Abstract
This article aims to encourage information specialists to consider chronic disposition and situational priming as avenues to enrich information science research. The author makes a case for conducting such investigations by articulating the potential contributions of advancing theoretical and practical understanding of information science in both physical and technological environments using these approaches. The author also offers a theoretical toolbox of conceptual underpinnings relevant to chronic disposition and situational priming to provide a general overview on how such investigations can be performed. It is hoped that the arguments and theoretical lenses put forth will inspire further research in the area.
1. Introduction
The field of information science combines diverse streams of knowledge to explain and advance all processes and techniques pertaining to the critical and competent acquisition (e.g. discover, access, collect), management (e.g. classify, organize, record, store, protect, retrieve, archive) and utilization (e.g. analyse, produce, disseminate) of physical and electronic sources of information [1, 2]. Myriad studies in this interdisciplinary field have been conducted, ranging from in-depth review articles [3, 4] to rigorous work of a conceptual [5, 6], critical-theoretical [7, 8], empirical [9, 10], ethnographic [11, 12], experimental [13, 14], historical [15, 16], policy-analytical [17, 18] and socio-technological [19, 20] nature. Despite knowledge advancement in the area, an important question that information specialists may raise in the near future is whether research can advance existing studies to contribute to a continuously rich, state-of-the-art understanding of information science among informational professionals and the scholarly community. To answer this question, this article aims to encourage information specialists to consider chronic disposition and situational priming as avenues to enrich information science research, especially behavioural research in information science.
Chronic disposition refers to an orientation (e.g. goals, motivations, traits, stereotypes) that reflects inherent constellations of knowledge in an individual’s memory [21]. These knowledge structures may include desired outcomes, which in turn may affect the strategies for achieving those outcomes [22, 23]. In contrast, situational priming refers to the process of activating specific knowledge structures, incidentally or unobtrusively, to influence what comes next without the individual’s awareness of this influence in a given situation [24]. Given that people are users of information (e.g. senders, receivers) [25], their chronic disposition is likely to influence, positively or negatively, how they acquire, manage and use information. The extent of the influence may be enhanced (i.e. when the prime stimulus is in line with an individual’s chronic disposition) or reversed (i.e. when the prime stimulus is in opposition to an individual’s chronic disposition) with the use of situational priming by making information and the cognitive operations used to comprehend and manipulate that information more accessible, which in turn influences information seekers’ and receivers’ subsequent judgements, decisions and overt behaviour [26]. Thus, exploring an individual’s chronic disposition may help information scientists explain natural occurrences of desired and/or undesired behaviour as a result of information exposure, while examining the use of situational priming may help encourage desired behaviours and/or avoid undesired behaviours among target audiences of information. A joint study of the two investigative lenses in physical and technological environments should contribute to advancing theoretical and practical understanding of information science, particularly in terms of accentuating and persuading desired relationships between people and physical and electronic sources of information. The following section provides a guide on how such investigations can be conducted using a theoretical toolbox of conceptual underpinnings relevant to chronic disposition and situational priming.
2. Theories for chronic disposition and situational priming
This article summarizes two major theoretical lenses that seem most pertinent to chronic disposition and situational priming research and considers insights that emerged from each lens. Specifically, this article considers the heuristic-systematic model of information processing and regulatory focus theory.
2.1. Heuristic-systematic model of information processing
Information processing refers to how an individual evaluates a given type of information (e.g. pictures, words). Two types of information-processing styles are widely recognized in extant literature: heuristic and systematic information processing. The former uses knowledge structures that are learned and stored in memory, while the latter involves comprehensive, analytical and cognitive processing of judgement-relevant information [27, 28]. Thus, heuristic information-processing people are likely to focus on easily acquired information with simple decision rules, whereas systematic information-processing people are likely to be information intensive and analytically oriented [29]. The heuristic approach offers people an economic advantage because it requires minimal cognitive effort to process information, but the systematic approach, which puts greater emphasis on source content and reliability, may exert a stronger persuasion impact on people, especially when determining information validity [30].
