Scarcity claims elicit extreme responding to persuasive messages: Role of cognitive elaboration

Opposing accounts of the persuasiveness of messages accompanied by scarcity information (rarity) were compared: heuristic-reduced thinking versus elaborative-increase thinking. In two experiments, 275 college students identified themselves as having a novel attribute (picture-mindedness [PM]/situation-mindedness or situation-mindedness [SMI]) that was designated as rare or common and that persuasive messages portrayed as either positive or negative. The results replicated Ditto and Jemmott-rarity bd to more extreme attitudes toward the focal attribute. However, thought-listings and path analyses favored elaborative rather than heuristic processing. In further demonstration that extreme attitudinal responding to scarcity information was mediated by thoughtful processing, Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 under low, bat not high, cognitive load.