Abstract

Previous studies measuring participants’ visual attention to charitable adverts have shown
that negatively valenced images and faces captured more attention. As adverts became more
positively valenced, participants also attended to charitable logos more. Only well-known charities
have been tested thus far. By using fictional charities, this thesis aimed to test whether the same
attentional bias to the negatively valenced faces would persist. No studies have measured visual
attention, and donor intentions in response to emotive appeals in adverts from unknown charities.
This thesis measured donor intentions, eye movements, and galvanic skin response of participants
viewing adverts featuring children with sad, neutral, or happy facial expressions from three
fictional child welfare charities. We expected the logo associated with the sad faces to elicit more
visual attention, donor intentions, and donation amounts than logos associated with neutral, or
happy faces. Results confirmed these hypotheses. Logos associated with the sad faces were fixated
at faster, more frequently, and for a longer duration than logos associated with neutral or happy
faces. Logos associated with sad faces also elicited higher donor intentions, and donation amounts.
These results suggest that unknown charities should create associations with negative valence, as
these types of adverts have shown to capture more attention, and elicit more donations.