Abstract:

Background:
Children are especially vulnerable to advertising. It is widely assumed that knowledge of advertising makes children less susceptible to advertising effects. However, researches in the field of advertising literacy have revealed that the effectiveness of cognitive defense against advertising is divergent. Scholars proposed an argument that comprehensive advertising defenses must include not only conceptual knowledge of advertising, but also skeptical attitude toward advertising and the actual use of advertising knowledge. A disposition toward critical thinking is the consistent internal motivation to use critical thinking to decide what to believe and what to do. Children with high critical thinking disposition are likely to have a strong motivation to process advertising under high elaboration conditions and to make decisions by using advertising knowledge while being confronted with advertising. This study proposed a hypothesis that children’s critical thinking disposition will moderate the influence of knowledge of persuasive intent on the desire for advertised products. While many scholars endorse the importance of critical thinking toward advertising defenses, a few take an empirical approach to explore the relationship between both. Further, a very few studies have examined the combined effect of critical thinking and knowledge of advertising on advertising defenses among children. The purpose of this study was to examine the moderating effect of critical thinking disposition on the relationship between knowledge of persuasive intent and desire for advertising products.

Methods:
The 4th-6th grade students were recruited from 14 elementary schools in Taiwan. A cross-sectional survey was conducted via questionnaires. The final sample consisted of 524 boys and 512 girls between the ages of 10 and 12. Hierarchical multiple regression was used for data analysis.

Results:
After age, gender and television viewing time were controlled for, children’s knowledge of persuasive intent was significantly and positively associated with desire for advertised products (β=.12, p<.001). The more knowledge of persuasive intent of advertising the children have, the more desire for advertised products they have; this stands in contrast to expectations. Critical thinking disposition, on the other hand, was significantly and negatively related to desire for advertised products (β=-.11, p<.001). Interaction analysis in regression showed that critical thinking disposition significantly moderated the influence of knowledge of persuasive intent on desire for advertised products (β=-.72, p=.005). Probing analysis showed that the positive relation between knowledge of persuasive intent and desire for advertised products only held for children with low critical thinking disposition (β=.18, p<.001). The positive relation disappeared in cases of children who with high critical thinking disposition (β=.05, p=.27).

Conclusion:
The results of this research highlight the important role of critical thinking disposition in children’s defense against advertising. Effective advertising literacy education must include strategies for nurturing children’s consistent internal motivation to use critical thinking rather than relying exclusively on strengthening knowledge of advertising only.

Keywords:

Advertising, children, critical thinking disposition, knowledge of persuasive intent.