A Strong Argumentative Orientation Makes the Cognitive Closure Easier: The Case for a Persuasive Health Message

The rationale of this study is that scalar adverbs are likely to act as a convenient means to achieve cognitive closure because they stress the argumentative orientation of the message. Based on this assumption, an experiment shows that the introduction of scalar adverbs in the message decreases the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStudia psychologica Vol. 62; no. 1; pp. 5 - 22
Main Authors Coppola, Vincent, Girandola, Fabien, Camus, Odile
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bratislava Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences 01.01.2020
Slovak Academy of Sciences, Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences
Subjects
Argumentative orientation, Message processing, Need for closure, Persuasion, Health communication
Consumers
Decision making
Heuristic
Information processing
Medical communication
Quality
France
United Kingdom
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Summary:The rationale of this study is that scalar adverbs are likely to act as a convenient means to achieve cognitive closure because they stress the argumentative orientation of the message. Based on this assumption, an experiment shows that the introduction of scalar adverbs in the message decreases the extent of its cognitive elaboration and increases its perceived quality and effectiveness for people high in need for closure, but not for people low in need for closure, for whom the outcomes are reversed with regard to perceived quality and persuasiveness of the message. To what extent such outcomes are likely to be affected by some variables traditionally studied in the persuasion literature is addressed in the discussion.
ISSN:0039-3320
2585-8815
DOI:10.31577/sp.2020.01.788