An experiment with 520 college students tested whether heightened awareness of cognitive processes during media exposure would affect the message interpretation process by enhancing skepticism, with the enhanced skepticism influencing both affective and cognitive aspects of decision making. Skepticism has affective andlogical components, which can be representedby trust (more affective) andperceivedrealism (more logical), andskepticism's effects on affective and logical decision making are manifested somewhat differently. The results of this study suggest that a minimal intervention that activates skepticism can have both direct and indirect effects on the message interpretation process that can improve the quality of decision making.
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