Conclusion explicitness in message communication: The roles of NFC and knowledge in attitude formation

The impact of need for cognition (NFC) and knowledge on the relationship between conclusion explicitness and attitude formation was examined in this study. A total of 360 undergraduate students participated in the experiment. Results showed that while high-NFC individuals engender more favorable attitudes toward the implicitly concluded message than the explicitly concluded message, low-NFC individuals engender more favorable attitudes toward the explicitly concluded message than the implicitly concluded message. In addition, low-knowledge individuals engender more favorable attitudes toward the implicitly concluded message than the explicitly concluded message; however, conclusion explicitness does not affect the attitudes of high-knowledge individuals. Furthermore, conclusion explicitness does not affect the attitudes of high-NFC individuals with high knowledge toward the incoming message. Contrarily, low-NFC individuals with low knowledge engender more favorable attitudes toward the explicitly concluded message than the implicitly concluded message.