Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

212 Understanding Intuitive Decision Making

Figure 5.1 uses a simple fl ow chart to represent how the perceptual fl uency heuristic can lead

to perceptual biases. Similar fl ow charts could represent how heuristics related to each of the

other fi ve cognitive processes in our model also lead to process-related biases. For perception,

irrelevant stimuli that are familiar, highly audible, highly legible, or otherwise easy to perceive

lead the audience to experience positive subjective feelings about those stimuli, such as liking

and certainty. The audience’s positive subjective feelings, in turn, lead them to give the irrelevant

stimuli undue value and weight and to place unwarranted confi dence in them. On the other

hand, relevant stimuli that are less familiar, less audible, less legible, or otherwise diffi cult to per-

ceive lead the audience to experience negative subjective feelings about them, such as disliking

and uncertainty. The audience’s negative subjective feelings, in turn, lead the audience to unduly

discount the relevant stimuli.

The intuitive-mode processes take place every time one of the six major cognitive processes

in decision making has been completed. The information on which the intuitive processes act is

not content information (i.e., what is perceived, attended to, comprehended, etc.) but is processing

information (i.e., the ease or diffi culty with which something is perceived, attended to, compre-

hended, and so on).

Brain Regions Activated. Intuitive-mode processes are a form of metacognition, 49 which is the

subjective experience people have of their cognitive processes.^50 Typically, the only time audience

members become consciously aware of an intuitive process is when processing becomes diffi cult.

When that happens, the metacognitive experience of disfl uency may activate rational-mode pro-

cesses.^51 Neuroscientists fi nd that disfl uency, or the subjective diffi culty of processing information,

triggers the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region located below the dorsomedial pre-

frontal cortex (see Figure 3.5 , p. 108).^52 The ACC acts as an alarm that activates areas in the frontal

lobe responsible for rational-mode thinking.^53

Legibility Effects: The Intuitive Appeal of Easy-to-See Messages

Audience members are more likely to believe highly legible messages than less legible ones. For

instance, they are more likely to judge a statement to be true when it is shown in colors that are easy

to read against the background color. In a study of legibility effects, readers were asked to quickly

FIGURE 5.1 Intuitive Processes Leading to Perceptual Biases

Irrelevant stimuli given

undue value, weight,

and confidence

Yes

Processing

information

No

Content

information Stimuli

easy to

perceive?

Feelings of

disliking

and

uncertainty

Feelings of

liking and

certainty

Perception

Irrelevant stimuli
easy to perceive
Relevant stimuli
not easy to perceive

Relevant stimuli

unduly discounted