Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion: An Individual Difference Perspective

According to the elaboration likelihood model, both situational and dispositional factors can influence the extent to which attitudes are formed through issue-relevant thinking. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that individuals high in need for cognition are more likely to think about and elaborate cognitively on issue-relevant information when forming attitudes than are individuals low in need for cognition. Analyses further indicated that individuals low in need for cognition acted as cognitive misers rather than as verbal dolts. In Experiment 2, individual differences in need for cognition were used to test the prediction from the elaboration likelihood model that subjects who tend to engage in extensive issue-relevant thinking when formulating their position on an issue also tend to exhibit stronger attitude-behavior correspondence. Results confirmed this hypothesis: The attitudes of individuals high in need for cognition, which were obtained in a survey completed approximately 8 weeks before the 1984 presidential election, were more predictive of behavioral intentions and reported voting behavior than were the attitudes of individuals low in need for cognition.