Predicting Reaction to a Message of Ministry: An Audience Analysis

Abstract

This study investigated whether audience characteristics identified as important in the conversion and religious recruitment literature could predict reaction to a Christianity-themed recruitment message. More specific goals involved (a) comparing the impact of potential recruits' dispositional attributes and personal motivations versus their situational availability on the persuasive effect of religious recruitment messages; and (b) rank ordering the audience characteristics examined based on their predictive power. Results indicated that dispositional and motivational considerations were more reliable predictors of receivers' responses to the recruitment message than were situational factors. Specifically, five of the six dispositional and motivational variables (i.e., loneliness, perceived childhood attachment history, meaning and purpose, other-orientation, and problem-solving perspective) were-at least under certain conditions-related to participants' interest in the church. The two variables representing situational availability, free time and membership status, however, were either unrelated to interest in the church or related to participants' reactions, but in the opposite direction of what was expected.

Religion, spirituality, and attachment.

“…Research has consistently documented that parental religiousness is an important moderator variable in the attachment-religion connection (Granqvist, 1998(Granqvist, , 2002(Granqvist, , 2005Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999;Granqvist, Ivarsson, et al, 2007;Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990;Pirutinsky, 2009;Reinert & Edwards, 2009;Wright, 2008). More specifically, memories of a secure attachment history as well as current secure attachment are linked to a high degree of parentoffspring similarity in many aspects of religiousness and spirituality.…”

many voices in a Muslim self

“…Psychologists have studied religious authority above all in terms of leadership and persuasion (see e.g. Dawson 2006;Wright 2008). In turn, in the sociology of religion, Max Weber's work on the three forms of legitimacy (traditional, charis matic and legal) has provided the domin ant paradigm (see e.g.…”