Richard E Petty

The Ohio State University | OSU · Department of Psychology

One of the most used self-administered instruments to assess persecutory delusions is the Persecutory Ideation Questionnaire (PIQ). Individual differences in PIQ scores are important because they predict the severity of symptoms associated with psychosis-related disorders. The current research demonstrates that PIQ is associated with two new outcom...

The present research examined whether consideration of individuals' certainty in their holism can enhance the ability of this individual difference to predict how they respond to contradiction‐relevant outcomes. Across four studies, participants first completed a standardized measure of holistic‐analytic thinking. Then, they rated how certain they...

Political extremism varies across people and contexts, but which beliefs will a person support through extreme actions? We propose that ambivalent attitudes, despite reducing normative political actions like voting, increase support for extreme political actions. We demonstrate this hypothesized reversal using dozens of measures across six studies...

Contrary to common beliefs, sometimes downplaying or even undermining one’s case can enhance impact, especially for people with strong attitudes. Across four studies ( N = 1,548), we demonstrate that the placement of the undermining information within a two-sided message matters. By manipulating message order within a two-sided message, Study 1 sho...

The book begins by overviewing the timeline of the pandemic and how it affected life, followed by a discussion of the ethics and legal aspects of the pandemic. It then discusses behaviors during the pandemic (e.g., social distancing, protesting) before discussing experiences during the pandemic (e.g., prejudice, well-being, stress, joblessness, fam...

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions¹, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process². In April 2020, an influential paper³ proposed 19 policy recommendations (‘claims’) detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandem...

Three experiments tested how low versus high pitch generated from sources beyond a message communicator can affect reliance on thoughts and influence recipients’ attitudes. First, participants wrote positive or negative thoughts about an exam proposal (Experiments 1, 2) or their academic abilities (Experiment 3). Then, pitch from the message recipi...

The volume Divided: Open-Mindedness and Dogmatism in a Polarized World provides a current scientific understanding of open-mindedness and dogmatism, illuminates the nature and causes of polarization, and provides clues regarding how one might attempt to reduce pernicious forms of polarization. To do so, this volume brings together a diverse group o...

The contemporary political domain is characterized by widespread negativity. Much of this negativity is thought to be generated by strong partisans, who overall express more anger, animosity, and bias than weaker partisans. The present research proposes, however, that self-categorized political independents hold preferences based more in negativity...

The volume Divided: Open-Mindedness and Dogmatism in a Polarized World provides a current scientific understanding of open-mindedness and dogmatism, illuminates the nature and causes of polarization, and provides clues regarding how one might attempt to reduce pernicious forms of polarization. To do so, this volume brings together a diverse group o...

De Neys makes some useful points regarding dual-process models, but his critique ignores highly relevant theories of judgment from the persuasion literature. These persuasion models predate and often circumvent many of the criticisms he makes of the dual-process approaches he covers. Furthermore, the persuasion models anticipated some of the correc...

This research examines how people can defend themselves from the threat associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic by relying more on their recently generated thoughts (unrelated to the threat), thus leading those thoughts to have a greater impact on judgement through a meta‐cognitive process of thought validation. Study 1 revealed that the impact of th...

Although two people could both enact similar forms of hypocrisy, one person might be judged as more hypocritical than the other. The present research advances a novel, theoretical explanation for a paradigmatic instance of this: the increased hypocrisy ascribed to contradicting a morally (vs. nonmorally) based attitude. In contrast to prior explana...

Many constructs in psychological science are highly abstract and considered sources of uncertainty in published research findings, which has yielded dissatisfaction as manifested in two seemingly opposing trends. First, many researchers have moved away from constructs toward specific observables and effects. Second, others have moved toward constru...

People generally intend to act more on beliefs and attitudes about which they have greater certainty. However, we introduce a boundary condition to the positive association between certainty and behavioral intentions—behavioral extremity. Uncertainty about a threatening issue like COVID‐19 can be disconcerting, and we propose that uncertain people...

Recent research has identified two aspects of the need to evaluate (NE) that are focused on interpersonal contexts: NE-expressing and NE-learning. Given that online word of mouth (WOM) is inherently interpersonal, we explore whether these two scales can predict consumers’ likelihood of creating and seeking online WOM. We find that high NE-expressin...

This article presents self-validation theory (SVT) as a framework predicting when mental contents guide performance. First, we illustrate how confidence can validate people's thoughts (goals, beliefs, identity) increasing and decreasing performance, depending on what thoughts are validated. This first section reviews examples of validation processe...

Attitude strength (what makes attitudes durable and impactful) has become an important topic in the domain of social influence. We review three areas in which the traditional view of attitude strength has been modified or updated since the publication of Petty and Krosnick's 1995 edited book on the topic. First, although it was widely assumed that...

