The proposed research is part of a long-term research program exploring the implications of the heuristic/systematic processing framework for understanding a broad range of persuasion phenomena. Whereas systematic processing emphasizes detailed scrutinization of persuasive argumentation and the role of recipients' message- and issue-relevant cognitions in determining persuasion and resistance to persuasion, heuristic processing emphasizes the role of simple decision rules in mediating opinion change. Six multi-study projects are proposed, all of which involve laboratory experiments. Project 1 distinguishes between issue- and position-involvement and links these constructs to differing motivational goals in persuasion settings and to unbiased and biased systematic processing, respectively. Project 2 pursues the multi-faceted nature of """"""""involvement"""""""" by proposing two additional constructs, accuracy-involvement and relational-involvement, and tests the validity of this distinction for understanding the processes underlying people's public expressions of opinion. Project 3 is explicitly related to health issues in its focus on how susceptibility to health threats and specific anxieties about health threats affect people's processing of and reactions to health messages. Project 4 seeks to demonstrate that heuristic cues such as source expertise and consensus information often bias the nature of systematic processing and promises to enlighten our understanding of both majority and minority influence. Project 5 seeks to broaden our understanding of heuristics by exploring the idea that prior attitudes often function as heuristics and that systematic processing may moderate the attitude-behavior relation. Finally, Project 6 explores the multiple roles that message comprehension may play in persuasion as well as the conditions under which stylistic variables such as speech rate influence persuasion.
| Chaiken, S; Maheswaran, D (1994) Heuristic processing can bias systematic processing: effects of source credibility, argument ambiguity, and task importance on attitude judgment. J Pers Soc Psychol 66:460-73 |
| Thompson, E P; Chaiken, S; Hazlewood, J D (1993) Need for cognition and desire for control as moderators of extrinsic reward effects: a person x situation approach to the study of intrinsic motivation. J Pers Soc Psychol 64:987-99 |
| Bargh, J A; Chaiken, S; Govender, R et al. (1992) The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect. J Pers Soc Psychol 62:893-912 |
| Maheswaran, D; Chaiken, S (1991) Promoting systematic processing in low-motivation settings: effect of incongruent information on processing and judgment. J Pers Soc Psychol 61:13-25 |
