Heuristic-systematic model of information processing
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The heuristic-systematic model of information processing (HSM) is a widely recognized model by Shelly Chaiken that attempts to explain how people receive and process persuasive messages.[1] The model states that individuals can process messages in one of two ways: heuristically or systematically. Whereas systematic processing entails careful and deliberative processing of a message, heuristic processing entails the use of simplifying decision rules or 'heuristics' to quickly assess the message content. The guiding belief with this model is that individuals are more apt to minimize their use of cognitive resources (i.e., to rely on heuristics), thus affecting the intake and processing of messages.[2] HSM predicts that processing type will influence the extent to which a person is persuaded or exhibits lasting attitude change. HSM is quite similar to the elaboration likelihood model, or ELM. Both models were predominantly developed in the early to mid-1980s and share many of the same concepts and ideas.[3]
Early research investigating how people process persuasive messaging focused mainly on cognitive theories and the way the mind processed each element of a message. One of the early guiding principles of underlying motivations of persuasive communications came from Leon Festinger’s (1950) statement that incorrect or improper attitudes are generally maladaptive and can have deleterious behavioral and affective consequences.
In 1953, Hovland, Janis, and Kelley noted that a sense of "rightness" accompanies holding opinions similar to the opinions of others. In 1987, Holtz and Miller reaffirmed this line of thought by noting, "When other people are perceived to hold similar attitudes, one's confidence in the validity of one's own attitude is increased."[4]
Another concept that contributed to the HSM was the sufficiency principle. This principle reflected widespread notions that people use limited cognitive resources, or use an "economy-minded" approach to information processing when presented with persuasive information. Based on this thought, early assumptions said people were at least partially guided by the "principle of least effort". This principle stated that in the interest of economy, the mind would often process with the least amount of effort (i.e., use a heuristic), and for more detailed information processing would use more effortful processing (systematic). This was the major difference when compared with the ELM, which described the two different ways information was processed, through central and/or peripheral processing.[5]
The developer and main researcher of the HSM was Shelly Chaiken. Under her direction, the HSM has undergone several major revisions. As she noted in 1980 and 1987, the model specified the two modes of heuristic and systematic processing. Then, Chaiken et al. noted in 1989 that the model was extended to specify the psychological conditions for triggering the modes of processing in terms of the discrepancy between actual and desired subjective confidence. In 1986, Chaiken, and others, updated the model to include underlying motivations.[6]
Heuristic processing
Heuristic processing uses judgmental rules known as knowledge structures that are learned and stored in memory.[7] The heuristic approach offers an economic advantage by requiring minimal cognitive effort on the part of the recipient.[1] Heuristic processing is related to the concept of "satisficing."[8]
Heuristic processing is governed by availability, accessibility, and applicability. Availability refers to the knowledge structure, or heuristic, being stored in memory for future use. Accessibility of the heuristic applies to the ability to retrieve the memory for use. Applicability of the heuristic refers to the relevancy of the memory to the judgmental task.[7] Due to the use of knowledge structures, a person using heuristic information processing is likely to agree with messages delivered by experts, or messages that are endorsed by others, without fully processing the semantic content of the message.[9] In comparison to systematic processing, heuristic processing entails judging the validity of messages by relying more on accessible context information, such as the identity of the source or other non-content cues. Thus, heuristic views de-emphasize detailed information evaluation and focus on the role of simple rules or cognitive heuristics in mediating persuasion.[1][10]
Individuals may be more likely to use heuristic processing when an issue is less personally important to them (they have low “issue involvement”) or when they believe their judgment will not have significant impacts on themselves (low “response involvement”).[1]
Systematic processing
Systematic processing involves comprehensive and analytic, cognitive processing of judgment-relevant information.[7] The systematic approach values source reliability and message content, which may exert stronger impact on persuasion, when determining message validity.[1] Judgments developed from systematic processing rely heavily on in-depth treatment of judgment-relevant information and respond accordingly to the semantic content of the message.[7] Recipients developing attitudes from a systematic basis exert considerable cognitive effort and actively attempt to comprehend and evaluate the message's arguments. When processing systematically, recipients also attempt to assess their validity as it relates to the message's conclusion. Systematic views of persuasion emphasize detailed processing of message content and the role of message-based cognitions in mediating opinion change. While recipients utilizing systematic processing rely heavily on message content, source characteristics and other non-content may supplement the recipients’ assessment of validity in the persuasive message.[1]
