Source expertise, source attractiveness, and the processing of persuasive information: A functional approach.

Abstract

Male undergraduates high and low in self-monitoring listened to either an expert or attractive male source deliver a counterattitudinal message supported by either strong or weak arguments. As expected, high self-monitoring individuals agreed with the expert source regardless of the quality of the arguments presented but agreed with the attractive source only when he delivered strong arguments. By contrast, low self-monitoring individuals agreed with the attractive source regardless of the quality of the arguments presented but agreed with the expert source only when he delivered strong arguments. Cognitive response and recall data suggested that high-self monitoring individuals were systematically processing the attractive source's message and were heuristically processing the expert source's message, whereas low self-monitoring individuals were systematically processing the expert source's message and were heuristically processing the attractive source's message. We discuss the role of source variables in persuasion settings, the determinants of an information-processing strategy, and the functional underpinnings of attitudes.

Motivations underlying attitudes: regulatory focus and majority versus minority support

“…Indeed, previous research has consistently shown that persuasive arguments have a greater impact when they target a recipient's chronic or temporary motivations (e.g. DeBono, 1987;DeBono & Harnish, 1988;Lavine & Snyder, 1996;Petty & Wegener, 1998;Prentice, 1987;Shavitt, 1990). Furthermore, previous research has also shown that persuasive communications benefit from matching their targets' regulatory focus (e.g.…”

El Estudio de las Preguntas Retóricas en el Cambio de Actitudes

“…Este modelo de cambio actitudinal permite, entonces, controlar y predecir resultados específicos para las diferentes variables persuasivas como, por ejemplo, aquellas relativas al emisor (e.g., el atractivo; DeBono & Harnish, 1988), al receptor (e.g., el estado de ánimo; Briñol, Petty & Barden, 2007), al canal (e.g., escrito; Burnkrant & Howard, 1984) o al mensaje (e.g., que contiene o no preguntas retóricas; Petty, Cacioppo et al, 1981).…”

Design Principles for Special Purpose, Embodied, Conversational Intelligence with Environmental Sensors (SPECIES) Agents

“…This can happen via sounds, words, graphics, and many other forms of media. Dialog support has been robustly shown to influence the persuasiveness of systems (e.g., Cable and Judge, 2003;DeBongo and Harnish, 1988;Enns et al, 2003 ;Petty et al, 1993 ;Schweidel et al, 2006 ;Westphal and Stern, 2007). This increase in persuasion is a function of people subconsciously asking themselves "how they feel about the message," and in doing so they attribute the positive affect to their judgment of confidence (Forgas, 1995 ;Schwarz and Clore, 1983 ).…”

“…This degree of credibility can be influenced by the system's appearance, real-world feel, and surface credibility (Angst and Agarwal, 2009;DeBongo and Harnish, 1988 ). This occurs because positive credibility "primes" other positive thoughts in the brain, making them easier to recall, thus influencing a user's judgment (Bower, 1981).…”