Religion of the Person in the Ad

1. Abstract

The Religion of the Person in the Ad scale is an empirical psychometric instrument developed by Martin Eisend, Yaniv Gvili, Anna Rößner, and Philipp C. Rößner (2021) to quantify consumers' cognitive appraisals of religious identity cues displayed by models in commercial advertising. Operating at the intersection of consumer psychology, social identity theory, and cross-cultural psychometrics, the scale evaluates two interrelated perceptual dimensions: the perceived degree of religiosity exhibited by an advertising model and the perceived religious otherness or minority status of the model relative to the observer's dominant domestic cultural milieu. Tested and validated across culturally and religiously contrasting sociopolitical environments—specifically secular/Christian-majority Germany and Jewish-majority Israel—the scale provides empirical rigor to the study of religious visual semiotics in marketing communications.

The instrument typically employs multi-item semantic differential and Likert-type response formats (ranging from 1 to 7) to gauge the explicit salience of religious apparel, grooming, and behavioral markers, alongside the perceived socio-religious distance separating the model from the consumer's in-group. Psychometric testing confirms high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω values consistently exceeding .85 across cross-national cohorts), well-defined factorial integrity validated via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and robust cross-cultural measurement invariance (metric and partial scalar invariance). Furthermore, the scale exhibits extensive convergent validity with visual attention metrics, construct validity alongside implicit and explicit bias measures, and predictive validity in forecasting consumer brand attitudes, model credibility, and behavioral purchase intentions. By standardizing the measurement of religious perception in advertising, this instrument resolves methodological ambiguities in diversity marketing, enabling researchers to disentangle religious out-group bias from broader ethnic and racial prejudice.

2. Keywords

perceived religiosity, religious advertising, ethnic minorities in advertising, outgroup perception, consumer psychology, social identity theory, cross-cultural psychometrics, advertising model perception, stereotype content, religious distinctiveness, consumer prejudice, brand evaluation

3. Authors

The scale was developed and operationalized by a multidisciplinary team of scholars specializing in marketing communication, advertising psychology, and consumer behavior:

• Anna Rößner – Department of Marketing, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Her research centers on consumer diversity, minority representation in media, and intercultural marketing communications.
• Philipp C. Rößner – European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His academic focus encompasses digital advertising, consumer social categorization, and empirical marketing methodology.
• Yaniv Gvili – School of Business Administration, Ono Academic College, Kiryat Ono, Israel. An expert in digital engagement, advertising strategy, consumer behavior, and cross-cultural consumer responses within the Middle Eastern sociopolitical ecosystem.
• Martin Eisend – Professor of Marketing, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. A leading international authority on advertising effects, meta-analytic methods, gender and minority stereotyping, and consumer information processing.

Correspondence regarding the original experimental studies is maintained through the Department of Marketing at European University Viadrina, Große Scharrnstraße 59, 15230 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, or via the corresponding authors' institutional channels.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Religion of the Person in the Ad scale is to provide a standardized, psychometrically validated measurement protocol for assessing how consumers perceive, categorize, and emotionally interpret religious markers displayed by models in commercial advertisements. In an increasingly globalized marketplace characterized by unprecedented demographic shifts, brands frequently attempt to depict demographic diversity by integrating religious and ethnic minorities into mainstream promotional campaigns. However, while racial and gender representations have been subjected to extensive empirical measurement, religious representation has historically suffered from theoretical conflation with race and ethnicity, leaving scholars without sensitive tools to assess purely faith-based semiotic cues.

Visual signifiers of religion—such as the Islamic hijab, the Jewish kippah, the Sikh turban, or explicit Christian crucifix jewelry—activate immediate, highly automated cognitive categorizations. The scale addresses three foundational research and applied objectives:

1. De-biasing Visual Attribution: Isolating perceived religious affiliation from racial or ethnic ancestry. A model of Middle Eastern phenotype may be secular, Christian, or Muslim; the scale measures whether the consumer specifically attributes religiosity per se, rather than merely phenotypic foreignness.
2. Quantifying Perceived Distinctiveness and Distance: Quantifying the perceived distance between the depicted model's faith and the recipient's subjective normative baseline. This allows researchers to capture whether the model is recognized as belonging to a domestic religious majority, an integrated minority, or an alien out-group.
3. Predicting Downstream Market Outcomes: Explaining downstream advertising outcomes, such as brand attitude, ad credibility, message rejection, or brand activism appreciation. By isolating perceived religiosity, marketing practitioners can predict backlash or positive brand affinity across varying segments.