Choosing systematic or heuristic processing
Both heuristic and systematic processes may occur independently. It is also possible for both to occur simultaneously in an additive fashion or in a way that the judgmental implications of one process lend a bias nature to the other.[7] The heuristic-systematic model includes the hypothesis that attitudes developed or changed by utilizing heuristic processing alone will likely be less stable, less resistant to counterarguments, and will be less predictive of subsequent behavior than attitudes developed or changed utilizing systematic processing.[1]
Message recipients using heuristic processing may sometimes choose to accept message conclusions they would otherwise have rejected, or vice versa, had they invested more time and effort to scrutinize the message.[1]
Source credibility affects persuasion under conditions of low, but not high, issue-involvement and response-involvement.[1]
When economic concerns are predominant, the recipient will likely use heuristic processing to form a judgment about the persuasive argument. Conversely, when reliability concerns are predominant (i.e., recipients perceive significant importance in accurately judging an argument), they will likely use a systematic processing strategy. Reliability concerns are influenced by the level of the recipient's issue-involvement or response-involvement. When the recipient views their judgment as being less consequential, they will likely place greater value on economic concerns than reliability concerns.
Practical application
Research into information processing, especially in persuasive messaging, has a natural application in advertising. For instance, HSM has been used in Internet webpage considerations. In a 2002 study by Wathen & Burkell, they proposed a theory that separated the evaluation process into distinct segments. In the theory, the process began with low-effort examinations of peripheral cues (e.g., appearance, design, organization, and source reputation) then continued to a more high-effort analysis of the content of the information source. The proposed research also drew on social psychological theories of dual-processing, which stated that information processing outcomes were the result of interaction between a fast, associative information-processing mode based on low-effort heuristics, and a slow, rule-based information processing mode based on high-effort systematic reasoning. Wathen and Burkell proposed (but did not test) that if an individual determines that an online source does not meet an appropriate level of credibility at any one stage, then he or she will leave the site without further evaluation. They theorized that this “easy to discard” behavior was indicative of information-rich environments, where the assumption is that many other potential sources of information exist, and spending too much time on any one source is potentially wasteful.[11]
The HSM has also been applied in medical decision-making contexts. A 2004 study by Suzanne K. Steginga, PhD, and Stefano Occhipinti, PhD, Queensland Cancer Fund and the School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, investigated the utility of the heuristic-systematic processing model as a framework for the investigation of patient decision making. A total of 111 men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer were assessed using verbal protocol analysis and self-report measures. The results showed: "Most men (68%) preferred that decision making be shared equally between them and their doctor. Men's use of the expert opinion heuristic was related to men's verbal reports of decisional uncertainty and having a positive orientation to their doctor and medical care; a desire for greater involvement in decision making was predicted by a high internal locus of health control. Trends were observed for systematic information processing to increase when the heuristic strategy used was negatively affect-laden and when men were uncertain about the probabilities for cure and side effects. There was a trend for decreased systematic processing when the expert opinion heuristic was used. Findings were consistent with the heuristic-systematic processing model and suggest that this model has utility for future research in applied decision making about health issues.[12]
Direction of future research
Originally the heuristic-systematic model was developed to apply to "validity seeking" persuasion contexts in which peoples' primary motivation is to attain accurate attitudes that align with relevant facts.[1][9] Chaiken assumes that the primary processing goal of accuracy-motivated recipients is to assess the validity of persuasive messages, and that both heuristic and systematic processing can serve this objective.[9] Other motives beyond the validity-seeking persuasion context were identified by Chaiken and colleagues (1989) who proposed an expanded model that posits two additional motives that heuristic and systematic processing can serve: defense-motivation and impression-motivation.
