Missing information can be more persuasive.

Abstract

A 2 x 2 experiment (low/high self-relevance and complete/incomplete information about an advertised service) was designed to test a set of hypotheses related to inference-making from advertisements providing no information on the uses of the advertised service. Findings show that under high self-relevance conditions, viewers have more positive attitudes toward the advertisements mentioning no use at all of the advertised service, whereas under low self-relevance conditions, viewers have more positive attitudes toward the advertisements mentioning all the possible uses of the advertised service. Similar relations are found for the attitudes toward the service. The absence of specific uses allows the viewers to complement the missing information with their own relevant information.