Research on persuasion has shown that for attitudes to change people need to take into consideration not only the thoughts message recipients generate in response to proposals but also how people think about their own thoughts (metacognition). In the present research, we introduce a new perspective for improving outgroup attitudes focused on the di...

Background: Instruments designed to assess individual differences in predispositions towards vaccination are useful in predicting vaccination-related outcomes. Despite their importance, there is relatively little evidence regarding the conditions under which these instruments are more predictive. The current research was designed to improve the ab...

Prior research showed that people holding attitudes on relatively moral topics became more open to two- rather than one-sided messages as the moral basis of their attitudes increased. Across three studies (N = 963), we extend this finding to relatively non-moral topics by demonstrating that two-sided messages can encourage people with strong attitu...

Social and behavioral science research proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting the substantial increase in influence of behavioral science in public health and public policy more broadly. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of 742 scientific articles on human behavior during COVID-19. Two independent teams evaluated 19 sub...

This collection of first-person accounts from legendary social psychologists tells the stories behind the science and offers unique insight into the development of the field from the 1950s to the present. One pillar, the grandson of a slave, was inspired by Kenneth Clark. Yet when he entered his PhD program in the 1960s, he was told that race was n...

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is a general persuasion theory that can help health communicators anticipate how their messages will affect recipients' attitudes and behavior. The ELM proposes that the degree to which people think carefully about (or elaborate on) a persuasive message determines its effectiveness. When people process informa...

People exhibit a general unwillingness to engage others on social issues for which they disagree (e.g., political elections, police funding, vaccine mandates, etc.), a phenomenon that contributes to the political polarization vexing societies today. Previous research has largely attributed this unwillingness to the perception that such counterattit...

Objective: The present research examined whether trait aggressiveness was more associated with aggressive behavior in relevant situations (playing a high-violence video game as compared to a lowviolence video game) and when participants had an agent (perpetrator) rather than a victim role. Method: Two studies were conducted with female undergraduat...

From vaccination refusal to climate change denial, antiscience views are threatening humanity. When different individuals are provided with the same piece of scientific evidence, why do some accept whereas others dismiss it? Building on various emerging data and models that have explored the psychology of being antiscience, we specify four core bas...

Background: The present study analyzes how attitudes can polarize after reminders of death in the context of persuasion, and proposes that a meta-cognitive process (i.e., self-validation) can serve as a compensatory coping mechanism to deal with mortality salience. Method: Participants were first asked to read either a strong or a weak resume of...

The present research examined the role of metacognitive confidence in understanding to what extent people’s valenced thoughts guide their performance in academic settings. First, students were asked to engage in positive or negative thinking about exams in their major area of study (Study 1) or about themselves (Studies 2 and 3). The valence of the...

Self-validation theory (SVT) is introduced and presented as a series of six postulates. The core notion of SVT is that thoughts become more consequential for judgment and action as the perceived validity of the thoughts is increased. Instead of focusing on the objective accuracy of thoughts, self-validation research focuses on a subjective sense th...

This article unpacks the basic mechanisms by which paralinguistic features communicated through the voice can affect evaluative judgments and persuasion. Special emphasis is placed on exploring the rapidly emerging literature on vocal features linked to appraisals of confidence (e.g., vocal pitch, intonation, speech rate, loudness, etc.), and their...

Although attitudes are often considered positive or negative evaluations, people often have both positive and negative associations with a target object or issue, and when people are ambivalent, they are typically presumed to find the experience aversive because they are motivated to hold clear, univalent attitudes. Cross‐cultural research, however...

There are many ways consumers' morality has been shown to impact their marketplace behavior. We present a theoretical framework for how to conceive of and study marketplace morality in an attempt to unify these disparate findings. First, we describe two common conceptualizations of marketplace morality: (a) the attribute‐level approach (where a pro...

COVID-19 mitigation strategies have largely relied on persuading populations to adopt behavioural changes, so it is critical to understand how such persuasive efforts can be made more effective. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion allows for the integration of a variety of seemingly disparate effects into one overarching framework....

Background: The Problematic Pornography Use Scale (PPUS) was originally designed to help predicting pornography consumption. Despite the frequency with which this scale is used in the scientific literature, there is still relatively little evidence regarding the predictive validity of this important instrument. This current research introduces a c...

We report seven studies that introduce and validate two unique aspects of evaluation that supplement the original Need to Evaluate (NE) scale (Jarvis & Petty, 1996). Whereas the original scale focused on the tendency to have attitudes, the two new scales focus on the tendencies to learn and express attitudes. Although the new scales are correlated...

This research examined the effect of perceived elaboration on the relationship between attitudes and prosocial behavior. Study 1 revealed that group fusion was more predictive of pro-group behavior (donation to in-group members) when perceived elaboration was high rather than low. In Study 2, attitudes toward helping were more likely to guide proso...

