Testing the Predictive Power of a Cognitive-Structural Approach to Message Design: Persuasive Effects Among Republicans and Democrats

Several theoretical approaches suggest that a promising approach to designing effective, tailored persuasive messages may be to draw on insights from an audience’s shared cognitive structure. Specifically, a cognitive-structural approach to message design would suggest that messages targeting central concepts in an audience’s shared cognitive structure will have stronger persuasive effects than messages targeting more peripheral concepts. The present investigation, however, failed to provide support for this approach. The results of four studies revealed that attitude and semantic networks each provided a different estimate of cognitive structure and made competing claims about whether this structure differs for Republicans and Democrats. However, neither structure successfully predicted which messages would be most effective. Instead, both Democrats and Republicans were persuaded by a wide range of arguments targeting both central and peripheral concepts. The results have implications for future work on the role of cognitive structures in persuasion and theory-driven message development.