Age differences in liking and recall of arousing television commercials

This paper examines age differences in liking of arousing television commercials and recall of the advertised brands and products. Based on the activation theory of information exposure, sensation seeking theory and the limited capacity model of mediated message processing, we expect that the effects of arousing commercials on liking and recall are moderated by age. An experiment (N = 66) indeed demonstrated that older adults showed more liking of calm commercials and better recall of the brands and products in these commercials than in arousing ones, whereas younger adults liked the arousing commercials more and remembered brand and products in these better.