Targeted speech is ubiquitous; it emanates from our televisions, radios, books, newspapers, magazines, and even interpersonal dialogue. Consumers of everything from shampoo to politics are used to being targeted, though perhaps not always aware of the consequences. Consumer behavior research shows that targeting is an effective tool in persuasion, influencing attitudes and behaviors. But just how targeting exerts its power over human decision making is unknown and the focus of this dissertation.;In a three-tiered study triangulating evidence from behavior, attention, and physiology, we explore the nature of felt-targetedness, or the perception of being an intended receiver, and how it impacts information processing during exposure to a persuasive message. Twenty adult participants completed demographic, attitude importance, and social identification questionnaires online. Ten days later, participants came into the lab and listened to 20 short messages on public policy issues. Ten messages targeted the participants' religion (Christianity) and ten messages targeted the participants' citizenship (American). Messages were followed by three questions probing felt-targetedness, felt-similarity, and agreement. During each trial, we collected eye position, pupil size, and EKG data. Results indicate that strength-of-identification is positively related to felt-targetedness, feeling targeted is accompanied by increased attention to the eyes of a speaker and, in nearly all cases, decreased sympathetic arousal compared to not feeling targeted. This study contributes to a growing body of work on targeted speech and the impact of social identification on persuasion by revealing potential mechanisms underlying target effects.
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