We hypothesized that affective-based attitudes would be more susceptible to rational arguments and, alternatively cognitive-based attitudes would be more susceptible to emotional arguments. Three studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Study 1, the participants' attitudes about 6 common beverages were classified as affectively or cognitively based, and then either rational or emotional counterattitudinal arguments were presented. In Study 2, naturalistic emotional and rational arguments in the form of advertisements were presented. In Study 3, affective and cognitive attitudes about analytic problems were created, and then either rational or emotional counterattitudinal arguments were presented. The expected patterns of attitude change and cognitive responses were obtained in each of the studies.

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This study examined the influence of framing and issue involvement on the intentions of participants to perform safe driving behaviors. It was hypothesized that when participants were involved with the issue, gain messages would increase intentions to perform safe driving behaviors more than would loss messages. To examine this hypothesis, participants were classified as either being high or low in involvement, and then were required to read either a gain or a loss message promoting a particular safe‐driving behavior. After reading the message, the participants' agreement with the message, cognitive and affective responses to the message, and intentions to perform the behavior were recorded. The results supported the hypothesis.

This study investigated the effects of cognitive capacity and suspicion on veracity judgments. It was hypothesized that under low suspicion conditions, truth bias would be more pronounced when participants had low cognitive capacity than when participants had high cognitive capacity. One hundred and seven participants viewed presentations of people either truthfully or deceptively describing a series of pictures. Prior to the presentations, a short description designed to increase suspicion was read to half the participants. Participants viewed half of the presentations while working on arithmetic problems (low capacity) and the other half while not working on arithmetic problems (high capacity). Following each presentation, the participants were required to evaluate the communicator's performance on a number of scales and indicate whether the communicator was actually describing the picture. The results partially supported the hypothesis.

It was proposed that thinking about disease-detection behavior would lead to more negative moods than thinking about health-promotion behavior. Detection behaviors produce more negative moods because they can threaten perceptions of good health. In a laboratory study, the initial mood states of 121 participants recruited from undergraduates and the general community were measured using a neutral-words rating procedure. Then participants were randomly assigned to think about performing a disease-detection behavior or a health-promotion behavior. Subsequently, they wrote down their responses to the behavior and evaluated these as either positive, negative, or neutral. Finally, the participant's mood was remeasured using both a neutral words-rating procedure and a more traditional bipolar rating measure. Results indicated that thought about disease-detection behavior produced more negative affective responses and more negative mood change than did thought about health-promotion behavior.