Cognitive elaboration: Basic research and clinical application

Abstract

This article reviews two lines of research in social-clinical psychology demonstrating that a person's own elaborative thinking mediates cognitive, affective, and behavioral change. Research on attitude change has found that what kind of arguments a person generates in response to a message predicts whether subsequent attitudes and behavior will be more resistant or changed. When an unmotivated person generates no arguments, belief is based on cues such as therapist credibility. Analogue research supports the importance of argument strength over source credibility in promoting attitude and behavior change in therapy. Research on simulation has found that when a person imagines a scenario of how he or she might behave and why, expectancies about such behavior and its actual performance are increased. Analogue research supports the role of constructing scenarios in changing the behavior of persons with low self-esteem and of clients in counseling. A research agenda is provided for assessing cognitive elaboration as a mediator of long-term change in therapy, for evaluating various interventions which should promote it, and for matching interventions to the cognitive style of clients.