Conservatism and advertising: The effects of conservative attitudes on decoding advertisements and attitudes towards advertising

There are two main approaches regarding conservatism, which has been a commonly discussed issue in today's Turkey. While the first one considers conservatism as a social ideology, the other deals with it as a personal preference and attitude. Just like other attitudes, conservative attitudes also shape individual's behaviors. This study deals with conservatism as an attitude and aims to explore whether conservative attitudes determine how individuals decode advertisements and develop attitudes towards advertising. To achieve this purpose, the study was carried out in two phases by adopting a mixed method. In the first phase, advertisement decoding patterns of the participants were examined according to their levels of conservatism and 30 participants were interviewed to obtain the data. In the second phase, 250 participants were administered a questionnaire to examine the relationships between the levels of conservatism, general attitudes towards advertisement and advertising and attitudes towards a particular advertisement presented to the participants. The results of the study revealed that the participants who watched the same advertisement showed different decoding patterns according to their levels of conservatism, and as conservatism level increases, the attitudes towards advertisement and advertising tended to be more positive. Key words: Conservative attitudes, conservatism, perception theory, advertisements,attitudes towards advertising