The successful impact of healthy eating campaigns often depends on the extent to which messages are effective in changing attitudes and behaviors over time. The present work proposes that healthy eating campaigns can be designed taking into consideration elaboration and validation processes so that the degree of attitude change is maximally influen...

Practitioners and researchers interested in designing wise interventions often recommend increasing personal involvement to be successful. Early research demonstrated that personal involvement increases elaboration leading to more persuasion for strong arguments, but to reduced persuasion if the arguments presented are specious. In most prior work,...

To better understand the seemingly inconsistent influence of consumers' morality on their marketplace behaviors, we apply insights from research on attitude moralization to the consumer domain. That is, rather than predefining certain products as “moral,” this approach treats morality as the extent to which individual consumers metacognitively perc...

People often form attitudes based on a mixture of positive and negative information. This can result in mixed evaluative reactions that are associated with feeling conflicted and undecided (i.e., felt ambivalence). In the present research, we examined whether expectations of receiving mixed information could dampen felt ambivalence compared to situ...

The present research demonstrates for the first time that the very same emotion can influence information processing and persuasion depending on the appraisal of the emotion that is highlighted. Across studies, we predicted and found that anger, surprise, and awe can each lead to relatively higher or lower levels of information processing depending...

Cleansing (separation) inductions reduce the impact of negative and positive reactions, whereas connection manipulations magnify them. We suggest that grounded procedures can produce these effects by affecting the perceived validity of thoughts. In accord with the self-validation theory, we also note the importance of considering how moderators, su...

This research demonstrates that two- versus one-sided counterattitudinal messages can encourage people with a strong moral basis for their attitudes to be more open to contrary positions. Studies 1A/B demonstrated that the interaction between moral basis and message sidedness was present not just for a controversial issue with balanced views in soc...

The current research demonstrates that posting online reviews can influence the evaluations of the individual posting the review. Across four studies, we examine the impact of individuals’ naive theories about the meaning of their own posting on subsequent attitudes. In these experiments, individuals were assigned to write either positive or negati...

Identity fusion is a strong feeling of connectedness that is capable of predicting willingness to self‐sacrifice. The current research explores whether considering the extremity of the situation improves the ability of identity fusion to predict willingness to engage in life self‐sacrifice. Participants first reported their level of identity fusion...

This research provides a novel analysis of the impact of hope and hopelessness on judgment, examining how they influence the use of judgment‐relevant thoughts. Hope and hopelessness are two ends of an emotional continuum for which the confidence and pleasantness appraisals are mismatched. That is, hope is appraised as a pleasant state that is assoc...

One of the most reliable and impactful methods for enhancing a persuasive appeal is to match an aspect of the proposal (i.e., its content, source, or the setting in which it is delivered) to an aspect of the consumer receiving it. This personalized matching in persuasion (also called tailoring, targeting, customizing, or personalizing) comprises a...

Some political attitudes and opinions shift and fluctuate over time whereas others remain fairly stable. Prior research on attitude strength has documented several features of attitudes that predict their temporal stability. The present analysis focuses on two of them: attitudinal ambivalence and certainty. Each of these variables has received mixe...

It is well established that the physical attractiveness of the source of a message can influence recipients' attitudes about the message proposal. The current research is the first to examine if attractiveness is also capable of affecting attitude confidence and resistance to change. Experiment 1 revealed that an attractive source decreased recipie...

The coronavirus pandemic has raised pressing questions about effective public health communication. Prior research has shown a persuasive advantage of arguments emphasizing a behavior’s benefits for others’ health compared to benefits for the recipients. We suggest that other-focused (vs. self-focused) messages function more as moral arguments and...

The coronavirus pandemic has raised pressing questions about effective public health communication. Prior research has shown a persuasive advantage of arguments emphasizing a behavior’s benefits for others’ health, compared to benefits for the recipients. We suggest that other-focused (vs. self-focused) messages function more as moral arguments and...

In recent years, psychology has wrestled with the broader implications of disappointing rates of replication of previously demonstrated effects. This article proposes that many aspects of this pattern of results can be understood within the classic framework of four proposed forms of validity: statistical conclusion validity, internal validity, con...

The present research shows that preparedness increases reliance on thoughts irrelevant to the domain of preparation. In Study 1, participants wrote positive or negative thoughts about a tuition increase proposal. Next, participants were primed with words related to preparedness or positive control words and reported their evaluations of the initial...

The certainty with which people hold their attitudes is an important consideration because attitudes held with certainty better predict judgment and behavior than attitudes held with doubt. However, little is known about whether people's assessments of their certainty reflect a disposition to hold attitudes with confidence. Adapting methods used to...

