Deck 3: Section 2: Attention and Encoding

Question 1

Essay question: Does making a message more vivid increase the chances it will be persuasive? Why or why not?
a. Vivid information can come to mind more easily Tversky & Kahneman, 1973).
b. Not much empirical evidence to support the role of vividness in attitude change Taylor & Thompson, 1982).
c. Can be counter-productive: vivid information can make people more confident in their opinions, even when it doesn't change the actual opinion Clark & Rutter, 1985).
d. Can be helpful in some contexts - if the vividness fits the message, it can enhance cognitive elaboration and persuasion Guadagno, Rhoads, & Sagarin, 2011).
e. Vivid information can catch attention of people who might otherwise ignore the message Chaiken & Eagly, 1976).

Answer 1

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Question 2

What two types of eye-gaze attract our attention? For each type of eye-gaze, describe how and why it captures our attention compared to other types of eye-gaze, for example).

Answer 2

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Question 3

Essay question: Describe an experiment that showed priming effects. Select one of the ones mentioned in the chapter. Were the participants conscious or unconscious of the effects? Why did the researchers use the methods they did? What was found?
a. Example: Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1985: participants overheard an ethnic slur, and subsequently rated a Black person's objectively poor) performance more negatively. Participants conscious of prime they heard it) but unconscious of its effects otherwise, social desirability). Real-world consequences of using/hearing ethnic slurs - researchers wanted to see effects in a way that wouldn't be "corrected" by participants' conscious attention to egalitarian norms.

Answer 3

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Question 4

Provide and explain three reasons why the vividness effects have not been empirically supported.
a. Confusion of vivid messages with vivid presentations.
b. High involvement of recipients of vivid messages vividness not needed, attention already captured). Need involvement.
c. Individual differences in chronic reliance on vivid imagery.

Question 5

Discuss the central difference between the properties of salience and vividness of a given stimulus. Based on this difference, why might salience and vividness have such different effects on attention?

Question 6

Explain why describing someone's features can inhibit later recognition of the person being described. What parts of the brain are involved?
a. This is due to verbal overshadowing: invokes a local, feature-by-feature processing orientation. Facial recognition is global, a heuristic process integrating across the whole face. Feature-oriented processing undermines recognition of the whole.
b. Left-hemisphere involves feature-based processing, specifically the fusiform face area FFA). The right hemisphere would be needed for global, configuring process involved in individuation.