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Cybernetics Guides Galvanometric Testing of Advertising Ethics M. Louise RIPLEY Associate Professor of Marketing, Women’s Studies and Environmental Studies School of Administrative Studies, Atkinson College, York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada ABSTRACT This paper proposes utilizing Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), a measurement popular in advertising research, to measure a respondent’s level of emotional response to an advertisement while analyzing an ad using the framework of Formal Deductive Logic (FDL). The galvanometer, in recording the respondent’s emotional reaction to the ad, should show differences between the respondent’s written evaluation of emotional response (i.e.: the logical approach) and the actual response, providing an idea of the error of judgment by the respondent in evaluating his/her emotional response to the ad. If we can discover ways of evaluating the difference between how respondents say they react to the emotional argument in an ad and how technology says they in fact react, we may be closer to knowing how the emotional content of ads may affect people before airing a particular ad. INTRODUCTION Most sciences so abhor mistakes that experiments are often numbered non-sequentially in order that researchers not become discouraged by failures, and mistakes are washed down laboratory drains. Cybernetics suggests we make use of mistakes to learn how to do things better and thus is an ideal science with which to study management decisions in the Social Sciences, particularly those about ethical advertising. Ethics is a relativist issue, depending upon the standards of conduct and moral judgment of those making the decision. An ad that offends one person’s ethics may cause no problem to another. Marketers nevertheless require some method of determining if an ad is ethical. Toward that end, they frequently start with an analysis of the logical arguments imbedded in the ad, but there are also emotional arguments in ads, and these are far more difficult to analyze. This paper proposes utilizing Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) to try to measure a respondent’s level of emotional response to an advertisement while working with an analysis of the ad that uses the framework of Formal Deductive Logic (syllogism). The galvanometer, in recording a respondent’s physiological reaction to the ad, should show any differences between the respondent’s written evaluation of emotional response (i.e.: a logical approach) and the actual response (i.e.: the real emotional response). That difference may be important in analyzing how people in fact respond to an ad. GALVANOMETRIC SKIN RESPONSE The Galvanometric Skin Response is a research method known as long ago as the end of the nineteenth century [1]. It was popular with marketing researchers in the middle of the last century, was brought forward again at the end of it [2] and is still in use today [3]. In simplest terms, GSR measures very small changes in the skin’s perspiration by how it conducts electricity, as an indication of a person’s emotional response to a stimulus. In our case this stimulus is an advertisement. The measure is highly specific and can be used to track a person’s reaction to precise points in an advertisement where the person experienced the reaction. Marketing researchers found it useful because they could track a person’s actual reaction to an ad instead of having to rely on what the person later reported they felt as a reaction. It was regarded as an unbiased measure of arousal in response to the ad [4]. The method was not without its problems. We may know the respondent experienced an emotion but if we are looking for a reaction of, say, excitement, we do not know if it was fear or some other emotion. The method nevertheless has good standing in the psychological literature and is “widely accepted by behavioural scientists” [5]. What is significant about GSR for the purpose of testing a respondent’s reaction to an ad with respect to judging ethics is that this kind of testing avoids the problem of the respondent’s “rational and cognitive processes”. It instead measures “an involuntary physiological response which is emotionally and/or unconsciously driven” [6]. Ethics is a deeply rooted phenomenon, often established early in life, subject to many and various recognized and unrecognized emotions. It also is an area where people usually wish to appear “better-behaved” than they might in truth feel or act. It would therefore be of value to have some measures of respondents’ reactions, other than those they report. DIFFICULTIES IN EVALUATING THE ETHICS OF AN AD The need for a better way of analyzing respondents’ emotional reactions to advertisements arose out a realization by some researchers who regularly utilize the Gilbert Multimodal Argumentation model that while we “talked the talk” of examining all modes of argument, when it came to examining emotional arguments, we were still placing them into the structure of