Exploring Message Framing Outcomes When Systematic, Heuristic, or Both Types of Processing Occur

Abstract

Mixed findings have emerged in message framing studies, even when such studies employ the same general type of framing, such as goal framing. This article attempts to show that by ex-tending the heuristic–systematic model-based explanation of message framing effects to incor-porate conditions that may prompt both systematic and heuristic processing, this theory may accommodate some of the aberrant findings. The research reported shows that by varying a message issue’s risky implications and its personal relevance, 2 factors that potentially influ-ence the type of processing people employ, systematic, heuristic, or concurrently both types of processing were evoked and influenced people’s judgments, causing alternative patterns of message framing effects to occur. The results offer insight into how each of these types of pro-cessing can affect message framing outcomes, and they imply that certain seemingly aberrant findings in the literature can be reconciled with this extended theory. There is growing agreement that different mechanisms ac-count for alternative types of message framing effects, such as those produced by risky choice, attribute, and goal framing (for a discussion of these distinctions, see Levin, Schneider, &