Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

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
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