on the latter mediated.through the former. Feelings elicited by the programs had no effect on these same attitudes. The influence of program liking on attitude toward the ad, and subsequently on attitude toward the brand, was moderated by both commercial involvement and the commercial's position in a sequence of commercials. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.