Explaining the Special Case of Incongruity in Advertising: Combining Classic Theoretical Approaches

In order to assess the effectiveness of an advertisement employing incongruity, it would be most helpful to determine when and how incongruity is likely to be processed by consumers and the nature of the response it is likely to evoke. By combining the tenets of two classic processing theories, Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (1981, 1986) and Mandler’s Schema Incongruity Theory (1982), this article develops an integrative framework for better understanding viewer responses to incongruity.