Can people improve their lives by smiling more, trying to have a better posture, and by thinking about good memories? Can individuals become more successful by deliberatively engaging in positive actions and thoughts? Do people feel better by following recommendations from naïve psychology? In the present article we discuss these questions, noting...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive, global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behavior change and poses significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences are critical for optimizing pandemic response. Here we review relevant research from a diversity of research areas rel...

This research finds evidence for reliable individual differences in people’s perceived attitude stability that predict the actual stability of their attitudes over time. Study 1 examines the reliability and factor structure of an 11-item Personal Attitude Stability Scale (PASS). Study 2 establishes test–retest reliability for the PASS over a 5-week...

Attitudes toward hiring people with disabilities are becoming critical for promoting diversity and egalitarianism within organizations. The few interventions designed to promote positive attitudes toward people with disabilities have relied on changing either the direction and/or the amount of thoughts people generate with regard to this discrimina...

We review work from persuasion science relevant to reducing prejudiced attitudes. We begin by introducing the idea that the thoughts people generate – their number and valence – are critical for understanding when responding to persuasive attempts will result in egalitarian attitudes. A focus on thinking highlights the importance of understanding s...

Discussions of the difference between biased and fake news were prevalent after the 2016 United States Presidential election. However, within social psychology, and especially the psychology of persuasion, perceptions of source bias have been largely overlooked or conflated with untrustworthiness. In the current work, we sought to demonstrate that...

Studies on bias correction have often used blatant inductions to motivate people to reduce the mental impact of perceived biases. In the current research, we test a relatively unexplored, subtle way of inducing bias correction based on the activation of different calculative mindsets. Across two studies, participants were exposed to an advertisemen...

Identity fusion is a powerful feeling of connectedness to one’s group. The current research explores whether measuring certainty in identity fusion improves its ability to predict extreme pro-group outcomes. Across three studies, participants reported their level of identity fusion with their country and their certainty in responses to the scale (p...

This research introduces a new approach for separating people from their thoughts by anticipating selling them to others. Participants were asked to write down either positive or negative thoughts about fast food on different pieces of paper. Then, participants were randomly assigned to role-play the part of either potential buyers or sellers for a...

Previous work has reliably demonstrated that when people experience more subjective ambivalence about an attitude object, their attitudes have less impact on strength-related outcomes such as attitude-related thinking, judging, or behaving. However, previous research has not considered whether the amount of perceived knowledge a person has about th...

When people perceive their thoughts and judgements as unduly affected by some biasing factor (in themselves or in the judgement setting), they often attempt to avoid or remove those biases. Theories describe different psychological mechanisms guiding these efforts. We review the primary theories of bias correction and focus on the use of naive theo...

Anecdotally, attributions that others are biased pervade many domains. Yet, research examining the effects of perceptions of bias is sparse, possibly due to some prior researchers conflating bias with untrustworthiness. We sought to demonstrate that perceptions of bias and untrustworthiness are separable and have independent effects. The current wo...

When crafting a message, communicators may turn to moral rhetoric as a means of influencing an audience’s opinion. In the present research, we tested whether the persuasiveness of explicitly moral counterattitudinal messages depends on how much people have already based their attitudes on moral considerations. A survey of the literature suggests se...

The history of attitudes research can be organized into three main sections covering attitude definition and measurement, attitude-behavior relationships, and attitude change. First, an evaluation of the history of attitude measurement reveals three relatively distinct phases: an early phase in which the classic direct self-report procedures were d...

This article describes the basic mechanisms by which the nonverbal behavior of a communicator can influence recipients’ attitudes and persuasion. We review the literature on classic variables related to persuasive sources (e.g., physical attractiveness, credibility, and power), as well as research on mimicry and facial expressions of emotion, and b...

Research on self-talk has found that what athletes say to themselves influences their performance in sport settings. This experiment analyzed the relationship between positive and negative self-talk and physical performance in light of another variable: overt head movements. Participants were randomly assigned to first generate and then listen to e...

Research on aggression has benefitted from using individual‐difference measures to predict aggressive behavior. Research on meta‐cognition has recently identified that the predictive utility of individual‐difference inventories can be improved by considering the certainty with which people hold their self‐views. Merging these two frameworks, the pr...

Placebo effects are the measurable psychological, biological, and behavioral changes that can result from expecting a treatment to be effective. Here we argue that not all expectations are created equally and there is much to learn by clarifying the psychological processes that underlie the expectations that cause placebo effects. It is proposed th...

Although Zwaan et al. argue that original researchers should provide a replication recipe that provides great specificity about the operational details of one's study, I argue that it may be as important to provide a recipe that allows replicators to conduct a study that matches the original in as many conceptual details as possible (i.e., an exact...

Three experiments examined whether perceiving thoughts as coming from internal versus external origins are more impactful on attitudes. Participants generated either positive or negative thoughts about different attitude objects, including different diets, and plastic surgery. Then, participants were induced to think that their thoughts came from t...