Publications

Publication details [#62729]

Hong, Cheng and Cong Li. 2017. The Effect of “Anonymous Reviewer”: A Study of Anonymity, Affect Intensity, and Message Valence in the Cyberspace. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 36 (5) : 504–525.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
SAGE Publications

Annotation

This inquiry elucidates how anonymity, together with affect intensity and message valence, impactts message receivers’ responses. A 2 (anonymous vs. revealed identity) × 2 (low vs. high affect intensity) × 2 (positive vs. negative valence) between-subjects experiment was conducted. It was found that when message affect intensity was low, an anonymous message was more effective in engendering trust toward the message and message processing depth than a message with a distinguished sender. However, such a difference was insignificant when affect intensity was high. Moreover, a significant interaction effect between affect intensity and message valence was found on message processing depth. When affect intensity was high, a positive message elicited more message processing. When affect intensity was low, there was no significant difference between positive and negative messages.