Central and peripheral routes to persuasion: An individual difference perspective.

Abstract

According to the elaboration likelihood model, both situational and dispositional factors can influence the extent to which attitudes are formed through issue-relevant thinking. The results of Experiment I indicated that individuals high in need for cognition are more likely to think about and elaborate cognitively on issue-relevant information when forming attitudes than are individuals low in need for cognition. Analyses further indicated that individuals low in need for cognition acted as cognitive misers rather than as verbal dolts. In Experiment 2, individual differences in need for cognition were used to test the prediction from the elaboration likelihood model that subjects who tend to engage in extensive issue-relevant thinking when formulating their position on an issue also tend to exhibit stronger attitude-behavior correspondence. Results confirmed this hypothesis: The attitudes of individuals high in need for cognition, which were obtained in a survey completed approximately 8 weeks before the 1984 presidential election, were more predictive of behavioral intentions and reported voting behavior than were the attitudes of individuals low in need for cognition.One of the major sources of variance in attitude research is that attributable to individual differences among subjects. In discussing this feature of experimentation, Underwood and Shaughnessy (1975) noted that certain questions allow individual differences to be an integral part of theoretical thinking, and this capability provides an important means of testing the adequacy of theoretical notions. They also maintained that "no variable has been so consistently ignored as has the individualdifference variable in theory construction" (p. 151). The purpose of the present research was to refine the contemporary conceptualization of need for cognition, to examine whether the effects of need for cognition on message processing and persuasion observed in previous research are attributable simply to intelligence, and to test a self-contained individual difference assumption in the elaboration likelihood model (ELM; , 1986a, 1986b that subjects who tend to engage in extensive (in contrast to meager) issue-relevant thinking when formulating their position on an issue also tend to exhibit stronger attitude-behavior correspondence.The ELM is based on the notion that people are motivated to This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants BNS-8217096 and BNS-8414853. Portions ofExperiment 1 wereconducted by Chuan Feng Kao to partially fulfill the requirements for a master's degree, and portions of Experiment 2 were conducted by Regina Rodriguez to partially fulfill the requirements for a senior honors thesis. We thank

Task-contingent conscientiousness as a unit of personality at work.

“…For example, compared to low scorers, high scores have stronger links between their moods and their thoughts (e.g., Petty, Schumann, Richman, & Strathman, 1993), their thoughts and their attitudes (see Cacioppo et al, 1996), and their attitudes and their behaviors (e.g., Cacioppo, Petty, Kao, & Rodriguez, 1986). They report less uncertainty about the nature of cause and effect relationships in the social world (e.g., Weary & Edwards, 1994) and possess more complex schemata for explaining human behavior (Fletcher, Danilovics, Fernandez, Peterson, & Reeder, 1986).…”

Elaboration likelihood model: A missing intrinsic emotional implication

“…83 Additionally, Cacioppo et al argued that '[t]he fact that the situational factors that have been used to manipulate the extent to which attitudes are based on issue-relevant thinking sometimes account for only a small portion of variance is theoretically due, in part, to systematic individual differences among people in their desire to engage in issue-relevant thinking when they formulate their attitudes'. 84 Further, they argued that one of the systematic individual differences is need for cognition and individuals low in need for cognition are cognitive misers. 85 Without measuring or controlling involvement, these researchers 86 examined the persuasion routers travelled by individuals low in need for cognition (cognitive misers) and high in need for cognition (cognitive elaborators) and reported a moderating effect of need-for-cognition on argument quality's influence on attitude.…”

Ambivalence and Persuasion: The Processing of Messages about Immigrant Groups

“…It could be suggested that ambivalence covaries with specific personality traits that facilitate systematic processing. For example, people who are ambivalent toward a group might generally possess a higher need for cognition, which is an individual difference variable that has been shown to facilitate systematic processing (e.g., Cacioppo, Petty, Kao, & Rodriguez, 1986;Cacioppo, Petty, & Morris, 1983). To test whether this possible relation might explain our findings, we asked our additional sample of 36 participants to complete measures of need for cognition (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984), need for closure (Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993), and tolerance for ambiguity (McLain, 1993).…”