Persuasion Processing Intuitions: How People Judge the Morality of Persuasive Messages

Zarema Khon, Haiming Hang and Samuel G. B. Johnson
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Zarema Khon: Nazarbayev University, Graduate School of Business
Haiming Hang: University of Bath
Samuel G. B. Johnson: University of Waterloo

No 2026/09, Working Papers from Nazarbayev University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: People encounter persuasion on a daily basis, but often resist persuasion attempts that clash with their moral intuitions. How do people make these moral judgments of persuasion? Four studies (N = 1,103) show that these judgments depend on metacognitive beliefs about how the persuasion is processed. If people think persuasion aims at their emotions and intuition - bypassing deliberative reasoning - they evaluate it as more immoral and manipulative than persuasion believed to be processed deliberately. This is because people find System 1 processing (fast and effortless, such as encountering an emotional appeal ad) more autonomy-threatening than System 2 processing (slow and effortful, such as reading about a product's features). Since System 2 (vs. System 1) persuasion is considered less immoral, it yields more positive attitude change than that of System 1 (no matter if the latter is positively valenced, such as humor, or negatively valenced, such as appeal to pity). These findings contribute to research on moral judgment, lay theories of cognitive processing, psychology of autonomy, and resistance to persuasion.

Keywords: persuasion; morality; perceived autonomy; reactance; dual-process theory; lay theories; metacognition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2026-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt, nep-neu and nep-nud
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