The persuasiveness of message frames. Under what conditions of issue Involvement, processing manner, mood and need for cognition are people more persuaded by message frames?

Abstract

The current study presents an experiment in which both issue involvement and frame are manipulated. After presenting a stimulus, measurements were done on processing manner, intention and attitude (to measure the persuasiveness of the frame), mood and need for cognition. The results obtained in this study suggest that both gain and loss frames could evoke systematic processing. This contrasts with previous studies, which generally accept that loss frames stimulate systematic processing. Two other unexpected findings of this study are that low involvement leads to systematic processing, and that systematic processing shows signs of a better persuasiveness in terms of attitude when a gain frame is used. Moreover people are more strongly persuaded in terms of intention when gain frames are used, and, when they process information heuristically, regardless of their level of involvement. Thus, contrasting results were obtained. As a result, it remains relevant to explore the conditions under which framing effects appear.