Fonseca, Ricardo Jorge Rodrigues Moita daBlascovich, JamesGarcia-Marques, Teresa2014-11-222014-11-222014Frontiers in Psychology, 5, Article 11701664-1078http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/3214This 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.engBiopsychosocial modelDual-processingPersuasionChallengeThreatjournal article10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01170