Defense-motivation is the desire to form or defend particular attitudinal positions.
Impression-motivation is the desire to form or hold socially acceptable attitudinal positions.
Contrary to previous viewpoints, the heuristic-systematic model and the elaboration likelihood model should be treated as complementary models to create a dual-processing framework for use in future research for understanding a variety of social influence phenomena.[9]
Criticisms
A major criticism of HSM is that the model closely relates to ELM, which is also a dual-processing model discussing two main paths to persuasion. The ELM discusses the two routes as "central" route processing and "peripheral" route processing. ELM's central processing has been likened to systematic processing in HSM, while peripheral processing is similar to HSM's heuristic processing. These two routes of processing define related theories behind attitude change.
In ELM, the central route is reflective and requires a willingness to process and think about the message. The peripheral route occurs when attitudes are formed without extensive thought, but more from mental shortcuts, credibility, and appearance cues. The route of persuasion processing depends on the level of involvement in the topic or issue. High involvement or elaboration increases central route processing especially when motivation and ability in the message exists. Therefore, low involvement increases peripheral route processing when motivation and ability conditions of persuasion do not exist. However, if the topic or idea is irrelevant to the individual, then the message takes the peripheral route.[13]
HSM specifically examines validity seeking persuasion settings concerning people's motivations within the social environment.[9] The limitation of HSM exists in the inability to define the specific motivations of persuasion, which is why Chaiken expanded HSM to illustrate that heuristic and systematic processing can "serve defense-motivation, the desire to form or defend particular attitudinal positions, and impression- motivation, the desire to form or hold socially acceptable attitudinal positions" (p.326).[9]
Major assumptions exist with both HSM and ELM, which is why both models have generated debate and are often misconstrued. Systematic processing assumes that persuasion has occurred via the recipient's understanding and cognitive elaboration of the persuasive argument.[9] In addition, researchers hypothesize that systematic processing requires and uses cognitive capacity, while heuristic processing makes low cognitive demands.[9] Furthermore, both HSM and ELM assume that "capacity and motivation are important determinants of systematic process" which results in biased modes of processing (p.327).[9] With heuristic processing, there is less need to process information and cognitively in comparison to systematic processing. Heuristic processing occurs when people simply form immediate decisions and conclusions based on the information available versus analytical processing of information given that obviously requires more cognition. Heuristic processing as defined by HSM, illustrates that people can formulate decisions utilizing basic rules such as "experts' statements can be trusted" and "consensus implies correctness" to establish validity within messages (p.327).[9] Therefore, individuals who process messages through heuristic processing routes of persuasion, likely formulate decisions based on experts’ opinion and what the consensus believes opposed to fully processing the message in its entirety.
This leads to another similarity between HSM and ELM, as attitudes and opinions developed through heuristic processing will tend to be "less stable, less resistant to counter-propaganda, and less predictive of behavior" in comparison to attitudes and opinions formed through detailed information within systematic processing (p.327).[9]
HSM postulates that heuristic and systematic processing can each influence both "independent" and "interdependent" effects on decision making by occurring simultaneously (p.328).[9] Unlike HSM, ELM does not postulate whether central route processing and peripheral route processing can co-occur or not. Another assumption by Chaiken and her colleagues is that systematic processing does in fact provide people with more judgment relevant information in comparison to heuristic processing of information, which does not account for any weaknesses in expert subject matter material.[9] Therefore, while systematic processing may be prevalent within many social environments, HSM, unlike its model counterpart ELM, does illustrate "the possibility that heuristic processing can exert a significant and independent influence on persuasion" (p 329).[9]
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the relationship between mental states and social situations, studying the social conditions under which thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur, and how these variables influence social interactions.
Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones is an informal fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence. This kind of appeal to emotion is irrelevant to or distracting from the facts of the argument and encompasses several logical fallacies, including appeal to consequences, appeal to fear, appeal to flattery, appeal to pity, appeal to ridicule, appeal to spite, and wishful thinking.
An attitude "is a summary evaluation of an object of thought. An attitude object can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind." Attitudes include beliefs (cognition), emotional responses (affect) and behavioral tendencies. In the classical definition an attitude is persistent, while in more contemporary conceptualizations, attitudes may vary depending upon situations, context, or moods.
The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion. It is a delayed increase in the effect of a message that is accompanied by a discounting cue, typically being some negative connotation or lack of credibility in the message, while a positive message may evoke an immediate positive response which decays over time. The sleeper effect also refers to a delayed positive response that is maintained over time. The effect was first noticed among US Army soldiers exposed to army propaganda. It was hypothesized that over time the soldiers forgot that the message was propaganda. The effect has been widely studied but notoriously difficult to reproduce, leading to some doubt over its existence.
Social judgment theory (SJT) is a self-persuasion theory proposed, perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes. According to this theory, an individual weighs every new idea, comparing it with the individual's present point of view to determine where it should be placed on the attitude scale in an individual's mind. SJT is the subconscious sorting out of ideas that occurs at the instant of perception. The theory of Social Judgement attempts to explain why and how people have different reactions and responded toward the same information or issue. Social Judgment Theory can be used to improve the way people communicate with one another. The theory is also widely considered in persuasions. The Social Judgement Theory depends on the individual's position on a certain issue occurring. Depending on three elements Social Judgement Theory has, they are followed by their anchor, alternatives and ego-involvement.
Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion is a dual process theory describing the change of attitudes. The ELM was developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo in 1980. The model aims to explain different ways of processing stimuli, why they are used, and their outcomes on attitude change. The ELM proposes two major routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.
In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics, and increasingly in sociology through cultural analysis.
The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities.
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.
The Affect infusion model (AIM) is a theoretical model in the field of human psychology. Developed by social psychologist Joseph Paul Forgas in the early 1990s, it attempts to explain how affect impacts one's ability to process information. A key assertion of the AIM is that the effects of affect tend to be exacerbated in complex situations that demand substantial cognitive processing. In simpler words, as situations become more complicated and unanticipated, mood becomes more influential in driving evaluations and responses.
Rochelle Lynne "Shelly" Chaiken is an American social psychologist. She first received her BS from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1971 for mathematics. She later earned her MS and her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in social psychology. She was a professor of psychology at New York University, but is now retired.
Narrative transportation theory proposes that when people lose themselves in a story, their attitudes and intentions change to reflect that story. The mental state of narrative transportation can explain the persuasive effect of stories on people, who may experience narrative transportation when certain contextual and personal preconditions are met, as Green and Brock postulate for the transportation-imagery model. As Van Laer, de Ruyter, Visconti, and Wetzels elaborate further, narrative transportation occurs whenever the story receiver experiences a feeling of entering a world evoked by the narrative because of empathy for the story characters and imagination of the story plot.
Heuristics is the process by which humans use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions. Heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, organizations, and even machines use to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problems. Often this involves focusing on the most relevant aspects of a problem or situation to formulate a solution. While heuristic processes are used to find the answers and solutions that are most likely to work or be correct, they are not always right or the most accurate. Judgments and decisions based on heuristics are simply good enough to satisfy a pressing need in situations of uncertainty, where information is incomplete. In that sense they can differ from answers given by logic and probability.
In social psychology, the Yale attitude change approach is the study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. This approach to persuasive communications was first studied by Carl Hovland and his colleagues at Yale University during World War II. The basic model of this approach can be described as "who said what to whom": the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. According to this approach, many factors affect each component of a persuasive communication. The credibility and attractiveness of the communicator (source), the quality and sincerity of the message, and the attention, intelligence and age of the audience can influence an audience's attitude change with a persuasive communication. Independent variables include the source, message, medium and audience, with the dependent variable the effect of the persuasion.
