Examining candidate information search processes: the impact of processing goals and sophistication

• Published in: Journal of communication Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 93 - 114
• Main Author: Huang, L-N
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2000; Blackwell; Annenberg School Press, etc; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Candidates; Cognition; Cognitive Processes; Communication Research; Decision Making; Evaluation; Higher Education; Impression Formation; Informal communication; Information Processing; Information Seeking; Linguistics; Memory; Natural language processing; Political Attitudes; Political Candidates; Politics; Psycholinguistics; Public; Student Attitudes; Undergraduate Students; Policy; Psycholinguistics; Cognition; Cognitive strategy; Memory/Memory ;Remembering/Memory;Remembering; Persuasion
• ISSN: 0021-9916; 1460-2466
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02835.x

An experiment investigated how 4 different information‐processing goals, varying on the dimensions of effortful vs. effortless and impression‐driven vs. non‐impression‐driven processing, and individual difference in political sophistication affect the depth at which people process candidate information and their decision‐making strategies. The results showed that subjects with the goal of memorizing information (effortful and non‐impression‐driven processing) conducted the deepest information search by accessing the largest amount of information and spending the longest time on searching information, followed by those with the goal of carefully evaluating candidates (effortful and impression‐driven processing). Moreover, political sophisticates were found to process information more efficiently and be more likely to adopt noncompensatory decision rules than were nonsophisticates, particularly when effortful processing was involved.