The guiding belief with this model is that individuals are more apt to minimize their use of cognitive resources (i.e., to rely on heuristics), thus affecting the intake and processing of messages.
[2] HSM predicts that processing type will influence the extent to which a person is persuaded or exhibits lasting attitude change.
One of the early guiding principles of underlying motivations of persuasive communications came from Leon Festinger’s (1950) statement that incorrect or improper attitudes are generally maladaptive and can have deleterious behavioral and affective consequences.
Then, Chaiken et al. noted in 1989 that the model was extended to specify the psychological conditions for triggering the modes of processing in terms of the discrepancy between actual and desired subjective confidence.
[1] Judgments developed from systematic processing rely heavily on in-depth treatment of judgment-relevant information and respond accordingly to the semantic content of the message.
[7] Recipients developing attitudes from a systematic basis exert considerable cognitive effort and actively attempt to comprehend and evaluate the message's arguments.
Systematic views of persuasion emphasize detailed processing of message content and the role of message-based cognitions in mediating opinion change.
It is also possible for both to occur simultaneously in an additive fashion or in a way that the judgmental implications of one process lend a bias nature to the other.
Conversely, when reliability concerns are predominant (i.e., recipients perceive significant importance in accurately judging an argument), they will likely use a systematic processing strategy.
The proposed research also drew on social psychological theories of dual-processing, which stated that information processing outcomes were the result of interaction between a fast, associative information-processing mode based on low-effort heuristics, and a slow, rule-based information processing mode based on high-effort systematic reasoning.
Wathen and Burkell proposed (but did not test) that if an individual determines that an online source does not meet an appropriate level of credibility at any one stage, then he or she will leave the site without further evaluation.
A total of 111 men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer were assessed using verbal protocol analysis and self-report measures.
Trends were observed for systematic information processing to increase when the heuristic strategy used was negatively affect-laden and when men were uncertain about the probabilities for cure and side effects.
[12] Originally the heuristic-systematic model was developed to apply to "validity seeking" persuasion contexts in which peoples' primary motivation is to attain accurate attitudes that align with relevant facts.
[13] HSM specifically examines validity seeking persuasion settings concerning people's motivations within the social environment.
[9] The limitation of HSM exists in the inability to define the specific motivations of persuasion, which is why Chaiken expanded HSM to illustrate that heuristic and systematic processing can "serve defense-motivation, the desire to form or defend particular attitudinal positions, and impression- motivation, the desire to form or hold socially acceptable attitudinal positions" (p. 326).
Heuristic processing as defined by HSM, illustrates that people can formulate decisions utilizing basic rules such as "experts' statements can be trusted" and "consensus implies correctness" to establish validity within messages (p. 327).
[9] HSM postulates that heuristic and systematic processing can each influence both "independent" and "interdependent" effects on decision making by occurring simultaneously (p. 328).