Collaborative Research: Persuasion by a Single Route: The Unimodel

这个项目开发了一种关于说服性沟通如何影响社会态度的新理论。这一新理论挑战了许多关于说服和态度改变的主流观点。大多数当代说服理论认为，说服性影响有两种不同的发生方式：(1)通过说服性信息本身，基于其所包含的论点的力量；(2)通过信息外部的特征，如传播者的地位或声望，或支持某一立场的不同人的数量。这些理论还表明，通过信息论证实现的说服比通过外部特征实现的说服更强大、更持久，对后续变化更具抵抗力。目前的项目引入了一种新的理论，在该理论中，两种看似不同的说服模式实际上构成了同一潜在过程的特例。这些案件的不同之处在于可以说服一个人的证据的内容，而不是这些内容改变人们态度的方式。七项实验研究验证了这一新颖的说服理论。这些实验是基于一项分析，该分析表明，以前的实验已经混淆了一般信息特征(如长度/复杂性、呈现顺序和相关性)与信息是否包含在消息本身内部(而不是外部)。通过对这些混淆的控制，应该可以证明说服这些不同类型的信息的功能等价性。这一新理论的一个重要含义是，强大、持久和抵抗的说服可能是在外部线索的基础上完成的。这一分析对说服在教育、治疗、健康和环境保护倡导等许多领域发挥作用具有根本性的影响。

This project develops a new theory of how persuasive communications influence social attitudes. The new theory challenges many prevailing views of persuasion and attitude change. Most contemporary theories of persuasion identify two distinct ways in which persuasive influence occurs: (1) through the persuasive message itself, based on the force of the arguments it contains, or (2) through features external to the message, such as the communicator's status or prestige, or the number of different people supporting a certain position. These theories also suggest that persuasion accomplished through message arguments is more robust, long-lasting, and resistant to subsequent change than is persuasion achieved through external features. The current project introduces a new theory in which the two seemingly different modes of persuasion actually constitute special cases of the same underlying process. These cases differ in the contents of evidence by which one may be persuaded, but not in the way those contents function to change people's attitudes. Seven experimental studies test this novel theory of persuasion. The experiments are based on an analysis showing that prior experiments have confounded general informational features (such as length/complexity, order of presentation, and relevance) with whether the information is contained inside (vs. outside) the message itself. By controlling for these confounds, it should be possible to demonstrate the functional equivalence for persuasion of these different types of information. A significant implication of the new theory is that robust, long-lasting, and resistant persuasion may be accomplished on the basis of external cues. This analysis has fundamental implications for a large number of areas in which persuasion plays a role, such as education, therapy, health and environmental-protection advocacy.