Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Benoit, Ilgım Dara
• Miller, Elizabeth G.

Titel

Enhancing creativity perception through fear

Ist Teil von

• Journal of business research, 2022-02, Vol.139, p.1084-1098

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• [Display omitted] •This research finds that fear positively impacts creativity perceptions, leading to increased advertising effectiveness.•Effect of fear on perceived creativity is mediated by ad engagement.•Fear’s positive impact on creativity perception holds for both integral fear (i.e., fear appeal) and incidental fear (e.g., dispositional/trait fear, fear due to an unrelated frightening situation).•Fear’s positive impact on creativity perception holds for different ad contexts (commercial ads, public service advertisements).•Fear’s positive impact on creativity perception holds for different product categories/messages (cookie, juice, carry-on luggage, anti-texting and driving, donation).•This research contributes to the creativity literature and practice by identifying a factor external to the creativity construct (fear) that impacts creativity assessments and by showing that creativity assessments are malleable and thus the effectiveness of investments in ad creativity can be enhanced.•This research contributes to the discrete emotions literature by showing that the effects of fear on perceived creativity differ from those of other emotions, such as disgust, sadness, anger, and happiness. While perceived creativity is a valued asset within marketing and advertising, the literature has not explored external factors that influence creativity perceptions of consumers. In this research, we show that fear positively affects creativity assessments leading to increased advertising effectiveness, and that this effect is due to fear’s positive impact on engagement. Across seven studies, we show that these findings hold for both incidental and integral fear (i.e., fear appeal), for public service announcements and commercial advertisements, and across a variety of product categories. This research extends the creativity literature from a focus on definition of creativity and generation of creative outputs to new factors that influence creativity perception, and also adds to the literature on discrete emotions. In addition, the paper provides insight to marketers seeking to increase the effectiveness of their creative ads.