In social psychology, the boomerang effect, also known as "reactance", refers to the unintended consequences of an attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead. It is sometimes also referred to as "the theory of psychological reactance", stating that attempts to restrict a person's freedom often produce an "anticonformity boomerang effect". In other words, the boomerang effect is a situation where people tend to pick the opposite of what something or someone is saying or doing because of how it is presented to them. Typically, the more aggressive something is presented, people would more than likely want to do the opposite. For example, if someone were to walk up to a yard with a sign saying "KEEP OFF LAWN" the person would be more likely to want to walk on the lawn because of the way they read the sign. If the sign read "please stay off my grass" people would be more likely to follow the directions.
The cognitive response model of persuasion locates the most direct cause of persuasion in the self-talk of the persuasion target, rather than the content of the message.
Self-persuasion is used to explain one aspect of social influence. This theory postulates that the receiver takes an active role in persuading himself or herself to change his or her attitude. Unlike the direct technique of Persuasion, Self-persuasion is indirect and entails placing people in situations where they are motivated to persuade themselves to change. More specifically what characterizes a self-persuasion situation is that no direct attempt is made to convince anyone of anything. Thus, with self-persuasion, people are convinced that the motivation for change has come from within, so the persuasion factors of another person's influence is irrelevant. Therefore, Self-persuasion is almost always a more powerful form of persuasion than the more traditional persuasion techniques. Self-Persuasion, also has an important influence in Social judgment theory, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cognitive Dissonance and Narrative paradigm.
Functional attitude theory (FAT) suggests that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions. Attitudes can be influential on many processes such as being utilitarian (useful), social, relating to values, or a reduction of cognitive dissonance. They can be beneficial and help people interact with the world. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956) and Katz (1960) separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served. This theory proposes that attitudes are held by individuals because they are important and integral to psychological functioning. The function of an attitude is more important than whether the attitude is accurate or correct.
References
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic Versus Systematic Information Processing and the Use of Source Versus Message Cues in Persuasion. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 39(5), 752-766. Retrieved from SocINDEX database.
↑ Chaiken, S., Liberman, A., & Eagly, A. (1989). "Heuristic and systematic processing within and beyond the persuasion context". In J. S. Veleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended Thought. New York: Guilford: 212–252.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
↑ Albarracin, D., Johnson, B. T., & Zanna, M. P. (2005). The handbook of attitudes. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
↑ Petty, R.E. & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986), Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. New York; Springer-Verlag
↑ Chaiken, S., & Trope, Y. (1999). Dual-process theories in social psychology . New York: Guilford Press.
↑ Dillard, James, and Michael Pfau. The persuasion handbook: developments in theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002. Print.
1 2 3 4 5 Chen, S., Duckworth, K., & Chaiken, S. (1999). Motivated Heuristic and Systematic Processing. Psychological Inquiry, 10(1), 44. Retrieved from SocINDEX database
↑ Simon, Herbert A. (1955). "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 69 (1): 99–118. doi:10.2307/1884852. JSTOR1884852.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Eagly, A.H. & Chaiken, S. (1993). Process theories of attitude formation and change: The elaboration likelihood and heuristic-systematic models. In A.H. Eagly & S. Chaiken, (Eds.), The psychology of attitudes. Orlando: Harcourt Brace: pp. 303-350.
↑ Wathen, C. N., & Burkell, J. (2002). Believe it or not: Factors influencing credibility on the Web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(2), 134–144
↑ Steginga, Suzanne K.; Occhipinti, Stefano (2004). "The Application of the Heuristic-Systematic Processing Model to Treatment Decision Making about Prostate Cancer". Med Decis Making. 24 (6): 573–583. doi:10.1177/0272989X04271044. PMID15534339. S2CID36170137.
↑ Griffin, E. A. (2006). A first look at communication theory (6th ed.) Boston, MA; McGraw Hill
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