Richard E. Petty

Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement

Undergraduates expressed their attitudes about a product after being exposed to a magazine ad under conditions of either high or low product involvement. The ad contained either strong or weak arguments for the product and featured either prominent sports celebrities or average citizens as endorsers. The manipulation of argument quality had a greater impact on attitudes under high than low involvement, but the manipulation of product endorser had a greater impact under low than high involvement. These results are consistent with the view that there are two relatively distinct routes to persuasion.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion

On New Year’s Day, 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.S.S.R. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev appeared on television in each others countries. It was the first time that American and Russian leaders had exchanged messages that were simultaneously televised. Reagan’s message, broadcast without warning during the popular Soviet evening news, spoke of world peace and called for the development of new defensive weapons. Gorbachev’s message, which appeared while many Americans were watching coverage of the traditional Tournament of Roses parade, also spoke of peace but decried seeking security with new weaponry. How effective were these messages likely to be? What would be the major determinant of effectiveness—the substance of the messages, or the appearance and demeanor of the speakers? If the messages produced attitude changes, would these changes last and would they lead to changes in behavior?

Personal involvement as a determinant of argument-based persuasion.

It was suggested that there are two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on peripheral cues in the persuasion situation. To test this view, undergraduates expressed their attitudes on an issue after exposure to a counterattitudinal advocacy containing either strong or weak arguments that emanated from a source of either high or low expertise. For some subjects, the communication was high in personal relevance, whereas for others it was low. Interactions of the personal relevance manipulation with the argument quality and expertise manipulations revealed that under high relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the quality of the arguments in the message, whereas under low relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the expertise of the source. This suggests that the personal relevance of an issue is one determinant of the route to persuasion that will be followed.

Attitude strength : antecedents and consequences

Contents: P.E. Converse, Foreword. Preface. J.A. Krosnick, R.E. Petty, Attitude Strength: An Overview. R.P. Abelson, Attitude Extremity. C.M. Judd, M. Brauer, Repetition and Evaluative Extremity. A. Tesser, L. Martin, M. Mendolia, The Impact of Thought on Attitude Extremity and Attitude-Behavior Consistency. R.E. Petty, C.P. Haugtvedt, S.M. Smith, Elaboration as a Determinant of Attitude Strength: Creating Attitudes That Are Persistent, Resistant, and Predictive of Behavior. W.D. Crano, Attitude Strength and Vested Interest. D.S. Boninger, J.A. Krosnick, M.K. Berent, L.R. Fabrigar, The Causes and Consequences of Attitude Importance. C.J. Thomsen, E. Borgida, H. Lavine, The Causes and Consequences of Personal Involvement. S.R. Gross, R. Holtz, N. Miller, Attitude Certainty. R.H. Fazio, Attitudes as Object-Evaluation Associations: Determinants, Consequences, and Correlates of Attitude Accessibility. W. Wood, N. Rhodes, M. Biek, Working Knowledge and Attitude Strength: An Information-Processing Analysis. A.R. Davidson, From Attitudes to Actions to Attitude Change: The Effects of Amount and Accuracy of Information. J. Jaccard, C. Radecki, T. Wilson, P. Dittus, Methods for Identifying Consequential Beliefs: Implications for Understanding Attitude Strength. M.M. Thompson, M.P. Zanna, D.W. Griffin, Lets Not Be S. Chaiken, E.M. Pomerantz, R. Giner-Sorolla, Structural Consistency and Attitude Strength. A.H. Eagly, S. Chaiken, Attitude Strength, Attitude Structure, and Resistance to Change. M.W. Erber, S.D. Hodges, T.D. Wilson, Attitude Strength, Attitude Stability, and the Effects of Analyzing Reasons. D.T. Wegener, J. Downing, J.A. Krosnick, R.E. Petty, Measures and Manipulations of Strength-Related Properties of Attitudes: Current Practice and Future Directions.

The Effects of Stereotype Activation on Behavior: A Review of Possible Mechanisms

Considerable recent research has examined the effects that activated stereotypes have on behavior. Research on both self-stereotype activation and other-stereotype activation has tended to show that people behave in ways consistent with the stereotype (e.g., walking more slowly if the elderly stereotype is activated). Interestingly, however, the dominant account for the behavioral effects of self-stereotype activation involves a hot motivational factor (i.e., stereotype threat), whereas the dominant account for the behavioral effects of other-stereotype activation focuses on a rather cold cognitive explanation (i.e., ideomotor processes). The current review compares and contrasts the behavioral research on self- and other-stereotype activation and concludes that both motivational and cognitive explanations might account for effects in each domain.

