Suchergebnisse

Subjects varying in cognitive complexity rated 35 six-trait sets according to how much they would like a person who had the qualities listed; then each subject re-read one set, thought about the person described, and wrote an impression of the person and re-rated the person on an evaluative
scale. Each subject then completed the same procedures for a second trait set as a same-subjects replication. Contrary to Abraham Tesser's explanation of the effects of thought on attitude change, the attitudes of cognitively complex subjects were not more likely to polarize after thought:
no differences between complex and noncomplex subjects were obtained with the original set, and with the replication set noncomplex subjects were more likely to polarize. The results also suggest limitations on the generality and powerfulness of the polarization phenomenon.

Advertisers sometimes use value appeals that are adapted to their specific cultural audience. After a meta-analysis in 2009 showing cultural value adaptation to be effective, new studies have been published and the advertising landscape has rapidly changed. The current meta-analysis involving about 120 comparisons of adapted versus unadapted value appeals on persuasion and ad liking presents three results. First, cultural value adaptation effects in advertising exist (persuasion: mean r = .049; ad liking: mean r = .055). Second, these adaptation effects have diminished over time (correlations between year of publication and persuasion effects: r = −.152; between year of publication and ad liking: r = −.185). Third, the adaptation effects do not allow for dependable advice for practitioners. We discuss these results in the context of globalization and the standardization-adaptation debate.

In research on effects of message variables, it is generally necessary to examine responses to actual messages that represent, embody, or instantiate the values of the variable of interest. Researchers have lately become attentive to problems of confounding in the use of individual concrete messages to represent abstract theoretical contrasts, and replicated treatment comparisons are increasingly common in communication research. How to treat the replications factor in the statistical analysis remains controversial. Whether to treat replication factors as fixed or as random hinges on what is assumed about the relationship between abstract treatment contrasts and their concrete material implementations. We argue that reflection on this relationship justifies a general policy of treating replications as random. Two circumstances in which fixed-effects analyses might seem attractive (the case of matched-message designs and the case of experimental manipulations occurring outside of messages) are considered, but it is concluded that these situations also require random-effects analyses.

Subjects differing in cognitive complexity formed impressions from either (1) three positive and three negative experimenter-selected traits, (2) three traits of each evaluation generated by the subject in a preliminary session, or (3) three experimenter-selected traits of one valence
and three subject-generated traits of the opposite valence. Additionally, subjects reconstructed their impressions from memory after eight weeks. Impressions were dominated in content and evaluation by information tied to subjects' own constructs. The strength with which subjects attributed
the stimulus qualities to the other was greater for self-generated traits. While all subjects organized inconsistency in their impressions at similar levels when receiving self-generated positive information, high and low complexity subjects differed in the organization of their impressions
in the other conditions largely owing to the greater utility of negative information to high-complexity subjects.