Influencing Perceptions of Relevance

Abstract

People process information more thoroughly when they are motivated to do so by perceiving the topic to be personally relevant. Scholars, from Aristotle to present-day authors, have advised communicators to stress the importance of their topics to their audiences—the implication being that such invocations can increase an audience's perception of relevance. This assumption, however, was untested by previous research. In this study, the data from a pilot study and two subsequent experiments are combined in an attempt to determine if an audience's perceptions of relevance can be influenced by including content that stresses the relevance of the issue discussed in the message. The results of this study suggest that the manipulation of relevance perception is possible but that relevance may not be the only motivating factor.

Notes

¹For Experiment 1, a complete text of the dependent measures and the treatment messages are available from the author.