In information processing, individuals systematically prefer information that is consistent with their belief, attitude, and decision, and ignore or devaluate those inconsistent information, which is known as confirmatory in-formation processing. From information sampling perspective, an individual's prior and prior-consistent information is attached with high salience and is sampled disproportionately by individuals. The more-salient samples are pivotal to judgment and decision-making. An experimental study explores how individuals are holding different prior atti-tudes sample and evaluate the pro and con messages on a controversial topic. It finds strong evidence of a prior atti-tude salience. Specifically, in the attitude development process, individuals sample more information from their atti-tudes, instead of the attitude advocated by a message. In the information evaluation process, the prior attitude sig-nificantly affects an individual's perception of the message attitude, evaluation of the informativeness of the message, and recall of the arguments (including arguments contained in the message and self-generated arguments). However,when the participants are free to select which message to read, the presentation order of the messages, rather than the prior attitudes, affects the selection behavior. The present study enriches our understanding of the biased information processing. It also has practical implications for real decision-making scenarios, such as persuasion and marketing, public opinion, and scientific knowledge communication.%个体在信息认知处理中往往系统性地偏好于同自己信念、态度和决策相一致的信息,同时忽略或扭曲性解读不一致的信息,这种现象叫验证性信息处理.从信息采样视角理解,个体的先验以及那些与先验一致的信息因为具有更高的显著性而更多地被个体所采样,成为个体评判与决策过程中的重要影响因素.通过设计基于争议性话题的消息处理实验,本研究实证观测了这种先验显著性的存在并探究了先验显著性对验证性信息处理的影响机制.结果表明,在态度形成过程中,个体更多地对自身的先验态度进行采样,相比之下,消息刺激蕴含的态度信息影响不大,表现出先验显著性.在消息认知和评估阶段,先验显著性扭曲个体对接收消息的态度感知以及信息性感知,并影响记忆信息召回.在消息搜索阶段,个体对消息刺激的选择和采样主要受位置显著性的影响,而受先验显著性的影响不强烈.相关结论对于说服与营销、舆情应对、科学知识传播等现实决策具有一定的参考作用.
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