Cognition+as+Motivation

__**Need for Cognition as Motivation to Process **__
 * by Mike Butruce **

In this study Kirk Hallahan, a Journalism and Technical Communication professor at Colorado State University, proposes several hypotheses comparing people with a high need for cognition (NFC) when forming their opinions on media based publicity and advertising. In 1985 he took a random sample of 233 Gainesville, FL residents and using the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) we can analyze his results to find that most of his findings were consistent with the fore stated hypotheses (5). Using the ELM we can categorize the people into two subgroups; the ones with a higher NFC typically reflect the behavior of one who would tend to follow the central route, and those who have a lower NFC would use the peripheral route. This meaning that those who have a higher NFC decipher messages with careful scrutiny, and are harder to persuade while the other group is more apt to pay attention to the credibility of the source, the overall presentation, or maybe even a catchy slogan. Since professionals in especially advertising are so concerned with getting their message across to a target audience the results of this research can hold a sustainable weight.

One bias to this work that they withhold to the end is that you have to realize people with different NFC’s typically use media for different purposes. Those with lower NFC’s have a tendency to embrace media for entertainment or escape purposes whereas the rest use it to satisfy their intellectual needs (15). That fits in the ELM with figuring out which route on takes. In order to determine the extent one would like to elaborate on the topic depends on their motivation and ability. Motivational factors might apply to those with a lower NFC as they relate to the subject but do not necessarily have the cognitive ability to actually diagnose the argument at hand.

In order to effectively test his 6 hypotheses, Hallahan devised question sets to gain quantitative and qualitative answers from his subjects (20). By classifying all of those undergoing the test into either high or low NFC he was able to compare the results to interpret the differences between the groups. One important thing to do while testing the ELM is to make sure the questions are designed to have consistent results, for example when referring to the credibility of a particular message the subjects were asked subjective questions like “did the message seem trustworthy or not trustworthy” and “was the message believable or not believable” (17). Hallahan also devised different numerical grading scales for the subjects to use in analyzing the messages. By structuring the questions this way the answers are guaranteed to be consistent.

The last part of the study was to actually analyze the results. Surprisingly neither group had a distinct advantage on their ability to recall the message which disproved the first hypothesis that NFC was positively correlated to this. The second hypothesis was proven correct that NFC is related to the number of cognitive responses generated. Those with a higher NFC on average had a higher total number of thoughts per message and scrutinized them way more; they also generated a greater amount of non-product thoughts compared to those with a lower NFC. Support for the third and fourth hypotheses were found which suggested that NFC individuals would generate more negative thoughts and that NFC was negatively related to the attitudinal measures (14). The fifth one was disproven and did not show any correlation between NFC and the amount of media use, meaning that no matter your NFC users typically absorbed the same overall amount of media. The last hypothesis was supported that claimed the need for cognition is positively related to attitudes toward both the editorial and advertising content of media.

By using the ELM strategies to diagnose Kirk Hallahan’s study Need for Cognition as Motivation to Process Publicity and Advertising we were able to better understand the two categories of subjects, high and low NFC, by applying the central and peripheral routes. As well as underlying reasons for the results after looking into motivation and ability factors in reference to the routes. The last part was making sure we tested different scales for each set of questions which were done by grading the message effectiveness on a numerical value as well as with subjective answers to maintain consistency.

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