Prior Attitudes Research Articles

How the attributes of content distributors influence the intentions of users to pay for content shared on social media

Social media companies such as Facebook, WeChat, and Weibo are trying to profit from paid content shared on social media. This paper studies how the attributes of content distributors influence the intentions of users to pay. An online 2 × 2 between-subject experiment was conducted among Weibo users. Two analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) and structural-equation modeling were employed to test the hypotheses. Subjects showed weaker intention to pay for content shared by a celebrity than that by a noncelebrity when distributors were not experts. Conversely, there was no significant difference when distributors were experts. When distributors were not celebrities, there was no significant difference between an expert and a nonexpert on the intention to pay. Subjects showed stronger intention to pay for content shared by an expert than that by a nonexpert when distributors were celebrities. Intention to pay was also significantly affected by attitudes toward the content distributor and prior attitudes.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Provider Perceptions of Telemental Health.

The present study was designed to assess mental health provider attitudes and perceptions of telemental health (TMH) prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as the nature of their TMH utilization. The study aimed to gather information about positive and negative attitudes towards TMH, perceptions and correlates based on the modality of care, and beliefs about the overall effectiveness of TMH as compared to face-to-face care. The current study is part of a larger mixed methods project utilizing a repeated cross-sectional design. An online survey was administered to a sample of 1448 mental health providers and included demographic and professional information, experiences with and perceptions of TMH prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as a brief measure of pandemic-related stress. The COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in an increased use of TMH in the study sample. During COVID-19, providers reported increased agreement with TMH being necessary, important, and effective for care delivery. Providers who primarily used video, compared with telephone, reported that TMH was more useful, satisfying, and effective. While negative attitude towards TMH was predicted only by prior attitudes and belief in TMH effectiveness, positive attitude towards TMH was also predicted by female sex and current level of pandemic related stress. TMH use during the pandemic was predicted by primary use of video platform and previous TMH use. The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in increased use of TMH and significantly increased positive perceptions about TMH among mental health providers.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11126-021-09899-7.

Learning Facts About Migration: Politically Motivated Learning of Polarizing Information About Refugees

Information processing during heated debates on asylum and immigration may often be influenced by prejudice rather than a desire to learn facts. In this article, we investigate how people process empirical evidence on the consequences of refugee arrivals through a novel survey experiment that disentangles politically motivated learning from other forms of learning and expressive responding. Specifically, we ask respondents to interpret a 2×2 table about the relationship between asylum seekers and crime rates. Crucially, respondents are randomly allocated to evaluate a conclusion that triggers their identity‐protective stakes or not. In addition, we test for motivated responding as an alternative explanation by randomly providing some respondents with a response format that motivates them to report their inference truthfully. We find that information processing changes substantially when new information challenges existing asylum attitudes. Politically motivated learning is strongest among voters with strong negative prior attitudes towards asylum seekers. Our results also indicate that expressive responding can only partially account for this gap in correctly reported inferences. Our research has important implications for research on the consequences of refugee migration, theories of motivated reasoning, and survey methodology.

Confirmation bias in information search, interpretation, and memory recall: evidence from reasoning about four controversial topics

Confirmation bias is often used as an umbrella term for many related phenomena. Information searches, evidence interpretation, and memory recall are the three main components of the thinking process involved in hypothesis testing most relevant to investigations of confirmation bias; yet these have rarely been explored using a unified paradigm. Therefore, this paper examines how confirmation bias works in each of these three stages of reasoning, using four controversial topics. Participants (N = 199) first indicated their attitudes and then answered tasks measuring confirmation bias. The results showed that confirmation bias was most prevalent in information search as participants tended to search for information confirming their prior attitudes. During information interpretation, confirmation bias occurred only for more polarizing topics. On the other hand, our results did not show confirmation bias in memory recall, as there was no difference in recall of information confirming or disconfirming prior attitudes for any of the topics. Although our attitudes affect the way we process information, it seems the effect varies depending on the reasoning stage, and this can have implications for debiasing strategies.

