The role of nonverbal behaviors as distractors in resistance to persuasion in interpersonal contexts

Nonverbal expectancy violations: Model elaboration and application to immediacy behaviors

“…Communicator behaviors and characteristics that contribute to interpersonal rewards mediate communication outcomes. All of the following have been defined as bases for reward and shown to influence outcomes: positive and negative feedback, physical attractiveness, smiling, head nods, task competence, socioeconomic status, purchasing power, and attitudinal similarity (Burgoon, 1978;Burgoon & Aho, 1982;Burgoon et al, 1979;Schiffenbauer & Schiavo, 1976;Smith & Knowles, 1979;Stacks & Burgoon, 1981;Storms & Thomas, 1977).…”

Distraction during persuasive communication: A meta‐analytic review

“…Recent research on the distracting effects of violations of nonverbal expectations also yields this credibility effect (Burgoon et al, 1982;Stacks & Burgoon, 1981;Woodall & Burgoon, 1981). Violations of proxemic norms by a rewarding persuader increase ratings of credibility and attitude change (Burgoon et al, 1982).…”

“…Baron et al (1973) claim that the effects produced by Allyn and Festinger's (1961) technique of distracting the persuadee by having her/him focus on the speaker's personality are due to the credibility of the speaker rather than to disruption of counterarguing. This same process is likely to occur when an unexpected violation of nonverbal expectations is encountered by a communicator (Stacks & Burgoon, 1981). Thus, the correlations from studies that either explicitly direct or implicitly cause receivers to focus on the speaker rather than the message likely will produce effects different from studies employing nonspeaker-centered distractors.…”

“…Included in the group of speaker-centered studies were estimates from studies by Allyn and Festinger (1961), Freedman and Sears (1965), Miller and Levy (1967), (-.54,.23 Burgoon et al (1978), Stacks and Burgoon (1981), Woodall and Burgoon (1981), and Burgoon et al (1982). These studies provided 19 estimates of the effect of distraction on attitude change (Table 3).…”

“…The two lines of violations research that have used the distraction explanations are language intensity expectations (Burgoon, Cohen, Miller & Montgomery, 1978;Miller & Burgoon, 1979) and nonverbal expectations of proxemic behavior (Burgoon, 1983;Burgoon, Stacks & Burch, 1982;Stacks & Burgoon, 1981) and kinesic synchrony (Woodall & Burgoon, 1981). These two lines of expectancy research have used the counterarguing hypothesis, learning theory (both involving message comprehension), and evaluation set (related to source derogation) as explanations for the effects of the violations accompanying persuasive communications.…”