the syllogism used in Formal Deductive Logic. Emotion regularly loses out in the analysis of argument. Traditionally in Western society, we think of argument as synonymous with logic. We hear it in phrases like, “I’m not going to argue with you if you can’t be logical”. But logic is not the only form of argument, nor is it the only basis on which to examine the ethics of an ad. Michael Gilbert [7] in introducing his theory of MultiModal Argumentation maintained that while argumentation traditionally is associated with logic and reasoning [8, 9, 10, 11, 12], we also must consider three other modes of argumentation: emotional, visceral, and kisceral, or intuitive. I focus in this paper only on the additional aspect of emotional arguments. Gilbert highlights the frequent erroneous perception that logical means right and emotional means wrong, and furthermore suggests, following Plato, that logic and emotion should never have been separated [13]. Almost every ad uses both logic and emotion. Most ads will use some logic to argue their position, with the possible exception of some of the more exotic perfume ads. Emotion is used in almost all ads at least to some extent partly because it breaks down logical counter-arguments or “unspoken utterances” [14], which the consumer is most likely to make while reading the ad. Any mode of argumentation may be right for a particular use. In analyzing advertisements, What I maintain may be wrong is the use of a mode of argumentation to make an unethical argument to sell a product. This is why we need to be able to examine emotional arguments in advertising. It is relatively easy to examine the logical argument in an ad, using the structures of Formal Deductive Logic. Working within the Gilbert model, I examine logical arguments in the following manner, using examples from Ripley [15]. In this business-to-business ad for Duo-Pro containment piping made by Asahi/America, for example, we see white pipe fittings against a blue background in the top third of the ad, with small bulleted paragraphs of print filling the lower two thirds of the page. In analyzing this ad, I begin with the standard syllogism format: All M are P. All S are M. _____________ Therefore, all S are P. We can easily fit Duo Pro’s argument into that same structure: All pipes that meet safety standards (M) are things that are worth buying (P). All Duo-Pro pipes (S) are pipes that meet (& exceed) safety standards (M). _____________________________ Therefore, all Duo-Pro pipes (S) are things that are worth buying (P). This ad is straightforward, using clear unambiguous logic to make its argument, and with little if any emotion involved. The use of the logical structure shows us we most likely have a true conclusion. An advertisement can also be straightforward and mainly emotional, but it is not as easy to examine emotional arguments. This ad for the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York City shows a blackand-white photograph of an ordinary woman holding a copy of the New York Times as she smiles out at us. The large writing says, “Yesterday She Was Blind.” The copy goes on to tell us that, using laser surgery, the doctors at the medical centre were able to restore her sight. The ad appeals to our logic in some way, as almost every ad will. The copy tells the woman’s story and links the recovery of her sight directly to the medical centre’s 135 years of experience, but the main thrust of the ad is emotional. There are, however, no “laws” of emotional argumentation as there are for logic. The best we can say is that the emotion appealed to in this ad is appropriate to the product advertised, and the ad does not distort facts to increase emotion. When working with highly emotional and misleading ads, however, especially if one is going to suggest they may be unethical, we need a way to analyze them more carefully. Take, for example, this exceedingly emotional ad for women’s running shoes. Ryka’s ad shows running shoes, a woman exercising, another with a tear running down her face, and in the centre, a pink rose, with copy reading, “Sometimes the only way to work it out, is to work it out. When you buy a pair, Ryka will commit seven percent of its profits to the Ryka ROSE Foundation (Regaining One’s Self-Esteem) to fund community-action programmes to end violence against women.” This ad utilizes the issue of violence against women to sell shoes. To critique it and evaluate whether it violates some ethical standard, it will not be sufficient to say, “it does not appear appropriate” or, “the ad distorts facts”. Therefore I turned to the method of analysis used for logic, the syllogism, claiming the overt and logical syllogism is: All firms that donate to a worthy cause are firms that deserve your business. Ryka is a firm that donates to a worthy cause. fairly evaluating an emotional argument if we use the structure of logical argument (the syllogism) to facilitate its analysis. Indeed, Elkyam [19] questioned whether it was fair to “analyze” emotional arguments at all, as he argued, with a silent