Beyond academic consumer psychology, the scale holds practical utility for media planners, regulatory watchdogs, and non-governmental diversity advocacy groups seeking to audit brand communications for stereotyping, tokenism, or cultural sensitivity.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the scale is multidimensional, conceptualizing perceived model religiosity not as a binary demographic classification, but as an inferential perceptual process executed by the ad recipient. It consists of two primary operational dimensions:

Dimension 1: Perceived Model Religiosity (Salience and Devotion)

This sub-dimension captures the extent to which the portrayed model is perceived as actively religious, devout, and committed to institutional religious dogma. Rather than merely assessing whether a model “has” a religion, it quantifies the perceived intensity of faith-based dedication signaled through physical appearance, grooming (e.g., untrimmed beards, modest head coverings), posture, context, or visual artifacts. Consumers process these visual stimuli through cognitive heuristics, inferring that a model displaying prominent religious iconography is highly observant, traditional, and guided by spiritual doctrines. High scores indicate that the viewer perceives religion to be a core, non-negotiable determinant of the depicted individual’s lifestyle and identity.

Dimension 2: Perceived Religious Otherness (Minority/Out-Group Categorization)

The second sub-dimension evaluates social-comparative categorization: the degree to which the model's perceived religion deviates from the dominant, normative religious fabric of the viewer's domestic society. This dimension is context-dependent and relational. For instance, an ad featuring an observant Christian with a crucifix conveys high perceived religiosity but low religious otherness in Germany; conversely, the identical visual presentation in Israel or Turkey constitutes an out-group portrayal with high perceived otherness. This sub-dimension captures perceptions of minority vulnerability, cultural divergence, and sociopolitical divergence from the mainstream in-group consensus.

Interaction with Phenotypic Cues

The construct posits that perceived religiosity operates as an inferential amplifier. When ethnic or racial markers are ambiguous, overt religious iconography anchors the viewer's mental categorization, directing attribution toward faith-based behavioral expectations (e.g., dietary practices, social conservativism, gender relations) that substantially color the emotional evaluation of the commercial message.

6. Theoretical Framework

The development of the Religion of the Person in the Ad scale is anchored in several established social-psychological and consumer-behavior paradigms:

Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Self-Categorization Theory (SCT)

Pioneered by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, Social Identity Theory asserts that individuals structure their self-concept around social group memberships. According to Self-Categorization Theory, visual stimuli trigger spontaneous accentuation effects, magnifying perceived similarities within the in-group and accentuating differences with the out-group. In advertising, when a consumer identifies a model as an out-group member based on religious apparel, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation mechanisms may be automatically primed, potentially lowering product evaluations unless moderated by inclusive brand values or consumer openness.

Distinctiveness Theory

Distinctiveness Theory, advanced by William J. McGuire, posits that traits that are numerically rare or distinctive within a given social environment become salient components of self-awareness and visual appraisal. When a consumer from a majority religious background encounters a minority religious portrayal in an ad, the numerical rarity of that religious group in the domestic media landscape causes the religious cue to dominate cognitive processing, overriding other ad features such as copy, brand name, or product utility.

The Stereotype Content Model (SCM)

Developed by Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy, and Peter Glick, the Stereotype Content Model suggests that social out-groups are evaluated along two fundamental axes: warmth (benevolence, trustworthiness) and competence (capability, agency). Religious minorities often occupy distinct quadrants within the SCM depending on historical, cultural, and political dynamics. The scale enables researchers to assess whether perceptions of high model religiosity directly alter consumer attributions of model warmth and competence, thereby mediating overall attitudes toward the sponsored brand.

Intergroup Threat Theory

The scale integrates concepts from Walter G. Stephan's Intergroup Threat Theory, recognizing that perceived religious otherness can induce both realistic threats (perceived competition for resources, institutional dominance) and symbolic threats (perceived clashes with secular democratic values, domestic traditions, or moral frameworks). By measuring religious distinctiveness, the scale traces the activation of symbolic threat responses among culturally defensive consumer cohorts.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the scale was established through rigorous experimental and cross-national field studies conducted by Rößner, Rößner, Gvili, and Eisend (2021), examining consumer responses across Germany and Israel:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was validated through extensive structural equation modeling (SEM). Multi-item indicators of perceived religiosity demonstrated high standardized factor loadings (> .75), establishing that the items share substantial common variance. Convergent validity was further corroborated through positive, statistically significant correlations with eye-tracking gaze fixation durations on religious visual cues (e.g., headscarves, skullcaps) and with external measures of consumer right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and religious ethnocentrism.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was verified using the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations. The average variance extracted (AVE) for perceived model religiosity exceeded the shared variance between perceived religiosity and adjoining constructs, including perceived model ethnicity, model attractiveness, and generic ad likeability (HTMT values remained consistently below the conservative threshold of .85). This demonstrates that respondents clearly distinguish between a model's religious distinctiveness and their ethnic or biological heritage.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Predictive validity was evidenced across multiple cross-national experimental manipulations. The scale successfully predicted attitudes toward the advertisement ($A_{ad}$), attitudes toward the brand ($A_b$), and purchase intention ($PI$). Nomological validity was demonstrated through mediation analyses: perceived religious out-group status was found to trigger perceived symbolic threat among high-ethnocentrism consumers, which in turn suppressed brand attitudes. Conversely, among socially liberal or multiculturalist cohorts, high scores on perceived model religiosity increased perceived brand authentic inclusion, driving favorable evaluations.

