The effectiveness of different types of pragmatic implications found in commercials to mislead subjects

Statements concerning the truthfulness of claims made in 16 tape‐recorded commercials about fictitious products were judged by 40 college students. In half of the commercials a claim was directly asserted while in the other half the claims were pragmatically implied. Pragmatic implications are statements that lead a person to believe something that is neither explicitly stated nor necessarily implied. As expected based upon previous research, subjects often responded to implied claims as if they had been directly asserted (particularly by subjects in the short delay group). In addition, differences were found in the effectiveness of four different types of pragmatic implications for misleading subjects.