0000000000077371
AUTHOR
Yoram Bar-tal
Cognitive Structuring and Its Cognitive-Motivational Determinants as an Explanatory Framework of the Fear-Then-Relief Social Influence Strategy
According to the fear-then-relief technique of social influence, people who experience anxiety whose source is abruptly withdrawn usually respond positively to various requests and commands addressed to them. This effect is usually explained by the fact that fear invokes a specific program of action, and that when the source of this emotion is suddenly and unexpectedly removed, the program is no longer operative, but the person has not yet invoked a new program. This specific state of disorientation makes compliance more likely. In this paper, an alternative explanation of the fear-then-relief effect is offered. It is assumed that the rapid change of emotions is associated with feelings of …
Mood, cognitive structuring and medication adherence
A study with a placebo was conducted. Healthy university students were given a placebo and were told to make one pill every day for a week. Participants were informed that the medicine improved mood. The extent to which they conformed to this instruction was treated as an index of compliance. Our results show that for women, but not for men, positive mood and cognitive structuring or negative mood and lack of cognitive structuring significantly predicted participants' compliance. A new model of medication adherence, based on the role of the patient's mood and cognitive structuring processes in decision making is presented in the paper.
Cognitive structuring and placebo effect
Abstract In much of the research concerning the placebo phenomenon, the idea that placebo effects may vary in strength depending on a patient's personal characteristics or traits has been investigated. Findings regarding possible personality differences in placebo response, however, are conflicting and non-systematic. In this article a new theoretical attempt to explain the placebo phenomenon is offered. The authors postulate that the power of the placebo effect is moderated by the extent of use of cognitive structuring, which in turn is influenced by the interaction between the individuals' level of need for cognitive closure and their ability to achieve this state. To test this assumption…
Need for closure moderates the break in the message effect
Abstract Cutting the message into smaller portions is a common practice in the media. Typically such messages consist of a headline followed by a story elaboration. In a series of studies Dolinski and Kofta (2001) have shown that such a break in the message increases the effect of the information provided in the headline over that of a story which actually contained information inconsistent with that headline. A possible explanation of this effect, based on the concept of the need for cognitive closure, is presented in the article. The experiment shows the break-in-the-message effect is found mainly for participants with high need for closure but not for those with low such need.