visual presentation of pictures taken during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the incompetence of the American government’s handling of that natural disaster. USING GSR TO TEST EMOTIONAL REACTION TO QUESTIONABLY ETHICAL ADS Galvanic Skin Response works by measuring the “electrical activity that is produced by the activity of the eccrine (sweat) glands that are widely distributed throughout the skin and are regulated by the autonomic nervous subsystems, the sympathetic and parasympathetic” [20]. GSR is considered by market researchers to be the best measure of psychological events occurring in the brain of the consumer, particularly because it measures things over which the respondent has no control. It reports on the amount of response to stimuli the respondent is experiencing, whether or not s/he is aware of it. Particularly important for use with issues of ethics, the GSR method can “bypass the mind’s ‘cognitive rationalizer’ and circumvent false or inaccurate reports” from consumers [21]. This avoids the problem of consumers saying what they think will make them sound like better citizens when being asked about ethics, or saying what they believe the researcher is looking for. _____________________________ Therefore Ryka is a firm that deserves your business. Beneath this, however, I unearthed a covert emotional argument, still in the form of a syllogism: All cases of pain in the world can be solved by buying a product. Violence against women is a case of pain. _____________________________ Therefore violence against women can be solved by buying a product (preferably ours). With this format, we can begin to analyze the emotional argument: to question the truth of the premises, to explore its soundness and validity, to verify whether we have a true conclusion. But is it fair to analyze an emotional argument in this way? This is the question that has haunted the author and others [16, 17, 18]: whether we are GSR has not been widely used in marketing research, despite high praise by its relatively few users. This has been attributed to the kind of “black box” nature of its analysis, whereby we purport to measure what goes on inside the heads of respondents. This, however, will be true of almost any measure purporting to tell us what is happening inside respondents’ heads. There are more serious faults, and ones that will have to be accounted for in using GSR for the purposes proposed in this paper. These include using general equipment not specifically designed or accurate enough for one’s purpose, using it in physical areas where there are too many distractions for the respondent, use by people not trained in its operation, and not knowing well enough how to calibrate results. All these problems can be overcome by hiring a reputable firm to do the GSR testing instead of just buying a galvanometer and trying to learn to be an expert oneself, as was done in many of the studies in the mid to late 1900s. One also needs to carefully and thoroughly explain to the expert hired the exact, proposed parameters and details of one’s study. The first step would be to pretest the methodology by testing respondents’ reactions to a series of ads, some of which were prejudged with other methods (perhaps just judgment) to be either predominantly logical or predominantly emotional. This would involve, as it typically does with the GSR, attaching sensors to the respondents’ fingertips and showing a series of advertisements. The GSR apparatus records respondents’ emotional reactions to the ads, not only in general, but second-by-second to each part of each ad. This enables a fine level of analysis of where respondents reacted in each ad. We would also have respondents put in writing, after the GSR tests, a statement about their emotional reaction to each of the ads, for comparison with the GSR results. Then I envision a more difficult test. I do not have the space in this preliminary paper to fully explore the precise use of the galvanometer for this part, much less to test and report on results, but I wish to outline some ideas and seek feedback from those attending the workshop. In this exercise a respondent, hooked up to the GSR apparatus, would perform the same kind of formal written syllogistic analysis I have shown here, on two ads, one a predetermined “logical” ad and one a predetermined “emotional” ad. We would test to see if the respondent records a greater emotional response while working with the “emotional” ad. Following up by asking the respondents to put in writing, after the GSR tests, a statement about their emotional reaction to each of the ads, for comparison with the GSR results, we would seek to know whether there were major differences in how the respondents described their emotional reactions to an “emotional” ad and how the GSR described their emotions. There is some concern with GSR that it does not enable the researcher to know whether the respondent’s reaction is positive or negative. For us, however, this does not matter; we are looking for an emotional reaction, which is, psychological