Effects Of Personal Relevance Research Articles

CURIOSITY TOWARDS ROBOT: THE ROLE OF AGE AND PERSONAL RELEVANCE

Being curious has various physical, social and psychological benefits. However, theories like the socioemotional selectivity theory suggest that information seeking goals tend to be overshadowed by emotionally meaningful goals with age. Personality and social psychology research also found consistent decline of curiosity in later adulthood. In contrast, selective engagement theory propose that people simply become more selective on where they allocate their cognitive resources as they age. Particularly, older adults tend to invest in things that have personal relevance. Yet, few studies have explored the interaction between age and personal relevance in the context of information seeking tendencies. We conducted a pre-test-post-test experiment with 50 younger (age 19-34) and 50 older adults (age 60-78). Participants were invited to learn about a robot (Vector by Anki) and freely interact with the robot for about 30 minutes. Questionnaires were filled before and after the interaction. Our results confirmed previous findings that older adults showed lower level of trait curiosity than younger adults (F(1, 98)=21.94, p<.001, ΔR2=). However, older adults actually showed higher level of state curiosity towards robot than their younger counterparts (F(1, 96)=21.94, p<.001). Moreover, there was a marginally significant interaction effect of personal relevance (p = .06). Tukey’s post-hoc test revealed that older adults who perceived increased relevance (M=5.39) after the interaction were significantly more curious than younger adults who also perceived increased relevance (M=4.51, p=.02), but there was no significant age difference when they perceived decreased relevance. Present study offers insights on promoting curiosity among older adults.

Integrating Self-Affirmation with Health Risk Messages: Effects on Message Evaluation and Response

ABSTRACTThis study tested a new method of using self-affirmation theory to increase adaptive responses to health risk messages. Participants’ self-concepts were affirmed via text integrated with risk messages (public service announcements/PSAs) rather than by methods used in most previous studies that have limited applicability for campaigns employing mediated messages. Participants were exposed to health risk PSAs either including or not including affirming text to examine relative effects on message evaluation and adaptive responses. The moderating effect of personal relevance of the behavior on responses was also examined. Participants exposed to PSAs with integrated, affirming text (affirmed participants) reported more positive attitudes toward the PSA, greater self-efficacy, and greater intention to reduce risky behavior than participants exposed to messages without affirming text (non-affirmed participants). Compared to non-affirmed participants, affirmed participants also reported weaker perceptions of risk severity and equivalent perceptions of susceptibility. The personal relevance of the behavior did not moderate any effects of self-affirmation. Implications for health campaigns that employ mass-mediated messages are discussed.

Effects of personal relevance and simulated darkness on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment.

This study investigated whether personal relevance influences the affective appraisal of a desktop virtual environment (VE) in simulated darkness. In the real world, darkness often evokes thoughts of vulnerability, threat, and danger, and may automatically precipitate emotional responses consonant with those thoughts (fear of darkness). This influences the affective appraisal of a given environment after dark and the way humans behave in that environment in conditions of low lighting. Desktop VEs are increasingly deployed to study the effects of environmental qualities and (architectural or lighting) interventions on human behaviour and feelings of safety. Their (ecological) validity for these purposes depends critically on their ability to correctly address the user’s cognitive and affective experience. Previous studies with desktop (i.e., non-immersive) VEs found that simulated darkness only slightly affects the user’s behavioral and emotional responses to the represented environment, in contrast to the responses observed for immersive VEs. We hypothesize that the desktop VE scenarios used in previous studies less effectively induced emotional and behavioral responses because they lacked personal relevance. In addition, factors like signs of social presence and relatively high levels of ambient lighting may also have limited these responses. In this study, young female volunteers explored either a daytime or a night-time (low ambient light level) version of a desktop VE representing a deserted (no social presence) prototypical Dutch polder landscape. To enhance the personal relevance of the simulation, a fraction of the participants were led to believe that the virtual exploration tour would prepare them for a follow-up tour through the real world counterpart of the VE. The affective appraisal of the VE and the emotional response of the participants were measured through self-report. The results show that the VE was appraised as slightly less pleasant and more arousing in simulated darkness (compared to a daylight) condition, as expected. However, the fictitious follow-up assignment had no emotional effects and did not influence the affective appraisal of the VE. Further research is required to establish the qualities that may enhance the validity of desktop VEs for both etiological (e.g., the effects of signs of darkness on navigation behaviour and fear of crime) and intervention (e.g., effects of street lighting on feelings of safety) research.

