Browsing by Author "Blascovich, James"
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- Challenge and threat motivation : Effects on superficial and elaborative information processingPublication . Fonseca, Ricardo Jorge Rodrigues Moita da; Blascovich, James; Garcia-Marques, TeresaThis paper integrates the motivational states of challenge and threat within a dual processing perspective. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals experience a challenge state when individuals have sufficient resources to cope with the demands of a task (Blascovich eta, 1993). Because the experience of resource availability has been shown to be associated with superficial processing (Garcia-Marques and Mackie, 2007), we tested the hypothesis that challenge is associated with superficial processing in two persuasion experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that inducing attitudes of participants in a challenge state was not sensitive to the quality of arguments presented. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effect occurs even when task engagement, manipulated by the presence (vs. the absence) of a task observer (Blascovich et al., 1993), is high. The implications of these results for the biopsychosocial model model and the cognitive and motivational literature are discussed.
- Familiarity, challenge, and processing of persuasion messagesPublication . Garcia-Marques, Teresa; Fonseca, Ricardo Jorge Rodrigues Moita da; Blascovich, JamesThis article focuses on how familiarity moderates task engagement. Blascovich et al. (1993) have demonstrated that task familiarity generally evokes challenge motivation; that is, the experience of having sufficient resources to meet task demands. Garcia-Marques, Mackie, Claypool, and GarciaMarques (2013) have demonstrated that individuals attend less to details while performing familiar tasks thereby processing information more superficially. The relationship between these two effects was tested in two experiments including the assessment of both the physiological measures that index individuals’ motivational states and of the way in which individuals process information. Experiment 1 revealed that familiarity with a persuasive message independently activates both a physiological challenge response and reduces participants’ sensitivity to argument quality. Experiment 2 provided additional evidence that the two effects act independently by showing that social presence moderates the first effect but not the second.