Effects of involvement on persuasion: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

Defines involvement as a motivational state induced by an association between an activated attitude and the self-concept. Integration of the available research suggests that the effects of involvement on attitude change depended on the aspect of message recipients' self-concept that was activated to create involvement: (a) their enduring values (value-relevant involvement), (b) their ability to attain desirable outcomes (outcome-relevant involvement), or (c) the impression they make on others (impression-relevant involvement). Findings showed that (a) with value-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were less persuaded than low-involvement subjects; (b) with outcome-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were more persuaded than low-involvement subjects by strong arguments and (somewhat inconsistently) less persuaded by weak arguments; and (c) with impression-relevant involvement, high-involvement subjects were slightly less persuaded than lowinvolvement subjects.To understand the conditions under which people are persuaded by others, researchers have often invoked the concept of involvement. Although this construct was popular prior to M. Sherif and Cantril's (1947) work (see A. G. Greenwald's, 1982, review), their proposal that highly involving attitudes be regarded as components of the self-concept or ego was seminal to theory about involvement's impact on attitude change. According to M. Sherif and Cantril (1947), such attitudes "have the characteristic of belonging to me, as being part of me, as psychologically experienced" (p. 93).M. Sherif, C. W. Sherif, and their colleagues developed the implications of involvement (which they often called "ego involvement") for persuasion by giving it a major role in their social judgment-involvement approach, a theory of attitude change developed in the 1950s and early 1960s (Hovland, Harvey, & Sherif, 1957;C. W. Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965;M. Sherif & Hovland, 1961). During this same period, Zimbardo (1960) introduced the concept of response involvement in order to predict attitude change in a social influence setting. In more A preliminary report of this research was presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, May 1987.We thank

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

“…Furthermore, personal relevance is known to increase processing of persuasive messages (for a review and meta-analysis, see Johnson & Eagly, 1989). Putting the participant "into" the story through second-person narratives might increase the story's impact.…”

Argument Strength and the Persuasiveness of Stories

“…Occasionally, countermessage or boomerang effects have been observed when weak arguments were presented (e.g., Park et al, 2007), in the sense that weak arguments led to persuasive effects contrary to the claims when elaboration likelihood was high. Factors that influence an individual’s ability (such as the speed at which assertions are presented; Smith & Shaffer, 1995) or the motivation to engage in elaboration (such as the personal relevance of a topic; cf., Johnson & Eagly, 1989) in turn affect the likelihood that strong arguments yield higher persuasion than weak arguments (cf. Carpenter, 2015; Petty & Wegener, 1998).…”

Getting at the truth or getting along: Accuracy- versus impression-motivated heuristic and systematic processing.

“…4 As Chaiken and Stangor (1987) argued, whether issue involvement instigates objective or biased processing depends on other factors such as prior commitments or vested interests in the issue. Johnson and Eagly (1989) similarly recognized the variable motivational orientation of issue-involved individuals by drawing the important distinction between outcome-relevant involvement (relevance of issue to desirable goals or outcomes) and value-relevant involvement (relevance of issue to enduring values). Leippe and Elkin's (1987) issue involvement manipulation is properly viewed as an outcome-relevant form of involve-form of impression motivation.…”

“…Impression motivation is allied with the social-adjustive function of attitudes (M. B. Smith et al, 1956) 1 and, more recently, with response involvement (e.g., Leippe & Elkin, 1987) and impression-relevant involvement (Johnson & Eagly, 1989). Theories of impression management (Schlenker, 1980;Tetlock & Manstead, 1985) and self-presentation (e.g., Jones, 1990;Tedeschi & Riess, 1981) similarly pertain to impression goals.…”