Personality and suspceptibility to the influence of television advertisement - presentation and research results analyssis

Joining the forces of television, specialized knowledge and different techniques used in television commercials creates a powerful tool of social influence. And though we openly deny our vulnerability to the advertising spots, articles from the largest producers change their places from market shelves to our homes and the airtime of commercial blocks becomes longer and longer. However the influence varies between people - every one of us reacts in a different way to certain announcements and different information attracts our attention. In the article, the author undertakes an analysis of the relations between the level of assertiveness (in the Rathus concept), the level of self-esteem (in the Berger concept) and the attitude towards television commercials. The research uses E.M. Berger’s self-acceptance scale, S. Rathus’s assertiveness scale and a scale constructed by the author of the study to analyses the attitude towards television commercials. The latter allows to control the three distinct components of attitude: affective, behavioral and cognitive.The presented theoretical and empirical analysis proves that the influence of advertisement on an individual is extremely complex. It depends on a large number o f highly related factors that create sophisticated structures. The study analyzes only two of them, obtaining surprising results. On this basis one can conclude that the impact of information found in advertising media on an individual is vast and multilevel and constructing an effective commercial requires broad knowledge from its creators, including the one about our personality