theory tells us, indicated by a physiological reaction in the sweat glands in the fingertips. We would expect to see a much higher reaction to ads we have labelled “emotional” than to those we have labelled “logical”. My hope would be that we would find this in the first level of testing. We also would expect to see higher levels of emotion scored on the GSR even while performing a logical analysis of an emotional ad, higher than when working on the logical analysis of a “logical” ad. CONCLUSION GSR remains a viable research technique. The decline of its use in marketing research has been documented [22] and the reasons for the decline in its use in that field have mainly to do with poor research methodology, little of which should affect what is proposed here. I believe testing respondents’ actual emotional reactions to ads they are working with in respect to ethics, may help us better understand how to analyze the emotions contained in an advertisement, and thereby bring us a little closer to understanding the issue of what makes an ad ethical. FUTURE RESEARCH Future research clearly includes performing the research that is only proposed here. Then we would need further research in making the leap from discovering through GSR that respondents do have an emotional response to an ad which perhaps they claimed in writing had not moved them emotionally, to deciding that this fact is linked to an ethical issue. One further area to be investigated, although not in the research agenda of this researcher, is the interesting problem of when an emotionally powerful ad scores high with respondents, either positively or negatively, either as strongly ethical or not ethical, but in-store results show it has no effect, or worse, a negative effect on sales. REFERENCES [1] Andreassi, John L., Psychophysiology, Human Behaviour and Physiological Response, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1980, p. 7. [2] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, pp. 33-53. [3] Laura Lake, Online Marketing Guide, 2009, http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingglossary/g/galva ndef.htm [4] Shimp, Terence A., Advertising, Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications 7th Edition, Cincinnati, Ohio: Thompson South-Western Publishing, 2007, p. 405. [5] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, p. 35. [6] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, p. 35. [7] Gilbert, Michael A., “Multi-Modal Argumentation”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Number 2, June 24, 1994, pp. 159-177. [8] Balthorp, Bill, “Argument as Linguistic Opportunity: A Search for Form and Function”, in Rhodes and Newell, eds., Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation, 1979, SCA/AFA, 1980. [9] O’Keefe, D. J., “The Concepts of Argument and Arguing”, in Cox, J.R. and C.A. Willard, Advances in Argumentation: Theory and Research, Illinois: AFA/SIU Press, 1982. [10] Willard, C.A., A Theory of Argumentation, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. [11] ________, Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1983. [12] Van Emeren, F. and R. Grootendorst, “Rationale for a Pragma-Dialectic Perspective”, Argumentation Number 2, 1989, pp. 271-92. [13] Gilbert, Michael A., “What is Emotional Argument? or Why do Argument Theorists Quarrel With Their Mates?” in Analysis and Evaluation: Proceedings of the Third ISSA Conference on Argumentation, Volume. II, Amsterdam, 1995, pp. 3-12. [14] Ripley, M. Louise, “The Ad as Argument,” in van Eemeren, Frans H., J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard, and Bart Garssen (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation. Amsterdam: International Centre for the Study of Argumentation, 2007, p. 1177. [15] Ripley, M. Louise, “Arguing for the Ethics of an Ad: An Application of (Michael Gilbert’s) Multi-Modal Argumentation Theory”, in Hitchcock, David (ed.) The Uses of Argument: Proceedings of a Conference at McMaster University, May 2005, pp. 393-402. [16] Duran, Claudio, “Propaganda and the Press: El Mercurio”, Classroom presentation in Philosophical and Ethical Issues in the Mass Media, Professors Claudio Duran and Louise Ripley York University, Winter 2006. [17] Gilbert, Michael A., "Let's Talk: Emotion and the Pragma-Dialectic Model", in F. H. van Eemeren and P. Houtlosser, (eds.), Argumentation in Practice, Holland: John Benjamins, 2005, pp. 43-52. [18] Gilbert, Michael A., “Emotion, Argumentation & Informal Logic.” Informal Logic, Volume 24, Number 3, 2004, pp. 245-264. [19] Elkyam, David, Classroom presentation in Philosophical and Ethical Issues in the Mass Media, Professors Claudio Duran and Louise Ripley, York University, Fall 2003. [20] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, p. 37. [21] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, p. 37. [22] LaBarbera, Priscilla A. and Joel D. Tucciarone, “GSR Reconsidered: A Behaviour-Based Approach to Evaluating and Improving the Sales Potency of Advertising”, Journal of Advertising Research, September/October, 1995, p. 50.