title: Do incompatible arguments cause extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments? The role of congruence between argument compatibility and argument quality.
abstract: Previous studies have demonstrated that arguments incompatible with prior beliefs are subjected to more extensive refutational processing, scrutinized longer, and judged to be weaker than arguments compatible with prior beliefs. However, this study suggests whether extensive processing is implemented when evaluating arguments is not decided by argument compatibility, but by congruence between two evaluating tendencies elicited by both argument compatibility and argument quality. Consistent with this perspective, the results of two experiments show that relative to congruent arguments, participants judged arguments eliciting incongruent evaluating tendencies as less extreme in strength, spent more time, and felt more hesitant generating strength judgments for them. The results also show that it is mainly incongruent arguments, not congruent arguments, whose strength ratings were more closely associated with the perceived personal importance of the issue, which intensified the tendency to evaluate arguments depending on argument compatibility. These results suggest that it is the incongruity between argument compatibility and argument quality, and not simply the argument compatibility, that plays a more important role in activating an extensive processing in the evaluation of arguments.
authors.affiliation: Center for Teacher Education, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Cheng-Hong
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Psychology, Hsuan Chuang University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hung-Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Psychology, Hsuan Chuang University, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Po-Sheng
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsueh-Chih
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: English Learning Center, Ming Chuan University, Taipei City, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sommers
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008960:Models, Psychological
keywords: argument compatibility; argument quality; congruence model; disconfirmation model; evaluation of arguments