Need for Cognition: An Individual Differences Approach to Understanding Warning Effectiveness

Research has shown that trait individual differences in need for cognition influence the evaluation of persuasive messages. Product warning instructions can be considered a form of persuasive message because a goal of warnings is to change attitudes and alter behavior. This research investigated the relationship between need for cognition scores and rating and recall measures of warning quality and effectiveness. Product warning instructions were presented with and without injury outcome statistics, which may act as a heuristic cue in the persuasion process. Results showed that individuals higher in need for cognition recalled more warnings that contained statistics and judged all types of warnings as more important. The potential for individual differences to help explain warning effectiveness is discussed.

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Investment Traits and Intelligence in Adulthood

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000101 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 82-89 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Sophie von Stumm

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Personality Traits ◽

Fluid Intelligence ◽

Need For Cognition ◽

Openness To Experience ◽

Intelligence Tests ◽

Crystallized Intelligence ◽

New Knowledge ◽

The Relationship ◽

Over Time

Intelligence-as-knowledge in adulthood is influenced by individual differences in intelligence-as-process (i.e., fluid intelligence) and in personality traits that determine when, where, and how people invest their intelligence over time. Here, the relationship between two investment traits (i.e., Openness to Experience and Need for Cognition), intelligence-as-process and intelligence-as-knowledge, as assessed by a battery of crystallized intelligence tests and a new knowledge measure, was examined. The results showed that (1) both investment traits were positively associated with intelligence-as-knowledge; (2) this effect was stronger for Openness to Experience than for Need for Cognition; and (3) associations between investment and intelligence-as-knowledge reduced when adjusting for intelligence-as-process but remained mostly significant.

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Reactance Proneness Assessment

Handbook of Research on Electronic Surveys and Measurements ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-792-8.ch043 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 323-329 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

L. Shen ◽

J. Dillard

Keyword(s):

At Risk ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Health Risk ◽

Health Communication ◽

Psychological Reactance ◽

Persuasive Messages ◽

Motivational State ◽

Persuasive Message ◽

Boomerang Effect ◽

Health Threats

The theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Wicklund, 1974) has often been called upon to explain the failure of persuasive attempts, and/or the “boomerang effect” in persuasion (Buller, Borland, & Burgoon, 1998; Burgoon, Alvaro, Grandpre, & Voulodakis, 2002; Grandpre, Alvaro, Burgoon, Miller, & Hall, 2003; Ringold, 2002). The theory contends that any persuasive message may arouse a motivation to reject the advocacy. That motivation is called reactance. Reactance may be considered to be an aversive motivational state that functions to reinstate an individual’s perceptions of autonomy. Although initially investigated as a state phenomenon, it has become evident that individuals are likely to vary in their trait propensity to experience reactance. Individual differences in reactance proneness offer a useful means of segmenting target audiences, especially in the context of health communication, because individuals most at risk for various health threats are also the individuals most likely to experience reactance when exposed to persuasive messages about that health risk (e.g., Bensley & Wu, 1991).

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Sense or sensibility? The neuro-functional basis of the structural matching effect in persuasion

10.31234/osf.io/pyr7s ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Antonio Aquino ◽

Francesca Alparone ◽

Stefano Pagliaro ◽

Geoff Haddock ◽

Gregory R. Maio ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Cingulate Cortex ◽

Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Message Content ◽

Persuasive Messages ◽

Matching Effect ◽

Persuasive Message ◽

Posterior Cingulate ◽

Cognitive Orientation ◽

Structural Matching

The present study investigates the neural pathways underlying individual susceptibility to affective or cognitive information in persuasive communication, also known as the structural matching effect. Expanding on the presumed involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) in persuasion, we hypothesized that the vMPFC contributes to the evaluation of persuasive information depending on its match with the recipient’s affective or cognitive predominance. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, 30 participants evaluated 10 consumable products presented with both affective and cognitive persuasive messages. All participants were characterized on a continuum regarding their personal orientation in terms of individual differences in need for affect (NFA) and need for cognition (NFC). The results showed that the vMPFC, posterior cingulate cortex, and cerebellum are more strongly activated when the persuasive message content, either affective or cognitive, matched the recipient’s individual affective or cognitive orientation. Interestingly, this effect in the vMPFC was found specifically when participants evaluated the products presented by the persuasive messages, whereas the correlation in the posterior cingulate cortex and cerebellum activity was detected when reading the messages. These results confirm the hypothesis that the vMPFC plays a role in subjectively weighting persuasive message content depending on individual differences in affective and cognitive orientation. Such a structural matching effect might involve the vMPFC particularly during explicit expressions of subjective valuations. These novel findings also further develop the conceptualisation of the role of the vMPFC in self-related processing.

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What if two involving stories contradict each other?