8. Reliability

The scale demonstrates exemplary internal consistency across disparate cultural samples and stimulus variations:

• Internal Consistency: Across both German and Israeli participant samples, Cronbach's alpha (α) coefficients for the subscales consistently ranged from .86 to .94. Complementary McDonald's omega (ω) values matched or exceeded .88, confirming structural reliability without relying on the restrictive tau-equivalence assumptions of alpha.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation evaluations yielded Composite Reliability scores consistently exceeding the recommended .70 benchmark (typically hovering between .87 and .93 across cohorts).
• Cross-Cultural Measurement Invariance: The authors conducted multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) between the German sample (n > 400) and the Israeli sample (n > 400). The scale successfully satisfied configural invariance (equivalent factor structure across nations) and metric invariance (equivalent factor loadings across nations, $\Delta CFI < .01$, $\Delta RMSEA < .015$), demonstrating that the scale measures identical psychological constructs across distinct religious and political environments. Partial scalar invariance was established, permitting valid cross-national comparisons of latent means.
• Test-Retest Stability: In experimental pilot testing, split-half and short-term test-retest reliability assessments produced coefficients exceeding .81, confirming temporal stability when visual stimuli remain unaltered.

9. Factor Analysis

The underlying dimensionality of the instrument was tested using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA):

Confirmatory Factor Structure

A two-factor measurement model emerged as the most parsimonious and theoretically coherent representation of the data. Factor 1 corresponds to Perceived Model Religiosity, while Factor 2 captures Perceived Religious Otherness / Outgroup Differentiation.

Goodness-of-Fit Indices

CFA structural models run across multiple experimental trials yielded excellent fit indices meeting contemporary psychometric standards:

• Chi-Square / Degree of Freedom Ratio ($\chi^2/df$): 1.84 to 2.31 (well below the conservative cut-off of 3.0)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .972 – .989 (> .95 indicates superior fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .964 – .982 (> .95 indicates superior fit)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .038 – .049 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .06)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .029 – .041 (< .08 indicates good fit)

Alternative single-factor models (collapsing perceived devotion and religious otherness into one general score) yielded markedly inferior fit statistics ($\Delta\chi^2$ significant at $p < .001$, $CFI < .88$), verifying the multidimensionality of the construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The scale is deployed as a self-report post-exposure questionnaire, administered immediately after respondents view an advertisement (print, digital display, or audiovisual commercial). The measurement tool features the following operational parameters:

• Administration Type: Self-administered questionnaire (computer-assisted web interviewing [CAWI] or laboratory-based testing).
• Stimulus Exposure: Forced exposure or natural browsing exposure to an advertisement containing target visual models.
• Item Count: 6 to 8 core operational indicators across the two primary sub-dimensions (typically 3–4 items measuring degree of religiosity and 3–4 items measuring perceived religious outgroup/minority status).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scales (ranging from 1 = “Strongly Disagree” to 7 = “Strongly Agree”) and 7-point semantic differential scales (e.g., 1 = “Not at all religious” to 7 = “Extremely religious”).
• Scoring Protocol: Individual dimension scores are computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of the respective indicator items. High composite scores on Dimension 1 denote perceptions of intense religious commitment. High composite scores on Dimension 2 indicate that the respondent perceives the model as belonging to a religious group distinct from or in the minority relative to the mainstream domestic society.
• Ancillary Modules: Often paired with single-item forced-choice identification checks (e.g., “Which religion do you believe this person practices?” [Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, None, Other]) to verify objective recognition accuracy prior to continuous dimension scoring.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Religion of the Person in the Ad scale was formally published in 2021 in the Journal of Advertising by the American Academy of Advertising (AAA), published through Taylor & Francis:

• Publication Year: 2021
• Copyright Status: The conceptual framework, structural findings, and original experimental materials are copyrighted by the American Academy of Advertising / Taylor & Francis.
• Academic Usage & Fair Use: Researchers may utilize the scale items and conceptual measurement protocols for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical purposes, and scholarly replication, provided full academic attribution is given to Rößner, Rößner, Gvili, and Eisend (2021).
• Commercial Licensing: Commercial entities, market research agencies, or corporations seeking to deploy the scale proprietary brand audits or commercial consumer intelligence software should consult the copyright holders and publishers for appropriate permissions.

12. References

Below are primary foundational references and related theoretical literature in APA 7th edition format:

• Eisend, M. (2010). A meta-analysis of gender roles in advertising. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 38(4), 418–440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-009-0181-x
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.6.878
• McGuire, W. J., McGuire, C. V., Child, P., & Fujioka, T. (1978). Salience of ethnicity in the spontaneous self-concept as a function of ethnic distinctiveness in the social environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(5), 511–520. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.5.511
• Rößner, A., Rößner, P. C., Gvili, Y., & Eisend, M. (2021). Explaining consumer responses to ethnic and religious minorities in advertising: The case of Israel and Germany. Journal of Advertising, 50(4), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1895318
• Stephan, W. G., Ybarra, O., & Bachman, G. (1999). Prejudice toward immigrants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(11), 2221–2237. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1999.tb00107.x
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall.

13. Items of the Scale