Measuring the Affective and Cognitive Properties of Attitudes: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Despite renewed interest in the affective and cognitive properties of attitudes, assessment of these constructs is plagued by a number of problems. Some techniques for overcoming these problems are outlined, and scales for assessing the affective and cognitive properties of attitudes are reported. Two studies examine the reliability and validity of these scales. Study 1 assesses the internal consistency and the discriminant and convergent validity of these scales and indicates that the scales are useful for assessing the affective and cognitive properties of attitudes toward a wide range of objects. In Study 2, the ability of the scales to differentiate attitudes that are based primarily on affective versus cognitive information is examined by experimentally creating affective or cognitive attitudes in subjects. Analyses reveal that the scales can differentiate between people whose attitudes are based primarily on either affective or cognitive information.

The gradual threshold model of ambivalence : Relating the positive and negative bases of attitudes to subjective ambivalence

This research examined the relationship between the measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Studies 2 and 3) positive and negative bases of attitudes and the psychological experience of attitudinal ambivalence. On the basis of these studies, the gradual threshold model of ambivalence (GTM) was advanced. The GTM holds that: (a) ambivalence increases in a negatively accelerating manner as the number of conflicting reactions (whichever of the positive or negative reactions are fewer in number) increases, (b) ambivalence is a negative function of the extent of dominant reactions, and (c) as the number of conflicting reactions increases, the impact of dominant reactions on ambivalence gradually decreases such that at some level of conflicting reactions (i.e, the threshold), the number of dominant reactions no longer has an impact on subjective ambivalence.

Need for Cognition and Advertising: Understanding the Role of Personality Variables in Consumer Behavior

Three studies were conducted to examine the role of need for cognition on attitudes formed as a result of exposure to advertisements. Prior research on need for cognition has used only long messages, counterattitudinal topics, or employed instructions that specifically told participants to evaluate products. Results of our studies reveal that need for cognition also affects the processes of attitude change when no explicit evaluation instructions are provided and when exposures are to relatively short, unfamiliar advertising messages presented in either self-paced or externally controlled formats. Consistent with prior research, attitudes of high need for cognition individuals were based more on an evaluation of product attributes than were the attitudes of low need for cognition persons (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, the attitudes of low need for cognition individuals were based more on simple peripheral cues inherent in the ads than were the attitudes of high need for cognition persons (Study 3). Implications for the study of personality variables in consumer behavior are discussed.

Distraction Can Enhance or Reduce Yielding to Propaganda: Thought Disruption Versus Effort Justification

Two experiments were conducted to test competing accounts of the distractionpersuasion relationship, thought disruption and effort justification, and also to show that the relationship is not limited to counterattitudinal communication. Experiment 1 varied distraction and employed two discrepant messages differing in how easy they were to counterargue. In accord with the thought disruption account, increasing distraction enhanced persuasion for a message that was readily counterarguable, but reduced persuasion for a message that was difficult to counterargue. The effort notion implied no interaction with message counterarguability. Experiment 2 again varied distraction but the two messages took a nondiscrepant position. One message elicited primarily favorable thoughts and the effect of distraction was to reduce the number of favorable thoughts generated; the other, less convincing message elicited primarily counterarguments, and the effect of distraction was to reduce counterarguments. A Message X Distraction interaction indicated that distraction tended to enhance persuasion for the counterarguable message but reduce persuasion for the message that elicited primarily favorable thoughts. The experiments together provided support for a principle having greater generality than the Festinger-Maccoby formulation: Distraction works by inhibiting the dominant cognitive response to persuasive communication and, therefore, it can result in either enhanced or reduced acceptance.

Mood management across affective states : the hedonic contingency hypothesis

Mood management in positive and negative moods is relevant to a variety of social phenomena and has been especially important in the helping literature. Theorists have predicted that sad people strategically engage in mood management activities more than happy people. However, application of learning principles across affective states led the authors to hypothesize that hedonic rewards are more contingent on scrutiny of hedonic consequences in happy than sad states. Thus, happy people should scrutinize the hedonic consequences of potential behaviors more than sad people. A selective exposure paradigm was used to test this hedonic contingency hypothesis. People in whom happy, sad, or neutral states were induced were asked to choose activities in which to engage. In 3 experiments, happy people based their choices on the affective consequences of those activities more than sad or neutral individuals. Implications for interpreting past work are discussed.