Abstract
Practitioners and researchers interested in designing wise interventions often recommend increasing personal involvement to be successful. Early research demonstrated that personal involvement increases elaboration leading to more persuasion for strong arguments, but to reduced persuasion if the arguments presented are specious. In most prior work, message recipients were plausibly motivated by their desire for knowledge. In the current research, we compare this epistemic goal to another goal in which people aim to process information to be entertained or have fun. Results showed that when people processed to gain knowledge (epistemic goal), they elaborated more in high personal involvement conditions, replicating the classic finding. However, high personal involvement decreased elaboration for people in hedonic conditions, reversing the classic interaction, and introducing a novel finding that is consistent with recent research suggesting that “thinking for pleasure” can be difficult.
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Notes
More participants than 128 were included because more people than we anticipated signed up for the experiment and we decided to include them rather than cancel their participation.
Decomposition by personal involvement did not revealed a two-way interaction between Goal and Argument quality under high involvement, F (1, 153) = 2.34, p = .13, ηρ2 = .01. Under low involvement, the interaction between Goal and Argument quality was also not significant, F (1, 153) = 1.91, ηp = .15, ηρ2 = .03.
More participants than 191 were included because more people than we anticipated signed up for the experiment and we decided to include them rather than cancel their participation. Analyzing separately by topics, the three-ways interactions are significant for each on the measure of attitudes. For the increasing vegetables topic, F(1, 140) = 11.03, p < .001, ηρ2 = .07; for the color green topic increasing vegetables topic, F(1, 129) = 5.28, p = .02, ηρ2 = .04.
Decomposition by personal involvement revealed a two way interaction between Goal and Argument Quality for those in the high-personal involvement condition, F(1, 269) = 11.62, p = .00, ηρ2 = .04. The difference between strong (M = .10, SD = 1.02) and weak (M = -.17, SD = 1.07) arguments was only significant in the epistemic goal condition, F(1,269) = 13.59, p = .00, ηρ2 = .05, but not in the hedonic goal condition, F(1, 269) = 1.26, p = .26, ηρ2 = .00. In the low-personal involvement condition, the two-way interaction between Goal and Argument quality was not significant, F(1, 269) = .62, p = .43, ηρ2 = .00.
Decomposition by personal involvement revealed a two-way interaction between Goal and Argument Quality for those in the high-personal involvement condition [F (1, 422) = 120.98, p = .00, ηρ2 = .03] because argument quality affected attitudes more in the epistemic than in the hedonic condition. However, in the low personal involvement condition, a significant Goal X Argument Quality interaction [F (1, 422) = 38.13, p = .00 ηρ2 = .01] revealed that argument quality mattered more in the hedonic than in the epistemic condition.
In the interests of disclosing our file drawer, we conducted one additional experiment in this line of research. In this study, we used a different population: Journalism students rather than Psychology students. Although we expected to collect a total of about 20 participants per condition, in this study we ended up with just a very small sample by the end of the semester. Specifically, only 56 students participated and were randomly assigned to the cells of a (Goal: Epistemic vs. Hedonic) × 2 (Personal Involvement: High vs. Low) × 2 (Argument Quality: Strong vs. Weak) between-subjects factorial design. The topic was the same as one of the two topics used in Study 2 (vegetables). The 2 (Goal: Epistemic vs. Hedonic) × 2 (Personal Involvement: High vs. Low) × 2 (Argument Quality: Strong vs. Weak) ANOVA revealed that the predicted three-way interaction was not significant, F(1, 48) = .16, p = .69, ηρ2 = .003. Importantly, when we collapsed this data set with the two studies reported in the main text and the study described previously, all the key effects remained significant. Before aggregating the information from the three data sets, we standardized the dependent measures, and included study as a factor. Results of a 2 × 2 × 2 X 3 (Study) ANOVA revealed a significant three-way interaction between goal to process, personal relevance and argument quality condition F(1, 472) = 5.12, p = .02, ηρ2 < .01, and this three-way interaction was not further moderated by Study; F(1, 472) = .71, p = .55, ηρ2 = .004. Furthermore, a follow up 2 (Matching: Matching vs. Mismatching) × 2 (Argument Quality: Strong vs. Weak) X 2 (Match to Involvement: Match to high involvement or Match to low involvement) X 3 (Study, 1, 2, or 3) ANOVA revealed that the predicted two-way interaction between Argument Quality and Matching was significant, F(1, 472) = 5.12, p = .02,, ηρ2 < .01, and this two-way interaction was not further moderated by match to Involvement; F(1, 472) = .06, p = .80,, ηρ2 = .00, or study; F(1, 472) = .71, p = .55,, ηρ2 = .004. A separate analysis also showed that the significant two-way interaction between Argument Quality and Matching was not moderated by Match for Goal (Match to epistemic vs Match to hedonic), F(1, 472) = .09, p = .77, ηρ2 < .001 or Study F(1, 472) = .71, p = .55, , ηρ2 = .004.
As noted throughout, we argue that participants elaborated more under low (vs. high) involvement conditions when they were in a hedonic (vs. epistemic) goal because when people are in a hedonic condition, the goal is often to escape from the self, and thus a low self-relevant message is more likely to match one’s desires than a message high in self-relevance. However, one might also say that under these matching conditions (e.g., hedonic goal with low involvement message), there is a fit between the level of thinking in the person and the situation. That is, it might be argued that matching two inductions of low-thinking could increase thinking because they fit with each other. We do not consider this alternative explanation plausible because when two inductions designed to reduce elaboration have been combined together in prior research, they typically show additive effects. That is, two inductions of low thinking reduce thinking over just one induction rather than increasing thinking because of the matching (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1979; Tormala et al, 2002).
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This work was supported by the Spanish Government [grant numbers PSI2011-26212 and PSI2014-58476-P].
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Ana Cancela declares that she has no conflict of interest. Pablo Briñol declares that he has no conflict of interest. Richard E. Petty declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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Cancela, A., Briñol, P. & Petty, R.E. Hedonic vs. epistemic goals in processing persuasive communications: Revisiting the role of personal involvement. Motiv Emot 45, 280–298 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09873-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09873-7