Impression Formation Online

Sensations of physical temperature can serve as a peripheral cue when some individuals interact with communication technology, but this phenomenon has been shown to occur only when individuals were engaged in peripheral-route associative processing. In an experiment (N = 211) with physical temperature and Web page color as between-subjects factors and need for cognition as a measured independent variable, participants viewed an organization’s Web page. Cognitive misers who experienced physical cold (versus warmth) reported less favorable attitudes toward the Web page. This interaction disappeared, however, when they viewed a Web page that featured a red color scheme, as red seemed to have stimulated an increase in central-route analytic cognitive processing. This pattern of results illustrates the utility of the elaboration likelihood model in studying impression formation in online contexts.