The role of contingency awareness,involvement, and need for cognition in attitude formation

This research investigates the role of involvement and need for cognition in influencing contingency awareness in attitude formation. Two experiments examine the nature of favorable attitudes formulated through established classical conditioning procedures. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that awareness influences attitudes toward a conditioned stimulus, particularly under conditions of high involvement and high need for cognition. Experiment 2 suggests that contingency awareness mediates the relationship between inferential belief formation and attitudes and that this effect is stronger under high involvement and high need for cognition. Implications for understanding the role of classical conditioning procedures in advertising are discussed. Randi Priluck (Rpriluck@pace.edu) is an associate professor of marketing at Pace University in New York. She received her Ph.D. from Drexel University in 1995. Her research areas of interest include classical conditioning and its advertising implications, cobranding strategies, and relationship marketing. She has written articles for theJournal of Advertising, theJournal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, theJournal of Product & Brand Management, Psychology & Marketing, theJournal of Consumer Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Management, theJournal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, theInternational Journal of Consumer Marketing, theInternational Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, theJournal of Marketing Education, and theJournal of Services Marketing. Brian D. Till (Tillbd@slu.edu) is an associate professor and chair of marketing at Saint Louis University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1993. His research areas of interest include classical conditioning, cobranding strategies, and the use of celebrity endorsers in advertising. He has published in theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Advertising, theJournal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising, Psychology & Marketing, theJournal of Product and Brand Management, and theJournal of Consumer Marketing.