Crying victims deserve more? how victim image, facial expression, entitativity and victim story impact charity advertising persuasiveness

Abstract

We propose that the choice between presenting a single victim or a group of victims in a charity ad should take into consideration the facial expression of the victim(s), entitativity, and the victim story, since these visual and verbal cues affect donors’ emotional responses and their perceived outcome efficacy, which have an impact on charitable giving behaviors. Four experiments are conducted. When a happy facial expression is presented, an ad showing a group of victims is found to be more persuasive than the same ad showing a single victim. When a sad facial expression is presented, an ad showing a single victim is more persuasive (vs. a group of victims). When presenting a group of happy-faced victims, we observe the advantageous effects of entitativity: high-entitativity (vs. low-entitativity) enhances people’s willingness to donate. However, no such differences between high- and low-entitativity are found when the ads present a group of sad-faced victims. When a victim story is included in the ad (i.e. a narrative ad), different versions of the ad are similarly persuasive regardless of victim image and facial expression. Non-profits and for-profit companies can maximize the success of their charitable campaigns by choosing the right victim image that suits their visual-verbal combination.