Wang Mo, Chen Yiwei
Psychology Department, Bowling Green State University, OH 43403, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2006 Sep;21(3):581-9. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.21.3.581.
This study examined the influences of cognitive resources and motivation on how young and older adults process different quantities of persuasive arguments. In the first experiment session, both young and older adults rated their attitudes toward marijuana legalization and capital punishment. After a week, they read either 3 or 9 similar-quality arguments supporting marijuana legalization and capital punishment. Half of participants were assigned to the high-involvement condition (i.e., told that they were going to discuss the arguments later with the experimenter) and the other half were assigned to the low-involvement condition (i.e., given no instructions). After reading the arguments, participants rated their attitudes toward those 2 social issues again. Highly involved young adults changed their attitudes regardless of the quantity of arguments, whereas lowly involved young adults' attitude change was influenced by the argument quantity. Older adults in both high-involvement and low-involvement conditions changed their attitudes according to the argument quantity. Working memory was found to mediate the age effects on attitude change. This finding demonstrated the importance of a cognitive mechanism in accounting for age differences in attitude change.
本研究考察了认知资源和动机对年轻人和老年人如何处理不同数量的说服性论据的影响。在第一个实验环节中，年轻人和老年人都对他们对大麻合法化和死刑的态度进行了评分。一周后，他们阅读了3条或9条质量相似的支持大麻合法化和死刑的论据。一半的参与者被分配到高参与度条件组（即被告知他们稍后将与实验者讨论这些论据），另一半被分配到低参与度条件组（即没有给出任何指示）。阅读完论据后，参与者再次对他们对这两个社会问题的态度进行评分。高度参与的年轻人无论论据数量多少都会改变他们的态度，而低参与度的年轻人的态度改变则受到论据数量的影响。高参与度和低参与度条件下的老年人都根据论据数量改变了他们的态度。研究发现工作记忆在年龄对态度改变的影响中起中介作用。这一发现证明了一种认知机制在解释态度改变中的年龄差异方面的重要性。
