Defensive Confidence and Certainty in Unchanged Attitudes: The Role of Affect-Cognition Matching.

Despite much prior research on matching appeals to the affective-cognitive orientation of attitudes, little attention has focused on the consequences of affect-cognition (mis)matching when individuals resist persuasion. We propose that unlike a matched attack, an attack that is mismatched to the affective-cognitive orientation of attitudes would result in low defensive confidence individuals holding onto their unchanged attitudes with less certainty than high defensive confidence individuals. As hypothesized, low defensive confidence participants were less certain after an affective than a cognitive attack for a cognitive issue (Study 1), and the opposite was true for an affective issue (Study 2). Both patterns occurred again when the affective-cognitive orientation of attitudes was manipulated (Study 3) or measured as an individual difference (Study 4). Moreover, perceived knowledge mediated the effects on attitude certainty (Study 4). We end by discussing implications for our understanding of affect-cognition matching and attitude certainty.

When Objective Ambivalence Predicts Subjective Ambivalence: An Affect-Cognition Matching Perspective.

Understanding when people are likely to feel ambivalent is important, as ambivalence is associated with key attitude outcomes, such as attitude-behavior consistency. Interestingly, the presence of conflicting positive and negative reactions (objective ambivalence) is weakly related to feeling conflicted (subjective ambivalence). We tested a novel situation that can influence the correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence: whether a message and a recipient's topic match in affective versus cognitive orientation. When a person encounters a message with an affective or cognitive match to the topic, conflicting reactions may be more accessible, increasing feelings of ambivalence. Across five studies, greater objective-subjective ambivalence correspondence occurred with an affective-cognitive match between message and topic orientation. Studies 4 and 5 also demonstrated that this primarily occurred when the message was counterattitudinal. This work contributes to the literature explaining the gap between measures of objective and subjective ambivalence as well as how messages can influence attitude strength properties.

Affective and cognitive meta-bases of attitudes: Unique effects on information interest and persuasion.

The authors investigated the predictive utility of people's subjective assessments of whether their evaluations are affect- or cognition driven (i.e., meta-cognitive bases) as separate from whether people's attitudes are actually affect- or cognition based (i.e., structural bases). Study 1 demonstrated that meta-bases uniquely predict interest in affective versus cognitive information above and beyond structural bases and other related variables (i.e., need for cognition and need for affect). In Study 2, meta-bases were shown to account for unique variance in attitude change as a function of appeal type. Finally, Study 3 showed that as people became more deliberative in their judgments, meta-bases increased in predictive utility, and structural bases decreased in predictive utility. These findings support the existence of meta-bases of attitudes and demonstrate that meta-bases are distinguishable from structural bases in their predictive utility.

Polarization of Attitudes as a Function of Mortality Salience: A Meta-Cognitive Analysis / Polarización de las Actitudes Como Resultado de Hacer Saliente la Mortalidad: un Análisis Meta-Cognitivo

Background: The present study analyzes how attitudes can polarize afterreminders of death in the context of persuasion, and proposes that a meta-cognitive process (i.e., self-validation) can serve as a compensatory copingmechanism to deal with mortality salience. Method: Participants were firstasked to read either a strong or a weak resume of a job applicant. Next,they listed their initial thoughts about that applicant. Then, they were askedto think about of their own death (i.e., mortality salience condition) versusbeing asked to think about of being cold (i.e., control condition). Finally,participants reported the confidence in their thoughts, as well as theirattitudes towards the applicant. Results: Participants who were assigned tothe mortality salience (vs. control) condition showed greater impact of theirpreviously generated thoughts on their subsequent attitudes. Additionally,as hypothesized, this effect of attitude polarization was mediated by changesin thought confidence. Conclusions: Attitudes unrelated to mortality canbe polarized by reminders of death and this effect can operate through ameta-cognitive process of thought validation. Implications for persuasion,self-validation, and beyond are discussed.

Antecedentes: la presenteinvestigación analiza cómo las actitudes se polarizan como resultado dehacer saliente la mortalidad en el contexto de la persuasión y propone queun proceso meta-cognitivo (i.e., la auto-validación) puede servir comoun mecanismo compensatorio de afrontamiento ante la idea de la muerte.Método: los participantes fueron asignados aleatoriamente a leer uncurrículum que incluía información muy convincente o información pococonvincente sobre un candidato a un puesto de trabajo. A continuación, escribieron los pensamientos que tuvieron sobre el candidato. Después, realizaron una tarea que implicó pensar en la idea de su propia muerte (i.e.,condición de mortalidad) o pensar en la idea de tener frío (i.e., condiciónde control). Finalmente, los participantes informaron de la confianza que tuvieron en sus pensamientos, así como de las actitudes que se formaron hacia el candidato. Resultados: los participantes de la condición demortalidad (vs. control) mostraron un mayor impacto de sus pensamientosiniciales sobre sus actitudes. Además, este efecto de polarización fuemediado por la confianza en los pensamientos. Conclusiones: las actitudesno relacionadas con la mortalidad pueden polarizarse al hacer salientela mortalidad y este efecto puede ocurrir a través de un proceso meta-cognitivo de validación del pensamiento.

Effects of mortality salience on evaluation of ingroup and outgroup sources: the impact of pro- versus counterattitudinal positions.

Past Terror Management Theory (TMT) research has demonstrated that mortality salience leads to favoritism toward ingroup members and derogation of outgroup members and to polarized attitudes toward the source of pro and counterattitudinal statements. In such research, the individual's group membership and the individual's worldview position were examined separately. Thus, when the individual's group membership was manipulated, one could normally assume that an outgroup member is counterattitudinal and an ingroup member is proattitudinal. It is unclear, therefore, whether ingroup members elicited favoritism from mortality salient participants because of their group membership or because of their presumably proattitudinal position, or both. The authors present two studies in which the individual's group membership and attitudinal position are jointly manipulated. Results showed that among mortality salient participants, the outgroup member received favorable or unfavorable evaluations depending on his position, whereas the ingroup member received moderately positive evaluations regardless of the position taken.

Affective-cognitive meta-bases versus structural bases of attitudes predict processing interest versus efficiency.

We proposed that (a) processing interest for affective over cognitive information is captured by meta-bases (i.e., the extent to which people subjectively perceive themselves to rely on affect or cognition in their attitudes) and (b) processing efficiency for affective over cognitive information is captured by structural bases (i.e., the extent to which attitudes are more evaluatively congruent with affect or cognition). Because processing speed can disentangle interest from efficiency by being manifest as longer or shorter reading times, we hypothesized and found that more affective meta-bases predicted longer affective than cognitive reading time when processing efficiency was held constant (Study 1). In contrast, more affective structural bases predicted shorter affective than cognitive reading time when participants were constrained in their ability to allocate resources deliberatively (Study 2). When deliberation was neither encouraged nor constrained, effects for meta-bases and structural bases emerged (Study 3). Implications for affective-cognitive processing and other attitudes-relevant constructs are discussed.