Vividness Effects: A Resource-Matching Perspective

Abstract

The authors present a resource-matching perspective to explain the relationship between vividness and persuasion. Three experiments confirm the predicted inverted-U relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for vivid information, and a positive linear relationship between resource allocation and persuasion for nonvivid information when vivid information is less resource demanding than nonvivid information. This persuasion pattern is reversed in experiment 4, where nonvivid information is less resource demanding than vivid information; that is, there is an inverted-U relationship for nonvivid information, and a positive linear relationship for vivid information. The contrasting persuasion functions for vivid and nonvivid information can predict when vivid information will be more versus less persuasive than nonvivid information.