Legalize cannabis? Effects of party cues on attitudes to a controversial policy proposal

ABSTRACT This article focuses on how party identity can shape policy support or opposition to the controversial issue of legalizing cannabis in Sweden, which is strongly opposed by the public. In a survey experiment (N = 3612), we manipulated if a message that supported or opposed a policy proposal to legalize cannabis was presented by a representative of the own party or an outgroup party. Results showed increased opposition to the proposal when the ingroup party opposed the policy and when the outgroup party endorsed the policy. When the ingroup party endorsed the policy and when the outgroup party opposed the policy, attitudes to the policy were not influenced. We argue that prior attitudes moderate how ingroup- and outgroup party messages are processed and that voters do not blindly follow the party line. Only when the own party presents a position that coincides with the individual’s prior position, are attitudes strengthened and voters follow the party line. Attitudes are also strengthened as a way to increase distance to a disliked outgroup party. When the party cue contradicts prior beliefs (ingroup-endorse; outgroup-oppose), the information is ignored, which allows individuals to retain their view of the party, be it positive or negative.

Consumer Adoption of Consumer-Created vs. Expert-Created Information: Moderating Role of Prior Product Attitude

Today, consumer-created information such as online consumer reviews have become important and popular, playing a key role in consumer decision making. Compared with expert-created information, each piece of information is less powerful or persuasive, but their aggregation can be more credible and acceptable. This concept is called collective intelligence knowledge. This study focuses on the persuasive effect on consumer product attitudes of consumer-created information compared to expert-created information. Using source credibility and familiarity theory, the study reveals how prior brand attitudes can play a moderating role in the persuasive effect of consumer-created information and expert-created information. Specifically, this study shows how consumer-created information is more persuasive when consumers have more favorable prior brand attitudes, while expert-created information is more persuasive when consumers have less favorable prior brand attitudes. Based on the results, this study proposes practical strategies for information structure, curation, and presentation. If a company has a good-quality brand evaluation of its products, it should increase the weight of consumer-created information such as online consumer reviews. Otherwise, the company needs to first improve brand evaluation through expert-created information such as third-parties or power-blogger reviews.

Individual-Level Determinants of the Public Acceptance of Policy Measures to Improve Urban Air Quality: The Case of the Barcelona Low Emission Zone

A variety of policy instruments that impose restrictions on traffic are being put in place across European cities to improve urban air quality. These measures include various schemes such as congestion charges, low emission zones (LEZs) and other traffic calming measures. In this paper, we are interested in the public acceptance of LEZs. Recent studies show high levels of public support for LEZs across Europe. However, specific research on public attitudes towards LEZs is limited. We conducted a self-administered survey (online) among residents in Barcelona, Spain. Based on a previous analytical model, bivariate and path analysis modelling was used to examine the association between key independent variables and acceptance. The results showed that most surveyed residents had a positive attitude towards implementing the LEZ, perceiving this policy instrument as a fair and effective measure to reduce air pollution. Perceived process legitimacy, perceived global impacts and affect had a significant direct effect on acceptance. Prior attitudes and personal orientations and, to a lesser extent, personal characteristics, were indirectly associated with levels of acceptance.

Communicating risk in human-wildlife interactions: How stories and images move minds.

Effectively communicating risk is critical to reducing conflict in human-wildlife interactions. Using a survey experiment fielded in the midst of contentious public debate over flying fox management in urban and suburban areas of Australia, we find that stories with characters (i.e., narratives) are more effective than descriptive information at mobilizing support for different forms of bat management, including legal protection, relocation, and habitat restoration. We use conditional process analysis to show that narratives, particularly with accompanying images, are effective because they cause emotional reactions that influence risk perception, which in turn drives public opinion about strategies for risk mitigation. We find that prior attitudes towards bats matter in how narrative messages are received, in particular in how strongly they generate shifts in affective response, risk perception, and public opinion. Our results suggest that those with warm prior attitudes towards bats report greater support for bat dispersal when they perceive impacts from bats to be more likely, while those with cool priors report greater support for bat protection when they perceive impacts from bats to be more positive, revealing 1) potential opportunities for targeted messaging to boost public buy-in of proposals to manage risks associated with human-wildlife interactions, and 2) potential vulnerabilities to disinformation regarding risk.

The impact of a physician's recommendation and gender on informed decision making: A randomized controlled study in a simulated decision situation.