Scientific Study of Literature ◽

10.1075/ssol.18013.kom ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 239-260 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Megumi Komori

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Social Issues ◽

Narrative Text ◽

Web Survey ◽

Persuasive Messages ◽

Narrative Transportation ◽

Situational Involvement ◽

The Relationship

Abstract This study investigated the relationship between individual differences in narrative transportation and attitude robustness. A total of 840 respondents participated in a web survey. In the first phase of the survey, respondents indicated their attitudes toward social issues after reading supporting or opposing texts with narrative and persuasive messages. After two weeks, the same participants read another text expressing the opposite perspective on the same issue, and again indicated their attitudes. Attitude robustness (i.e., degree of change in attitude between phases) was significantly predicted by transportability and mediated by transportation-related concepts of situational involvement. Additionally, whereas situational involvement with narrative text was predicted by transportability, situational involvement with persuasive text was consistently predicted by self-involvement with the issues. Implications of the findings for narrative transportation and persuasion research and limitations of the study are discussed.

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The Need to Belong and the Relationship Between Loneliness and Health

Zeitschrift für Gesundheitspsychologie ◽

10.1026/0943-8149/a000129 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 22 (4) ◽

pp. 194-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Freda-Marie Hartung ◽

Britta Renner

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Social Isolation ◽

Social Situation ◽

First Year ◽

Health State ◽

Need To Belong ◽

First Year University ◽

Perceived Social Isolation ◽

The Impact ◽

The Relationship

Humans are social animals; consequently, a lack of social ties affects individuals’ health negatively. However, the desire to belong differs between individuals, raising the question of whether individual differences in the need to belong moderate the impact of perceived social isolation on health. In the present study, 77 first-year university students rated their loneliness and health every 6 weeks for 18 weeks. Individual differences in the need to belong were found to moderate the relationship between loneliness and current health state. Specifically, lonely students with a high need to belong reported more days of illness than those with a low need to belong. In contrast, the strength of the need to belong had no effect on students who did not feel lonely. Thus, people who have a strong need to belong appear to suffer from loneliness and become ill more often, whereas people with a weak need to belong appear to stand loneliness better and are comparatively healthy. The study implies that social isolation does not impact all individuals identically; instead, the fit between the social situation and an individual’s need appears to be crucial for an individual’s functioning.

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Attachment and Field Dependence: Individual Differences in Information Processing

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.9.1.43 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 43-55 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Patrizia Vermigli ◽

Alessandro Toni

Keyword(s):

Information Processing ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Field Dependence ◽

Attachment Styles ◽

Close Relationships ◽

Adult Age ◽

Males And Females ◽

Figure Test ◽

The Relationship ◽

Measure Field

The present research analyzes the relationship between attachment styles at an adult age and field dependence in order to identify possible individual differences in information processing. The “Experience in Close Relationships” test of Brennan et al. was administered to a sample of 380 individuals (160 males, 220 females), while a subsample of 122 subjects was given the Embedded Figure Test to measure field dependence. Confirming the starting hypothesis, the results have shown that individuals with different attachment styles have a different way of perceiving the figure against the background. Ambivalent and avoidant individuals lie at the two extremes of the same dimension while secure individuals occupy the central part. Significant differences also emerged between males and females.

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Individual Differences in Students' Preferences for Lecturers' Personalities

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001.26.4.176 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 26 (4) ◽

pp. 176-184 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Adrian Furnham ◽

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Personality Traits ◽

Big Five ◽

Student Ratings ◽

Descriptive Statistics ◽

Personality Profile ◽

Similarity Effect ◽

Intelligence Scores ◽

The Relationship

Abstract. This study examines the relationship between students' personality and intelligence scores with their preferences for the personality profile of their lecturers. Student ratings (N = 136) of 30 lecturer trait characteristics were coded into an internally reliable Big Five taxonomy ( Costa & McCrae, 1992 ). Descriptive statistics showed that, overall, students tended to prefer conscientious, open, and stable lecturers, though correlations revealed that these preferences were largely a function of students' own personality traits. Thus, open students preferred open lecturers, while agreeable students preferred agreeable lecturers. There was evidence of a similarity effect for both Agreeableness and Openness. In addition, less intelligent students were more likely to prefer agreeable lecturers than their more intelligent counterparts were. A series of regressions showed that individual differences are particularly good predictors of preferences for agreeable lecturers, and modest, albeit significant, predictors of preferences for open and neurotic lecturers. Educational and vocational implications are considered.

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The role of personality in shaping pandemic response: Systemic sociopolitical factors drive country differences

10.31234/osf.io/m9vj2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Meghan Siritzky ◽

David M Condon ◽

Sara J Weston

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Big Five ◽

Public Health Research ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Economic Factors ◽

State Fragility ◽

Systemic Factors ◽

Pandemic Response ◽

The Relationship

The current study utilizes the current COVID-19 pandemic to highlight the importance of accounting for the influence of external political and economic factors in personality public-health research. We investigated the extent to which systemic factors modify the relationship between personality and pandemic response. Results shed doubt on the cross-cultural generalizability of common big-five factor models. Individual differences only predicted government compliance in autocratic countries and in countries with income inequality. Personality was only predictive of mental health outcomes under conditions of state fragility and autocracy. Finally, there was little evidence that the big five traits were associated with preventive behaviors. Our ability to use individual differences to understand policy-relevant outcomes changes based on environmental factors and must be assessed on a trait-by-trait basis, thus supporting the inclusion of systemic political and economic factors in individual differences models.

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