Unscrambling words increases brand name recognition and preference

Abstract

Unscrambling an anagram prior to making a recognition judgement about that target word or an unrelated word increases one's claims of having seen the target word before (the revelation effect). We examined whether a revelation effect would occur with brand name recognition and preference. When participants had to solve an anagram prior to seeing a target brand, they were more likely to claim to have seen the brand before (Experiment 1), to have known the brand in high school (Experiment 2), and to give higher preference ratings for the brand (Experiments 1 and 2). These results demonstrate that the revelation effect can be applied to brand names and preference judgements. We discuss our findings in terms of discrepancy-attribution, whereby surprising fluency is misattributed to both past experience and preference. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.