The Stability of Attitudes Shaped by Regulatory Depletion and the Roles of Need for Cognition, Attitude Certainty, and Argument Quality

This experiment examined the effects of a counterattitudinal persuasive message on the attitudes of depleted individuals and the stability of these depletion-induced attitudes in response to new attitude-relevant information. 135 undergraduates completed depletion tasks and reported their attitudes following a persuasive message. After the presentation of a bogus computer error, participants were given information about the mentally fatiguing or replenishing effects of the original tasks and rated their attitudes again. The results were broadly supportive of the metacognitive approach to attitude change under depletion (Williams et al., 2010). Depleted participants formed more favorable attitudes in response to strong rather than weak arguments. Weak arguments were associated with higher levels of attitude certainty among higher need for cognition (NC) participants. Cognitive responses did not mediate these effects. Only the participants who were higher in NC, had been exposed to strong arguments, held their post-persuasion attitude with low certainty, and were presented with the mentally depleting information demonstrated attitude change. These findings suggest that even when people have the ability and motivation to engage in effortful thinking following the presentation of a persuasive message, they might form inappropriate inferences about their counterarguing performance due to the unexpected mental fatigue they feel.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Williams, Sally A.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/33509

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/33509