| Advertisement recognition | Study 1, Study 2 | Measured as a response to the question “Have you seen this particular advertisement before?” (yes/no) |
| Attitudes toward the advertisements (Holbrook & Batra, 1987) | Cronbach’s α = .959 (Study 1), α = .980 (Study 2), α = .958 (Study 3), and α =.956 (Study 4) | Three items measured on a 7-point bipolar scale: “bad” (1) to “good” (7), “dislike” (1) to “like” (7), and “unpleasant” (1) to “pleasant”(7) |
| Attitudes toward the brand (Holbrook & Batra, 1987) | Cronbach’s α = .957 (Study 4) | Three items measured on a 7-point bipolar scale: “bad” (1) to “good” (7), “dislike” (1) to “like” (7), and “negative opinion” (1) to “positive opinion” (7) |
| Brand familiarity (Åkestam et al., 2021) | Cronbach’s α = .931 (Study 1) and α = .980 (Study 2) | Three items measured on a 7-point bipolar scale as responses to the question “What is your current relation to the brand in the advertisement?”: “don’t know at all” (1) to “know very well” (7), “not familiar with” (1) to “very familiar with” (7), and “have no prior experience with” (1) “to have extensive prior experience with” (7) |
| Model age | r = .899, p < .001 (Study 1); r = .94, p < .001 (Study 2); r = .738, p < .001 (Study 3); and r = .857, p < .001 (Study 4) | Measured as responses to two questions: “How old would you guess that the person in the advertisement is?” (answered on a ratio scale) and “How would you describe the person in the advertisement on the scale below?”(answered with two items on a 7-point bipolar scale): “young” (1) to “old” (7) and “youthful” (1) to “elderly” (7) |
| Model attractiveness (Berg, 2015) | Cronbach’s αolder, = .849 and αyounger = .950 (pretest 2 for Study 3) | Measured using three items on a 7-point bipolar scale: “not good looking” (1) to “good looking” (7), “unattractive” (1) to “attractive” (7), and “ugly”(1) to “beautiful” (7) |
| Model recognition | Study 1 and Study 2 | Measured as responses to two questions: “Do you recognize the person in the advertisement?” (yes/no) and “Do you know the name of the person in the advertisement? Please write down the name of the model as you remember it.” (yes/no) |
| Purchase intentions (Åkestam et al., 2021) | Study 4 | One item measured on a 7-point Likert scale as the response to the statement: “I would like to buy products from the brand in the advertisement”: “disagree” (1) to “agree” (7) |
| Realism of the advertisement | Pretest 2 for Study 3 | Measured on a 7-point Likert scale as the response to the statement “The advertisement is realistic”: “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (7) |
| Similarity | Pretest 1 for Study 3 | Measured on a 7-point bipolar scale as the response to the question “How similar or dissimilar are these two photos? (Please disregard the age of the persons in the photos when answering this question.)”: “dissimilar” (1) to “similar” (7) |
| Social connectedness with the people in the advertisements (adapted from Hutcherson et al., 2008) | Cronbach’s α = .855 (Study 3) and α = .819 (Study 4) | Three items:”I feel like I belong with the people in the advertisement,” “I am similar to the people in the advertisement,” and “I feel positive toward the people in the advertisement”: measured on a 7-point Likert scale: “disagree” (1) to “agree” (7) |
| Thought protocol (Åkestam et al., 2017; Liljedal et al.,2020) | Model (e.g., “the woman is cute”), r = .96, p < .001; model age (e.g., “she’s old”), r = .98, p < .001; and representation of older women in advertising (e.g., “surprising but nice to see an elderly lady in the advertisement”), r = 1.00, p ≤ .001 (Study 2) | Participants were asked to write down as many thoughts as they liked, directly after having viewed the stimuli advertisement. Both authors then coded the resulting thoughts independently, making notes of the number of thoughts pertaining to different categories |