Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Aids to Audience Decision Making 179

Audiences tend to discount or ignore any comparative information they have to memorize,

infer, or transform.^376 When audience members are aware that comparative information about an

alternative’s attributes is missing, they often treat that missing information as a reason to reject that

option. Thus, they are more inclined to reject alternatives about which they know less than to

reject options about which they know more.^377 When comparison shopping, consumers tend to

interpret missing attribute values in a way that supports the purchase of the option that is superior

on the common attributes.^378 At other times, audience members make decisions without making

the necessary comparisons because they are not aware that comparative information is missing.^379

For more on how missing slot values bias audience decisions, see Chapter 5 pp. 238–239.

Slot Values for Each Alternative in Numeric Form

Although audiences mentally convert cardinal numbers into ordinal numbers or scale values prior to

making comparisons, they integrate or combine information more accurately and effi ciently when

comparative information is expressed in numeric rather than verbal form.^380 When expert recruit-

ers screen résumé profi les—résumés with numeric ratings of each résumé element—as opposed to

actual résumés, their judgments are more predictable and there is higher agreement among them.

Résumé profi les simplify the recruiters’ task by having third-party raters substitute numeric values

(e.g., 2.0 on a 4-point scale) for the verbal descriptions in the actual résumés (e.g., “Career Objective:

To pursue a career in which I can use my marketing and management skills to actively participate as

a team member”). Real-world résumé screening, on the other hand, involves the more complex task

of fi rst determining attribute values before combining those values into judgments.^381

When consumers are given numeric values for product attributes, they make more attri-

bute-based comparisons than when they are given qualitative information about those attributes.^382

Conversely, when attribute values are represented as words instead of numbers, consumers make

more alternative-based comparisons and use more noncompensatory choice rules to integrate the

information they fi nd.^383 Numeric information helps audience members make better trade-offs.

It also encourages them to demand multicriteria arguments to aid their decision-making process.

Without numeric information, audience members are often swayed by overly simplistic arguments

when faced with confl icts of choice.^384

Although audiences prefer to receive information about probabilities in numeric form, they

prefer to use words (e.g., doubtful, likely ) to express probabilities to others.^385 Occasionally, words or

a combination of numbers and words may prove optimal for decision making. For example, con-

sumers who were asked to choose between two health maintenance organizations (HMOs) on the

basis of a bar chart gave the numerical ratings (48% versus 56%) more weight when the qualitative

verbal scale, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent, was added to the chart (see Figure 4.4).^386

0255075100

HMO B

HMO A

Poor Fair Good Excellent

48%

56%

FIGURE 4.4 Consumers’ Overall Satisfaction With Two HMOs

Source: Adapted from Finucane et al. (2003)