NEED FOR COGNITION AND THE EFFECTS OF REPEATED EXPRESSION ON ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY AND EXTREMITY

An abundance of empirical data supports the notion that an attitude's accessibility is a key determinant of the attitude's likelihood of influencing judgment and behavior (see Fazio, forthcoming, for a review). Repeated expression of an attitude has been shown to enhance attitude accessibility, but recent findings suggest that attitude polarization is another possible consequence of this procedure. We conducted a study to determine if these polarization and accessibility effects might be partially mediated by increases in attitude-relevant thought. Consistent with this reasoning, subjects high in their need for cognition (NFC) showed both greater polarization and greater accessibility increases than did low NFC subjects.