Threat perception after the Boston Marathon bombings: The effects of personal relevance and conceptual framing

We examined how the Boston Marathon bombings affected threat perception in the Boston community. In a threat perception task, participants attempted to “shoot” armed targets and avoid shooting unarmed targets. Participants viewing images of the bombings accompanied by affectively negative music and text (e.g., “Terror Strikes Boston”) made more false alarms (i.e., more errors “shooting” unarmed targets) compared to participants viewing the same images accompanied by affectively positive music and text (e.g., “Boston Strong”) and participants who did not view bombing images. This difference appears to be driven by decreased sensitivity (i.e., decreased ability to distinguish guns from non-guns) as opposed to a more liberal bias (i.e., favouring the “shoot” response). Additionally, the more strongly affected the participant was by the bombings, the more their sensitivity was reduced in the negatively framed condition, suggesting that this framing was particularly detrimental to the most vulnerable individuals in the affected community.

Persuasiveness of Hiv/aids Public Service Announcements as a Function of Argument Quality, Personal Relevance, and Evidence Form

We conducted an experiment with a mixed factorial design to examine how HIV/AIDS public service announcements (PSAs) that varied in quality of argument, level of personal relevance, and form of evidence, affected attitude and behavioral intention toward condom use with main and nonmain partners. Participants were 85 heterosexually active young adults at a northeastern university in the United States. Results showed that argument quality influenced attitude toward condom use regardless of partner type, and level of personal relevance influenced attitude toward condom use with main partners but not with nonmain partners. There was no difference in attitude or behavioral intention according to whether the evidence was narrative or statistical. The attitudinal effect of personal relevance was more prominent in narrative than in statistical PSAs.

The Effect of Personal Relevance on Learning Stroke Symptoms/Response

The aim of this study was to test the effect of increasing the personal relevance of stroke symptom information on learning stroke symptoms/emergency response. A randomized pretest-posttest double-blind study design was used. A total of 173 community-dwelling adults participated. Treatment participants read the personally relevant statement, "Learn about stroke to save someone you love," completed the Stroke Action Test pretest, read the National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke pamphlet titled Know Stroke. Know the Signs. Act in Time, and responded to the Stroke Action Test posttest. The control condition differed only in the omission of the personally relevant statement. The treatment group learned significantly more than the control group, F(1, 170) = 7.46, p < .007, eta2 = .02. The mean items learned by the treatment group was 8.3 (SD = 5.67) compared to the control group mean of 6.2 (SD = 5.76). Prefacing stroke prevention information with the statement, "Learn about stroke to save someone you love," could result in greater learning of stroke symptoms/response.

Capitalizing on the Self-Referencing Effect in General Psychology: A Preliminary Study

After reviewing the literature on the effect of personal relevance (self-schema, self-referencing effect, autobiographical significance, etc.), I implemented a constructivist narrative assignment for general psychology students. I hoped the assignment would enhance learning of and memory for psychological principles. Students wrote personal relevance papers in which they described psychological principles in their own words and provided examples of how the principles they chose were relevant in their own lives. Students assigned to write the papers produced higher exam scores. Moreover, student feedback revealed other benefits, including improved writing quality, higher grades, and increased motivation to learn.

The Effect of Personal Relevance and Approach-Related Action Expectation on Relative Left Frontal Cortical Activity

Past research using a variety of methods has suggested that the frontal cortex is asymmetrically involved in the experience and expression of positive (or approach motivational) and negative (or withdrawal motivational) affects, with the left frontal region being involved in positive affects (or approach) and the right frontal region being involved in negative affects (or withdrawal). However, some studies have failed to replicate these effects, leaving many scientists questioning the meaning of the past supportive findings. To examine these inconsistencies in results, we tested the hypothesis that increasing the personal relevance of the stimuli and approach motivational intensity would increase relative left frontal activation. Results supported the predictions. Moreover, by showing the predicted effects with anger-inducing stimuli, the results demonstrated that motivational direction, rather than affective valence, accounts for asymmetrical frontal cortical activity.