ObjectiveThis study examined the influence of physicians’ recommendations and gender on the decision‐making process in a preference‐sensitive situation.MethodsN = 201 participants were put in a hypothetical scenario in which they suffered from a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). They received general information on two equally successful treatment options for this injury (surgery vs physiotherapy) and answered questions regarding their treatment preference, certainty and satisfaction regarding their decision and attitude towards the treatment options. Then, participants watched a video that differed regarding physician's recommendation (surgery vs physiotherapy) and physician's gender (female vs male voice and picture). Afterwards, they indicated again their treatment preference, certainty, satisfaction and attitude, as well as the physician's professional and social competence.ResultsParticipants changed their treatment preferences in the direction of the physician's recommendation (P < .001). Decision certainty (P < .001) and satisfaction (P < .001) increased more strongly if the physician's recommendation was congruent with the participant's prior attitude than if the recommendation was contrary to the participant's prior attitude. Finally, participants’ attitudes towards the recommended treatment became more positive (surgery recommendation: P < .001; physiotherapy recommendation: P < .001). We found no influence of the physician's gender on participants’ decisions, attitudes, or competence assessments.ConclusionThis research indicates that physicians should be careful with recommendations when aiming for shared decisions, as they might influence patients even if the patients have been made aware that they should take their personal preferences into account. This could be particularly problematic if the recommendation is not in line with the patient's preferences.

Implicit Attitudes Towards Robots Predict Explicit Attitudes, Semantic Distance Between Robots and Humans, Anthropomorphism, and Prosocial Behavior: From Attitudes to Human\u2013Robot Interaction

How people behave towards others relies, to a large extent, on the prior attitudes that they hold towards them. In Human–Robot Interactions, individual attitudes towards robots have mostly been investigated via explicit reports that can be biased by various conscious processes. In the present study, we introduce an implicit measure of attitudes towards robots. The task utilizes the measure of semantic priming to evaluate whether participants consider humans and robots as similar or different. Our results demonstrate a link between implicit semantic distance between humans and robots and explicit attitudes towards robots, explicit semantic distance between robots and humans, perceived robot anthropomorphism, and pro/anti-social behavior towards a robot in a real life, interactive scenario. Specifically, attenuated semantic distance between humans and robots in the implicit task predicted more positive explicit attitudes towards robots, attenuated explicit semantic distance between humans and robots, attribution of an anthropomorphic characteristic, and consequently a future prosocial behavior towards a robot. Crucially, the implicit measure of attitudes towards robots (implicit semantic distance) was a better predictor of a future behavior towards the robot than explicit measure of attitudes towards robots (self-reported attitudes). Cumulatively, the current results emphasize a new approach to measure implicit attitudes towards robots, and offer a starting point for further investigations of implicit processing of robots.

Rigid Religious Faith Promotes Selective Exposure to Attitude-Congruent Political Information

When seeking political information, people are motivated to selectively seek information that is congruent with their prior attitudes. However, some individuals may do so more than others, and not much is known about what factors affect such individual differences. Rigid religious faith is one variable that may promote selective exposure. Messages of the importance of rigid faith—the idea that religious beliefs must be held firmly and not doubted—could encourage a habit of selective exposure to information that supports existing religious beliefs. As a side effect, this habit of selective exposure might be applied outside the context of religion. In this study, an information-search task on a non-religious political issue is used to demonstrate that subjects prefer to read a greater number of arguments that are congruent with their prior attitudes on the issue, and this effect of prior attitudes on information-search behavior is found to be stronger among individuals who have rigid religious convictions. A scrambled-sentence task is used to prime half the subjects with religious concepts prior to completing the information-search task. This experiment demonstrates that increased salience of religious faith causes an increase in selective exposure to attitude-congruent political information.

Heterogeneous informational and attitudinal impacts on consumer preferences for eggs from welfare enhanced cage systems

Consumers ascribing value to animal welfare related attributes has become a common interest for various stakeholders. This study investigated heterogeneous consumer preferences for eggs from the welfare enhanced production systems, and further, how the effects of information regarding these production systems depended on consumers’ previous purchase experience and initial perceptions. A nationally representative sample of respondents completed a self-reported survey and a set of discrete choice experiments on egg products. Respondents were randomly assigned into two groups, with one group being offered additional information regarding the pros and cons of each housing system on various aspects (i.e., animal welfare and environmental impacts). Using the conditional logit models, results showed that consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for egg attributes depended on previous purchase experience. Those who had purchased cage-free eggs before were willing to pay up to $1.39/dozen higher premium for the advanced cages. Furthermore, the informational impacts depended on consumers’ purchase experience and initial perceptions. Inexperienced consumers were more responsive to information compared to the experienced consumers. The mixed information decreased price premium by up to 75%. Inexperienced consumers with higher perceived importance on welfare or environmental issues showed even more preference updates. While the prior attitudes helped the experienced consumers to differentiate across products, additional information lowered these attitudinal effects. These results implied that information that aimed to educate the general public had higher marginal effects on the inexperienced consumers than on the experienced ones.

