The impact of attitudes on memory: An affair to remember.

Abstract

Many theories of the effects of attitudes on memory for attitude-relevant information would predict that attitudinally congenial information should be more memorable than uncongenial information. Yet, this meta-analysis showed that this congeniality effect is inconsistent across the experiments in this research literature and small when these effects are aggregated. The tendency of the congeniality effect to decrease over the years spanned by this literature appeared to reflect the weaker methods used in the earlier studies. The effect was stronger in 2 kinds of earlier experiments that may be tinged with artifact: those in which the coding of recall measures was not known to be blind and those that used recognition measures that were not corrected for bias. Nonetheless, several additional characteristics of the studies moderated the congeniality effect and suggested that both attitude structure and motivation to process attitude-relevant information are relevant to understanding the conditions under which people have superior memory for attitudinally congenial or uncongenial information.

The Sleeper Effect in Persuasion: A Meta-Analytic Review.

“…In line with other meta-analyses (i.e., Eagly et al, 1999;B. T. Johnson & Eagly, 1989), we estimated the recipients' prior knowledge on the issue (little or none, moderate, high) from the characteristics of the issue or the researchers' comments in the Method section of the report.…”

“…T. Johnson & Eagly, 1989), we estimated the recipients' prior knowledge on the issue (little or none, moderate, high) from the characteristics of the issue or the researchers' comments in the Method section of the report. Further, to capture the recipients' motivation to think about the communication, we coded the outcome relevance of the issues covered in messages, following previous metaanalyses (e.g., Eagly et al, 1999;B. T. Johnson & Eagly, 1989;Wood & Quinn, 2003).…”

“…These procedures allowed us (a) to identify the conditions under which the sleeper effect is most likely to occur and (b) to derive overall estimates of the effect. Furthermore, the review permitted the estimation of decay and stability in attitude change, which, to our knowledge, has never been done across different studies of persuasion (for meta-analyses on other attitudinal phenomena, see Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, & Shaw-Barnes, 1999; B. T. Johnson & Eagly, 1989;Wood & Quinn, 2003). Finally, this meta-analysis is among the first to consider predictions coming from a variety of conceptualizations, including models of persuasion that specify memory processes, as well as more recent analyses of the factors that increase the influence of message arguments and cues-namely the heuristic-systematic model (for reviews, see Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; and the elaboration-likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; see also .…”

On the one hand, and on the other: The effect of embodying balance and uncertainty orientation on the confirmation bias

“…On the other hand, inconsistent information results in an expectancy violation which is immediately salient and results in increased elaboration if viewed as a threat on the self, as discussed above. A meta-analysis (Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, & Shaw-Barnes, 1999) examining this process found evidence for both, and although memory was slightly improved for congenial information, the studies were quite mixed in their conclusions. Further analysis revealed a number of moderating variables.…”

“…Whether people are more likely to remember consistent or inconsistent information is still in contention (Strangor & McMillan, 1992;Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, & Shaw-Barnes, 1999). On the one hand, consistent information fits into an individual's schema and is therefore more likely to be integrated and more likely to be recalled (Oswald & Grosjean, 2004).…”