COGNITIVE RESPONSES TO AIDS INFORMATION - THE EFFECTS OF ISSUE INVOLVEMENT AND MESSAGE APPEAL

In a within-subjects design (n = 30), a sampling of rational and emotional public service announcements related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was tested for memorability. Subjects' cognitive involvement with the issue of AIDS was measured with a four-item scale (alpha =.86). Analysis of variance indicated a significant main effect of appeal (p <.05), emotional messages being more memorable, and a significant Appeal x Involvement interaction (p <.05). Subjects with low involvement remembered emotional messages better than they remembered rational messages. However, highly involved subjects exhibited no appeal-related memory differences. Emotional messages were also significantly more effective in stimulating a desire to learn more about AIDS (p <.01). These results extend and lend partial support to the elaboration likelihood model and illustrate the importance of issue involvement as a audience segmentation characteristic. © 1990, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.