Briana Anderson - Cornell University

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H3: In a high involvement condition, people will rely less on the physical appearance
of endorser when making judgments about organizational credibility than in a low
involvement condition. Thus, higher levels of personal involvement will result in a
smaller difference in means of endorser credibility between attractive and unattractive
endorsers.
Hypothesis 3 deals with the role of cognitive involvement in perceptions of
endorser credibility. H3 was not supported by this test. Tables 26 and 27 present the
findings of the univariate ANOVA model with attractiveness, company type, and
personal involvement as the fixed factors. Table 26 presents the results from the
univariate ANOVA, which shows a main effect for attractiveness (unattractive
received higher endorser credibility ratings) and for personal involvement. Figures 7
and 8 on page 58 highlight the fact that the difference in means was actually greater
for those with high involvement than those with low involvement (the opposite of the
hypothesis). This finding suggests that those with high involvement made stronger
judgments based on attractiveness than those with low involvement. Additionally,
Table 26 illustrates that those respondents with a higher level of cognitive
involvement had higher overall ratings of endorser credibility (see Table 27 for the
means).
An interesting finding in this series of univariate ANOVA models is that for
the models where endorser trustworthiness and expertise were the dependent variable,
company type became a significant main effect variable when the endorsers (both
attractive and unattractive) paired with the cosmetic company got higher ratings of
endorser trustworthiness and expertise than that of the endorsers with the
pharmaceutical company.