Are Trustworthiness and Legitimacy \u2018Hard to Win, Easy to Lose\u2019? A Longitudinal Test of the Asymmetry Thesis of Police-Citizen Contact

ObjectivesTest the asymmetry thesis of police-citizen contact that police trustworthiness and legitimacy are affected more by negative than by positive experiences of interactions with legal agents by analyzing changes in attitudes towards the police after an encounter with the police. Test whether prior attitudes moderate the impact of contact on changes in attitudes towards the police.MethodsA two-wave panel survey of a nationally representative sample of Australian adults measured people’s beliefs about police trustworthiness (procedural fairness and effectiveness), their duty to obey the police, their contact with the police between the two waves, and their evaluation of those encounters in terms of process and outcome. Analysis is carried out using autoregressive structural equation modeling and latent moderated structural models.ResultsThe association between both process and outcome evaluation of police-citizen encounters and changes in attitudes towards the police is asymmetrical for trust in police effectiveness, symmetrical for trust in procedural fairness, and asymmetrical (in the opposite direction expected) for duty to obey the police. Little evidence of heterogeneity in the association between encounters and trust in procedural fairness and duty to obey, but prior levels of perceived effectiveness moderate the association between outcome evaluation and changes in trust in police effectiveness.ConclusionsThe association between police-citizen encounters and attitudes towards the police may not be as asymmetrical as previously thought, particularly for changes in trust in procedural fairness and legitimacy. Policy implications include considering public-police interactions as ‘teachable moments’ and potential sources for enhancing police trustworthiness and legitimacy.

Hot Politics? Affective Responses to Political Rhetoric

Canonical theories of opinion formation attribute an important role to affect. But how and for whom affect matters is theoretically underdeveloped. We establish the circumplex model in political science as a theory of core affect. In this theory unconscious emotional processes vary in level (arousal, measured with skin conductance) and direction (valence, measured with facial electromyography). We theorize that knowledge, attitude extremity, and (in)congruence with political rhetoric explain variation in affective responses. In a large lab study (N = 397), participants watched video clips with left-wing or right-wing rhetoric on prominent issues. We find that people with extreme attitudes experience more arousal in response to political rhetoric and that political rhetoric incongruent with prior attitudes evokes negative affect. Moreover, we show that affective responses lead to opinion change, independent of self-reported emotions. We conclude by setting a research agenda for the alignment between affective and cognitive components of emotions and their consequences.

Perceived Media Bias and Intention to Engage in Discursive Activities for Mental Health: Testing Corrective Action Hypothesis in the Context of Mass Shooting News

ABSTRACT The current study tested the “corrective action hypothesis” by analyzing intentions to engage in discursive activities for mental health in response to news coverage of mass shootings. Hypotheses were proposed regarding how involvements with the news influence on people with mental health issues moderate preexisting attitude toward people with mental health issues in predicting perceived media bias, and how perceived media bias predicts intention to engage in discursive activities for mental health. Two hundred nighty eight respondents were surveyed through Qualtrics national research panels. The results suggested participants would not be motivated by their prior attitude toward mental health to take part in discursive activities unless they are highly involved with the news issue and in the meantime perceived mass shooting coverage is biased against people with mental health. The results extended the discussion of corrective action hypothesis to the context of media coverage of mass shooting – a significant issue nowadays that intertwines with public health concerns. The results also provide a basis for the discussion of the potential benefits of employing perceived media bias in educating the public by appealing to individuals’ outcome concerns and value systems.

The Role of Gender on the Associations among Children’s Attitudes, Mathematics Knowledge, Digital Game Use, Perceptions of Affordances, and Achievement

This study explored associations among children’s prior attitudes, prior mathematics knowledge, and frequency of digital game use, with children’s perceptions of game affordances, and transfer to out-of-game performance when interacting with digital math games, with respect to gender. Participants were 187 children (ages 8–12). An SEM mediation path analysis using MPLUS software showed significant direct effects for all pathways for all children, and significant indirect effects on all pathways for male children and five of six pathways for female children. More favorable attitudes, prior math knowledge, and perception of the helping affordances were associated with increased posttest performance, while increased frequency of digital game use and stronger perception of the hindering affordances was associated with decreased posttest performance. The model showed stronger connections for male children between frequency of digital game use, prior mathematics knowledge, and hindering affordances to the posttest, while female children showed stronger connections between attitude and perception of helping affordances to the posttest.

