Attitude involvement: A moderator of social information processing effects
Abstract
According to the social information processing literature, both objective job characteristics as well as social influences affect workers' attitudes, perceptions and behaviors. The current investigation focused on attitude involvement as a moderator of SIP effects. From Petty & Cacioppo's (1986) Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, highly involved participants were expected to expend the cognitive effort to scrutinize the merits of informational cues and base their attitudes, perceptions and behaviors on the objective task characteristics. Alternatively, it was predicted that their low involvement counterparts would instead simply rely on the information presented in the cues. Finally, it was expected that as participants gained task experience, the low involvement orientation would shift to one of high involvement and the effects of the social cues would diminish over time. A laboratory study was conducted with Attitude Involvement (high and low), Social Cues (positive and negative) and Task Design (enriched and unenriched) as between-subjects factors at Time as the within-subjects factor. Two hundred forty introductory psychology students at a large midwestern university participated for course credit. The hypotheses were supported by the attitudinal data only. Specifically, the positive and negative informational cues influenced only low involvement participants' satisfaction ratings, and their effects diminished over time. The objective design of the task influenced satisfaction for high involvement participants as well as task perceptions and performance for high and low involvement participants at both time periods. Explanations and implications of these findings were discussed and recommendations for future research were offered.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Weiss, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Occupational psychology|Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology
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