Richard Reardon

Forewarning of content and involvement: Consequences for persuasion and resistance to persuasion

Two experiments were conducted to advance our understanding of the effects of forewarning on persuasion. In Experiment 1, personal involvement, warning of message content, and distraction during the forewarning-message interval were manipulated. The results indicated that if warned subjects were personally involved with the attitude issue, they became resistant to the persuasive appeal when they were not cognitively distracted after warning. In contrast, when subjects were not personally involved, they were susceptible to the appeal regardless of levels of warning and distraction. In Experiment 2 manipulation of message strength was added to the three factors of Experiment 1. The results revealed that subjects in high involvement conditions were better able to differentiate the strength of the message (i.e., rate the strong message to be more persuasive than the weak one) than those in low involvement conditions; however, this was true only when the subjects were unwarned, or were warned but distracted. When warning was not followed by distraction, the subjects in high involvement conditions showed resistance to the strong message as well as the weak one. In low involvement conditions subjects were more persuaded in general, but when the warned were not distracted, they seemed to agree more with the strong message than with the weak one. Measurements of postmessage thoughts in both experiments indicated

Multiple sources in advertising appeals: When product endorsers are paid by the advertising sponsor

Previous research has shown that respondents who are exposed to multiple sources featured in an advertising appeal engage in more diligent processing of the message arguments than those who are exposed to a single message source presenting the same basic appeal. Other research has demonstrated that the persuasive advantage of an appeal can be significantly diminished when respondents perceive that the message source is motivated by the compensation received to endorse a product. Using a 2 (Single vs. Multiple Sources)×2 (Paid vs. Unpaid Source) between-subjects factorial design, subjects were shown a print advertisement for a new multivitamin food supplement. Results showed that subjects exposed to unpaid multiple sources generated significantly more positive thoughts and attitudes than those exposed to a similar number of sources who were paid to endorse the product. In contrast, subjects in the single-source conditions showed no significant differences in the number of thoughts and the strength of attitudes in response to paid versus unpaid message sources. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

Self-Nonself-Segregation and Reality Monitoring

Differentiated, field independent individuals are presumably better able to separate the self from the nonself than less differentiated, field dependent individuals (Witkin, Goodenough, & Oilman, 1979). This should have important implications for reality monitoring (Johnson & Raye, 1981): the process of determining whether a memory originated in thought processes (internal) or in perception (external). In Experiment 1, field dependent and independent subjects were asked to discriminate between internal and external sources of memories. Field independent subjects were more accurate at identifying the origin of their memories (they made fewer reality monitoring confusions) than were field dependent subjects. When subjects were asked to discriminate between two external sources of memories (Experiment 2) or between two internal sources of memories (Experiment 3), field independent subjects did not show the source discrimination advantage. Recognition memory also varied across experiments with field independent subjects showing an advantage in some (Experiments 1 & 2) but not all (Experiment 3) cases. The results are discussed in terms of an overreliance by field dependent subjects on the sensory, semantic, and contextual detail characteristic of externally derived memories; and, a lesser awareness by these subjects of their own cognitive operations.

Cognitive Differentiation, Automaticity, and Interruptions of Automatized Behaviors

The construct of field dependence-independence was explored with respect to individual efficacy in forming automatized sequences. Thirty-six female subjects developed and used such sequences. They experienced either severe, mild, or no interruption of the sequences at various points during 60 trials (such that each trial was a repetition of the sequence). Attention deployment to task-relevant and task-relevant material during these interruptions was assessed using recognition confidence measures. Results indicated that the distinction between task-relevant and task-relevant items was important to both field-dependent and field-independent subjects: Field-dependent subjects incorporated more task-relevant material as an attentional focus and monitored both kinds of material more closely when the sequence was not interrupted. The opposite was true for field independent subjects, who were also faster in forming the sequence.

Memory processes and hypochondriacal tendencies

Students with high and low Scale 1 (hypochondriasis scale) responses on the MMPI reported health-related and nonhealth-related events about themselves or about a close friend and then listened to tapes of others doing the same. Memory after 1 week was identical for the two groups, but identification of the origin of a memory varied with Scale 1 responses. Low Scale 1 subjects made fewer confusions than high Scale 1 subjects when distinguishing between memories about their health and the health of a friend or of a stranger. However, high Scale 1 subjects were at least as able to determine the origin of a memory as were normal subjects when the discrimination did not involve a memory about themselves. Interestingly, it does not appear that high Scale 1 individuals are particularly poor at monitoring the origin of health-related memories, but rather that normals are particularly good monitors in this domain.

Field-dependence/independence and active learning of verbal and geometric material.

Field-independent individuals generally perform better on learning and memory tasks than field-dependent persons. One explanation for this superiority is that field-independent subjects take a more active approach to learning, while field-dependent subjects take a more passive, spectator approach. In the present study, field-dependent and independent subjects were asked to sort geometric and verbal material into pigeon holes according to category exemplars, forcing both groups to take an active role in learning. Subsequently, they were asked to recall the locations of the categories. Both groups excelled at the sorting task; however, field-dependent subjects were poorer at it. On the recall task, there was a continued superiority in performance by field-independent subjects. The results suggest that memory differences between the two groups cannot be reduced to active versus passive learning styles. To the contrary, active learning may interfere with the memory of field-dependent persons by increasing demands for processing.

The greater memorability of self‐generated versus externally presented product information

Previous research based on the “generation effect” (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) seems to suggest that when subjects are allowed to do more active thinking on their own in order to generate a response to an experimental stimulus (self-generated information), memory performance is often better than when all the answers or solutions to the stimulus question are presented to them (externally presented information). In the present study, it was demonstrated that potent generation effects can occur in the context of a single advertising appeal. The results also confirm that the existence of an elaborate semantic network (i.e., prior knowledge) for a given product category can be an important factor in facilitating the generation effect. Implications for memory theories and directions for future research are discussed.

Psychological differentiation and the evaluation of juridic information: cognitive and affective consequences

Abstract The cognitive and evaluative involvements of field dependence-independence in the processing of available information were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, ninety-six female undergraduates were assigned to field-dependent and field-independent conditions (via a median split on Embedded Figures Test scores). Half were given information about the trial of a man accused of attempted manslaughter that was suggestive of guilt; the other half received information suggestive of innocence. They were asked to indicate their confidence in the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and to recall arguments from the information they received. Field-dependent subjects were significantly more extreme in their confidence judgments, particularly in the exonerating conditions. They also showed nonsignificantly poorer recall. In Experiment 2, forty-eight subjects from Experiment 1 were given arguments biased in the opposite direction of their original sets. Field-dependent subjects were significantly more likely to shift their confidence judgments and report discomfort when the new information suggested innocence, and to underrecall new information when it suggested guilt. Field-dependent subjects again showed poorer recall. The results of both experiments were discussed in terms of their support for a field-dependence value bias and encoding deficiency.

Comprehending ambiguity in the sentence-verification paradigm: Basic process or problem solving?

A linguistic ambiguity experiment using a sentence-verification procedure was performed to determine whether and how subject awareness of ambiguity affects response latency and error. Results showed a decline first in errors and then in latencies for the one sentence pair type most likely to fool subjects (the “ambiguous-unexpected” type), thus supporting the hypothesis that subjects who are aware of ambiguity attempt to jointly minimize latency and error (Pachella, 1974). The findings suggest that research in this area, instead of revealing “basic” information-processing mechanisms, may instead reflect conscious subject strategies adapted to an idiosyncratic context.