Recognizing and Trusting Persuasion Agents: Attitudes Bias Trustworthiness Judgments, but not Persuasion Detection.

People rely on intuitive knowledge about persuasion to cope with persuasion attempts motivated by self-interest. Because this knowledge associates persuasive intent with low trustworthiness, identifying the communicator as an agent with ulterior motives tends to reduce trust in the communicator. Three studies suggest that the extent to which people call on this association to assess a persuasion agent depends on whether the agent's message challenges or reinforces their prior attitudes. Challenged attitudes motivate people to use the negative association between persuasive intent and trustworthiness, whereas reinforced attitudes lead people to neglect it. However, prior attitudes do not affect people's capacity to detect cues of ulterior motives and develop an awareness of the persuasive intent. Thus, recipients of persuasive messages that support their prior beliefs trust persuasion agents despite being aware of the agents' ulterior motives. This seems to be a byproduct of people's motivation to preserve a sense of self-integrity.

Using persuasive refutation texts to prompt attitudinal and conceptual change.

We investigated knowledge and attitudes before and after reading refutation texts augmented by different kinds of persuasive information and how emotions mediated the process of knowledge and attitude change. Undergraduates (N = 424) enrolled in 4 universities from 3 countries read a refutation text on genetically modified foods (GMFs) and were then randomly assigned to receive additional information about advantages of GMFs, disadvantages of GMFs, or both. After studying, students reading about advantages of GMFs had significantly more positive attitudes than students who read about disadvantages. There was also a significant reduction in misconceptions; participants in the positive-oriented text condition showed the largest learning gains, particularly those who held more positive initial attitudes. Epistemic emotions of curiosity, frustration, hope, and enjoyment mediated attitude change while confusion mediated relations between prereading attitudes and postreading knowledge. In addition, the direct relationship between prior attitudes and surprise was moderated by type of text. When reading about both advantages and disadvantages of GMFs, participants reported significantly less surprise when compared with those who read about either advantages or disadvantages of GMFs. To foster conceptual change when learning about complex topics, refutation texts may be paired with persuasive information that is aligned with accurate conceptions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Fighting biased news diets: Using news media literacy interventions to stimulate online cross-cutting media exposure patterns

Online news consumers have the tendency to select political news that confirms their prior attitudes, which may further fuel polarized divides in society. Despite scholarly attention to drivers of selective exposure, we know too little about how healthier cross-cutting news exposure patterns can be stimulated in digital media environments. Study 1 ( N = 553) exposed people to news media literacy (NML) interventions using injunctive and descriptive normative language. The findings reveal the conditional effect of such online interventions: Participants with pro-immigration attitudes engaged in more cross-cutting exposure while the intervention was only to a certain extent effective for Democrats, ineffective for Republicans, and even boomeranged for partisans with anti-immigration attitudes. In response to these findings, Study 2 ( N = 579) aimed to design interventions that work across issue publics and party affiliation. We show that NML messages tailored on immigration beliefs can be effective across the board. These findings inform the design of more successful NML interventions.

Distributing Computing Devices in Classrooms: Hedonic and Utilitarian Influences on Science and Technology Attitudes

While extensive efforts have been made to harness benefit of computing technologies in education, little attention focuses on how such efforts lead to students’ positive attitudes toward science and technology. Building on the technology acceptance model and motivation literature, the current study proposed that hands-on experiences with computing devices allow students to perceive their technology use as being useful and enjoyable, which in turn leads to positive attitudes toward science and technology in general. Data collected from a pedagogical intervention support our predictions regarding the role of utility perception and enjoyment. Furthermore, it is suggested that students’ prior attitudes toward science and technology and the type of device used in the intervention influence perceived usefulness and enjoyment of classroom computing. When using education-specific devices, students’ prior attitudes were positively associated with postintervention attitudes as well as with utility perception and enjoyment. When using general-purpose devices, however, students’ prior attitudes were not related to those outcomes. These results imply that distribution of technologies to schools may improve attitudes toward science and technology, particularly in populations that have been underrepresented in the fields of science and technology thus far.