Although an individual may chronically lean towards either a heuristic or a systematic information processing style in general, it is likely that the approach used to evaluate a given piece of information will depend on the context in which he or she receives and uses the information, especially in contemporary times when people are exposed to myriad physical and electronic sources of information. For example, scholars have shown that analytical processes are often activated for novel, complex problems whereas heuristic processes are often applied to daily choices [31, 32]. Future research could examine further the chronic information processing styles of people under different contexts of information exposure and assess how corresponding behaviours can be persuaded and enhanced in a desired way. For example, if poor test results of a specific segment of university students were attributed to a chronic heuristic learning approach, scholars could examine how systematic processing can be activated in the delivery of lectures and learning materials (e.g. engagement in problem-solving scenarios). Conversely, if consumers were experiencing a high degree of confusion when reading product labels, future research could consider exploring how to induce heuristic processing (e.g. pictorial illustrations, concise markers of end results); extended research could also examine whether cognitive dissonance is reduced with such stimuli.
2.2. Regulatory focus theory
Regulatory focus refers to an individual’s personal values and belief orientation that guide his or her pursuit to embrace pleasure but avoid pain [33]. People are goal driven, and thus the way they behave and make decisions is influenced by their self-regulatory goals [34, 35]. Two independent strategies for achieving a particular end state are common in the literature: promotion and prevention. These strategies assist the individual in either approaching a state (e.g. seeking advancement and being open to possibilities) that matches the desired end state (i.e. promotion) or avoiding a state (e.g. avoiding risks and mistakes) that does not match the desired end state (i.e. prevention) [36, 37]. In particular, promotion- and prevention-focused people are likely to be sensitive to gain- and loss-related information that involves the presence or absence of positive and negative outcomes, respectively [38]. Thus, Higgins [39] suggests that positive-outcome goals lead to actions related to accomplishment and aspiration whereas negative-outcome goals result in actions related to responsibility and safety.
Various instruments for measuring regulatory focus have been developed, such as the regulatory focus questionnaire by Higgins et al. [40] and the promotion/prevention scale by Lockwood et al. [41]. Despite some limitations, such as problems of direct adaptation of scales across different cultures [42] and weak correlations [43], these scales remain frequently used in various disciplines, including marketing and psychology [44–46]. Nonetheless, similar to the differences in chronic disposition of information-processing styles among people, different people may chronically lean towards different types of regulatory focus. Considering that the strategy of a promotion-focused individual differs from that of a prevention-focused individual, the regulatory focus that is chronically activated is likely to affect the type of information that he or she searches for and relies on to make judgements and decisions. Noting such differences may be important in efforts to effectively manage and disseminate information in a way that yields desired behaviours among target audiences. Thus, accessing chronic regulatory focus dispositions and engaging in situational priming (e.g. exposure of positive information to promotion-focused people and negative information to prevention-focused people) in a variety of interdisciplinary contexts (e.g. advertisements, investments) can be fruitful in information science research.
3. Conclusion
In short, this article makes a case for enriching information science research through investigations that consider chronic disposition and situational priming. The author hopes that this article will encourage information scientists to consider alternative ways in which information users can be better understood, persuaded and encouraged to engage in desired ways of acquiring, managing and using information and, in doing so, contribute to the theoretical and practical advancement of information science in physical and technological environments. The author also suggests that useful short notes should appear more frequently in top-tier journals to (a) acknowledge the importance and contribution of proposing contemporary, novel thoughts and ideas, (b) appreciate the value in bringing together simple but disparate theories (the greatest contributions are often the simple ones), and (c) recognize the value of scholarly opinions in enriching understanding, especially in times when research expansion is rapid but gaps remain. These brief but important contributions would help identify and bring research gaps to the fore.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is especially grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments, which improved the quality of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.