Hans Hoeken: Determinants of Perceived Message Convincingness

Hans Hoeken: Determinants of Perceived Message Convincingness

Every day, people face many messages that aim to change their opinions and behaviors. And almost automatically and effortlessly, people have an intuition about how convincing these messages are. Interestingly, Mercier and Sperber (2017) claim that these rapidly produced convincingness intuitions often approximate the judgments that would result from a more careful evaluation of the message’s argumentative content.

Recently, Hoeken, Fikkers, Eerland, Holleman, van Berkum and Pander Maat  (2022) have proposed the Perceived Convincingness Model to explain how these intuitions come about and under what conditions these intuitions align with more carefully developed judgments. It is argued that these intuitions are fueled by (1) the ease with which the message is perceived to be processed, (2) the valence, and (3) the intensity of the experienced emotion.

In this study, we aim to assess to what extent these three variables indeed serve as significant predictors of the message’s perceived convincingness as well as the actual message claim acceptance. Participants will read 20 short, actually published letters to the editor, and rate each letter’s convincingness, ease of processing, and – using self-administered manikins – emotional valence and emotional intensity.

MS Teams link:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NTVkMzgwYTMtNWUwZC00YzA4LThkMjMtN2FkM2Y0MGI1NmIz%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22d72758a0-a446-4e0f-a0aa-4bf95a4a10e7%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2283c475af-f9dc-4c5e-80f5-e3f3e2e17adc%22%7d

Meeting ID: 378 507 609 893
Passcode: FyT58p