The Effect of Message Credibility, Need for Cognitive Closure, and Information Sufficiency on Thought-Induced Attitude Change

Self-generated thought has been shown to have a significant impact on attitude change. Merely thinking about an attitude can result in more extreme attitudes. Although research in this area has investigated several moderating factors, most of the research looks at constraints that attenuate but do not reverse the effect (depolarization). The current research investigates source effects as a depolarizing variable while testing two additional moderating variables. The results provide important new insights into self-generated persuasion. Source effects can result in polarizing effects if the source is credible but depolarizing effects if the source is less credible (experiment 1). Further, thought-induced attitude change depends on varying levels of need for cognitive closure (experiment 2 and experiment 3) and information sufficiency (experiment 3)