The Impact of Attitude Accessibility on Elaboration of Persuasive Messages

Two experiments were conducted to examine the impact of attitude accessibility on elaboration of persuasive appeals. In Experiment 1, the accessibility of attitudes toward nuclear power was measured using response latencies. Participants were then presented with a persuasive message that contained either strong or weak arguments against the use of nuclear power. Argument quality had a greater impact on persuasion when attitudes were high in accessibility than when they were low in accessibility. In Experiment 2, the accessibility of attitudes toward vegetarianism was experimentally manipulated by varying the number of times participants expressed their attitudes toward vegetarianism. Participants then read a pro-vegetarianism persuasive message that contained either strong or weak arguments. Again, argument quality had a greater impact on persuasion when accessibility was high than when it was low. Taken together, both experiments suggest that increased message topic attitude accessibility leads to enhanced elaboration of persuasive messages on those topics.