22 © Science and Education Centre of North America The Effects of Education and Incongruent Images on Product Warnings

Abstract: The research reported in this article investigates how the education level of consumers affects liking and safety feeling toward a product when incongruent images are present with product warnings. The current study used a 2 by 2 experimental methodology to investigate underlying psychological processes of adult consumers who have varying levels of education. The current study finds that relative to high-education consumers, low-education consumers (those who did not complete high school) were more significantly affected by the presence of incongruent images in the product warnings. They displayed higher liking and more safety feeling toward a product when warnings accompanied incongruent images versus warnings with no images. This effect is not found among high-education consumers. That result has alarming implications. Low-education consumers may be unable to critically evaluate product warnings and can be persuaded to misjudge product warnings and product safety when product warnings include incongruent images. The current research extends the previous research on low-education consumers by studying the impact of incongruent images in the product warnings. Specifically, we focus on investigation of subjective attitude formation of warnings (liking and safety feeling) in the presence of incongruent images which was not investigated in the past