| Abstract: |
This dissertation project deals with the effect of touch on attitude change under the consideration of results from de-biasing literature and consumer studies. In the first study of the project, 88 participants were presented with a number of stimuli with which they either had to interact via touchscreen or mouse. The task was to rank-order the items according to a certain criteria, either their quality or their memorability. Consumer research showed that touching products leads to a more positive evaluation of these products. This is explained by an evoked ownership over the product resulting from the touch. Therefore, we hypothesized that interacting with the stimuli on a touchscreen would heighten their impact on the person. In this particular study we used arguments as a studying object. We expected the arguments to be more impactful, and therefore lead to a bigger attitude change, when participants interacted with them via touchscreen compared to interacting with them via mouse. Also, research on de-biasing mechanisms showed that the occupation with a counter-attitudinal viewpoint can facilitate attitude change. Therefore, we hypothesized that the arguments would lead to a bigger attitude change, if participants had to interact with them on a qualitative level. This led to the hypothesis that participants who had to rank-order the items according to their quality would show a bigger attitude change than participants who had to rank-order them according to their memorability. The statistical analysis of data could neither find a significant difference between the two devices (Touchscreen vs. Mouse) nor between the two rank-ordering tasks (Quality vs. Memorability). However, the results showed that after interacting with the material participants perceived the topic to be more important than they did beforehand. Future studies are planned to further investigate possible effects of touch on stimulus perception as well as possible effects of stimulus attributes on perceived ownership. |