The Direct Effect of Personal Relevance on Attitudes

The personal relevance of several academic and public policy proposals was manipulated, in the absence of any persuasive message, in two studies using a survey methodology and in two laboratory studies. Results generally showed that high personal relevance attitudes differed from low personal relevance attitudes. These results seem to indicate that a high-relevance version of a policy proposal is not the same attitude object as the low-relevance version of the same proposal. In expectancy-value terms, relevance manipulations may affect the valued consequences of a policy that come to mind. Framing a question in high-versus low-relevance terms can increase the accessibility of different object attributes. Implications for interpreting personal relevance findings in persuasion research are also discussed.