Purpose
Traditionally, it has been held that strong attitudes are a result of the conscious cognitive process of elaboration where one engages in effortful issue-relevant thinking. The purpose of this study is to show that attitude strength can follow from processes not just limited to elaboration – as a function of certain embodied states. This study examines bodily manipulations that could alter perceptions about the quality of the information describing a target (e.g. notion of “hard/soft” evidence), and, find that such an embodiment leads one to have strong attitudes toward the target object. This study proposes an attitude-rehearsal-based mechanism to explain the phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach
This study have relied on lab experiments as a methodology – undergraduate students and American residents served as participants. This study have conducted a pre-registered study as well.
Findings
In the work, the study shows that strong attitudes can result from processes not just limited to elaboration, as a function of certain embodied states. This paper examines bodily manipulations that could alter perceptions about the quality of information describing the target (e.g. notion of “hard vs soft”; “converging vs diverging” information), and, find that such an embodiment leads one to have strong attitudes toward the target. This study consistently observed that the bodily manipulations influence attitude accessibility, a direct and operational indicator of attitude strength. This study further validates an attitude-rehearsal-based mechanism to explain the observed phenomenon.
Originality/value
While much work has investigated the impact of embodiment on attitudes, little attention has been paid to whether, and, how embodied states can impact the “strength” of the attitude without impacting the attitude itself – to the knowledge, this paper is the first to document this. Moreover, traditionally, it has been held that strong attitudes are a result of the conscious cognitive process of elaboration where one engages in effortful issue-relevant thinking. This study however shows that attitude strength can follow from processes not just limited to elaboration – as a function of certain embodied states.
