The personal relevance of several academic and public policy proposals was manipulated, in the absence of any persuasive message, in two studies using a survey methodology and in two laboratory studies. Results generally showed that high personal relevance attitudes differed from low personal relevance attitudes. These results seem to indicate that a high-relevance version of a policy proposal is not the same attitude object as the low-relevance version of the same proposal. In expectancy-value terms, relevance manipulations may affect the valued consequences of a policy that come to mind. Framing a question in high-versus low-relevance terms can increase the accessibility of different object attributes. Implications for interpreting personal relevance findings in persuasion research are also discussed.
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