Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study starts with a simple question: “Everything else being equal, will people who exert more cognitive effort produce better messages?” To test this idea, we set up a high and a low personal relevance condition in order to influence people’s motivation to think more or less effortfully in an upward influence situation. Results revealed that individuals in the high personal relevance, compared in the low relevance condition, reported a higher degree of problem-solving goal importance and a higher level of cognitive effort. Their messages also tend to contain more reasons and more diverse of reasoning angles. Second, among the five distinct goals relevant to advice giving situations, problem-solving goal importance is found to be a significant predictor of message reasoning, such that the more individuals emphasize problem-solving goals, the more likely that their messages will demonstrate a higher level of reasoning. Third, while goal assessment initiates a message production process, cognitive effort to implement goals play an important mediation role in connecting goals and message features.