Divergence vs. ambivalence: effects of personal relevance on minority influence

AbstractAccording to the literature on social influence, a minority source can induce two main cognitive processes: validation and divergence. The aim of the present study was to determine if the two processes are jointly or alternatively activated. We hypothesized that the process stimulated by the minority source would be different according to the personal relevance of the issue for the participants. Specifically, we predicted that a minority would induce more validation (i.e. ambivalent thoughts about the issue) in the low relevance condition rather than in the high relevance condition. On the other hand, the minority would produce more divergence (i.e. alternative proposals) in the high relevance condition rather than in the low relevance condition. Two experiments in which the participants were exposed to a counter‐attitudinal message of a minority or a majority supported these predictions. Moreover, in Study 1 evidence has also been found that a minority source fosters more pertinent (but not more original) proposals in the high relevance condition rather than in the low relevance condition, whereas in Study 2 ambivalence (other than divergence) appeared to be correlated with, but not a significant mediator of, indirect influence. The implications of these findings for minority influence theory are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

The Effects of Personal Relevance and Repetition on Persuasive Processing

Abstract Past research has suggested that familiarity with a message, brought about by repetition, can increase (Cacioppo & Petty, 1989) or decrease (Garcia-Marques & Mackie, 2001) analytic (systematic) processing of that message. Two experiments attempted to resolve these contradictory findings by examining how personal relevance may moderate the impact of familiarity on processing. Experiment 1 manipulated repetition and personal relevance and found that message repetition increased analytic processing (as reflected by greater persuasion following strong vs. weak arguments) under high relevance conditions and decreased analytic processing when relevance was low. In Experiment 2, both repetition and relevance were manipulated in different ways, but results again showed that repetition reduced analytic processing under low relevance conditions and that perceived familiarity mediated this outcome. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Information Bias in Contingent Valuation: Effects of Personal Relevance, Quality of Information, and Motivational Orientation

A laboratory experiment examined the potential for information bias in contingent valuation (CV). Consistent with the view that information about a public or private good can function as a persuasive communication, willingness to pay (WTP) was found to increase with the quality of arguments used to describe the good, especially under conditions of high personal relevance. Under low personal relevance, WTP for a public (but not for a private) good was higher when an altruistic, as opposed to an individualistic, orientation was activated. It is concluded that the nature of the information provided in CV surveys can profoundly affect WTP estimates, and that subtle contextual cues can seriously bias these estimates under conditions of low personal relevance.

The Effect of Personal Relevance on Psychological Inference: A Developmental Analysis

The effect of personal relevance was examined as a motivational alternative to capacity-based explanations of young children's failure to describe others in terms of psychological characteristics. In Study 1, children at 2 age levels (5-6 and 9-10 years) were asked to describe actors exhibiting different behaviors and to select partners for different games. As predicted, children who expected to interact with the actors were much more likely to describe them in psychological terms. Older children selected partners based on instrumental goals, maximizing their own outcomes, whereas younger children selected partners based on liking. The findings were replicated in Study 2, and expecting interaction was also found to affect behavior (toy allocation). The results suggest that the verbal inferencing skills of young children have been underestimated in the past, and that younger children may be more oriented than older children toward affective relative to instrumental goals in anticipating interaction with a peer.

The Effect of Personal Relevance on Psychological Inference: A Developmental Analysis

The Effect of Personal Relevance on Psychological Inference: A Developmental Analysis

Uncertainty orientation and persuasion: Individual differences in the effects of personal relevance on social judgments.

Uncertainty orientation and persuasion: Individual differences in the effects of personal relevance on social judgments.

Uncertainty orientation and persuasion: Individual differences in the effects of personal relevance on social judgments.

Uncertainty orientation and persuasion: Individual differences in the effects of personal relevance on social judgments.