Premium
The greater memorability of self‐generated versus externally presented product information
Author(s) -
Reardon Richard,
Moore David J.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1520-6793(199605)13:3<305::aid-mar4>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - psychology , appeal , stimulus (psychology) , cognitive psychology , social psychology , law , political science
Previous research based on the “generation effect” (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) seems to suggest that when subjects are allowed to do more active thinking on their own in order to generate a response to an experimental stimulus (self‐generated information), memory performance is often better than when all the answers or solutions to the stimulus question are presented to them (externally presented information). In the present study, it was demonstrated that potent generation effects can occur in the context of a single advertising appeal. The results also confirm that the existence of an elaborate semantic network (i.e., prior knowledge) for a given product category can be an important factor in facilitating the generation effect. Implications for memory theories and directions for future research are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.