Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

The message concreteness manipulation from study 1 was slightly modified to feature a firsthandsmoking context. Imagery processing mode was primed using written instructions (Thompsonand Hamilton 2006). The participants in the high imagery (low imagery) condition received thefollowing instructions:We do request that you read the information on the webpage carefully. Try your best to useimagination (reason and logic) as you get a sense of what is being presented. DON‘T let yourlogical thinking get in the way (your imagination gets the better of you). Rather, utilize the powerof imagination to help you visualize the situation described in the message (try to objectivelyunderstand the content of the webpage).The measures for attitude toward the webpage, flow and processing fluency were the same asthose used in study 1. Future cigarette trial intention was gauged by three items from Pechmannet al. 2003. All measures employed seven-point scales. Scale reliabilities ranged from .79 to .95.Items were averaged to obtain composite scores for the main constructs.Results and DiscussionManipulation Checks. The concreteness manipulation was tested with a seven-point vividnessscale (Petrova and Cialdini 2005). The webpage with concrete (versus abstract) messages wererated as significantly more vivid (MConcrete= 4.46 and MAbstract = 3.71, t (94) = -3.21, p < .01).Recall of the webpage information was coded by two independent judges who were blind to themanipulation. Results showed that 90% (67%) correctly recalled ―time bombs‖ ("health risks") inthe concrete (abstract) condition (inter-coder reliability = .92). The message concretenessmanipulation was therefore successful.Second, to examine the manipulation of processing mode, participants were asked to recall theinstructions that they had received prior to viewing the webpage. Subjects in the low-imagerymode condition were more likely to recall that they were asked to be objective while reading thewebpage (MLowImageryMode = 5.81 and MHighImageryMode = 3.24, t (94) = 6.90, p < .001).Those in the high-imagery mode were more likely to recall that they were told to visualizeeverything on the webpage (MHighImageryMode = 5.38 and MLowImageryMode = 3.67 and t(94) = -4.36, p < .001). Thus, the processing mode manipulation also appeared successful.Hypotheses Testing. To test H4, a 2 message concreteness (concrete versus abstract) X 2processing mode (high versus low imagery) full-factorial MANOVA was performed .Multivariateanalysis revealed that a two-way interaction effect involving message concreteness andprocessing mode was significant (Wilks‘ λ: F [2, 91] = 2.50, p < .05, one-tailed). No othermultivariate effect was significant. Univariate analyses indicated that the interaction effectbetween message concreteness and imagery processing mode was significant on attitude towardthe webpage (F[1, 92] = 4.89, p < .04). However, the same interaction effect was not significanton cigarette trial intention (p > .88). Treatment means are reported in table 2.Further analysis revealed that, in high-imagery primed processing mode, compared with abstractmessages, concrete messages produced significantly more favorable attitude toward the webpage(MConcrete = 4.22 and MAbstract= 3.24, t[40] = 3.29, p < .01). However, the effect was notsignificant on cigarette trial intention (p > .75). Contrary to the predictions, in the low-imageryprocessing mode, abstract (versus concrete) message produced no significant differences onoutcome measures. Hence, congruency effects on outcome measures were partially found forconcrete but not abstract message, providing preliminary support for H4.