The Prevention Effect of Third-Person Perception: A Study on the Perceived and Actual Influence of Polls

This study ties the third-person effect phenomenon to social comparison research by positing that a downward comparison is made when people regard “others” as more influenced than themselves by persuasive messages. A likely consequence of the downward comparison is prevention behavior, which refers to the attempt to avoid undesirable outcomes. Hence we can expect a negative relationship between perceived influence of messages on others and actual influence of the messages on self. This negative relationship should be particularly likely to exist among less efficacious individuals. Utilizing a survey experiment (N = 800), which examined both the perceived and actual influence of opinion poll findings on people's issue opinions, this study shows that the prevention effect does not exist across the board, but there is enough evidence showing its existence among less efficacious people on certain issues.     

An exploration of female offenders’ memorable messages from probation and parole officers on the self-assessment of behavior from a control theory perspective

Guided by control theory, this study examines memorable messages that women on probation and parole receive from their probation and parole agents. Women interviewed for the study were asked to report a memorable message they received from an agent, and to describe situations if/when the message came to mind in three contexts likely to emerge from a control theory perspective: when they did something of which they were proud, when they stopped themselves from doing something they would later regret, and when they did something of which they were not proud. The types of memorable messages and the reactions to these messages within the three contexts were coded, and differences between women on probation versus parole were examined. Overall, a greater proportion of women on parole recalled memorable messages, and the most frequently reported type of memorable message was behavioral advice. Women reported that the message helped them do things of which they were proud, such as engaging in routine activities and fulfilling goals; helped them to not give into urges that could lead to further negative sanctions or feelings of regret; and came to mind when they relapsed. Practical implications of the findings for training are presented.     

The relationship between the developmental level of persuasive strategies and their effectiveness

Research on the development of persuasive communication skills has described the emergence of four basic strategies in persuasive messages. This study includes two experiments to assess the role these strategies play in the process of gaining compliance. In both, college students received messages requesting they volunteer for an experiment and advocating compliance. Messages differed in the level of strategic adaptation of the compliance‐gaining appeal they offered. In general, form of request (supported versus unsupported) and content of specific message appeals influenced compliance, but level of strategic adaptation made little or no contribution to message effectiveness.     

Visual Assertions: Effects of Photo Manipulation and Dual Processing for Food Advertisements

In our media landscape, consumers view a plethora of messages with visual assertions, created through postproduction photo manipulation, which communicate meaning at-a-glance. These visual assertions are processed initially and directly and greatly influence how consumers think, feel, and behave. Yet the impact of visuals, which likely color all processing, is not incorporated in persuasive message processing models. Using dual processing models from multiple disciplines as a theoretical foundation, this study demonstrates through two experiments that the effects of photo manipulation, as visual assertions, in food advertising increased consumers' perceptions of healthfulness, positive attitudes, and purchase intentions. Dual processing models for persuasive messages should be extended to account for the initial, influential visual processing of implied assertions, often manipulated during postproduction.     

Mother Goose and Mother Nature: Designing Stories to Communicate Information About Climate Change

Narratives have the ability to highlight climate change information in a relatable and engaging format. The purpose of the present investigation was to test the effects of five story structure types containing climate change information on perceived message effectiveness. Furthermore, we measured whether political affiliation moderated persuasive effectiveness of climate change messages among U.S. eligible voting adults (N = 594) who identified as Republican, Democrat, and Independent. The highest rated story overall was situated in the past, was realistic, and had clear moral values, indicating that certain appealing stories can serve as effective conduits for persuasive messages across the political spectrum. There were few differences between political affiliations, namely, that Democrats and Republicans rated messages differently on effectiveness when they differed on moral themes.     

The Post-Nuclear Family and the Depoliticization of Unplanned Pregnancy in Knocked Up,Juno, and Waitress

This essay explores three films from 2007, Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress, which foreground young women's unplanned pregnancies. These movies depoliticize women's reproduction and motherhood through narratives that rearticulate the meaning of choice. Bypassing the subject of abortion, the women's decisions revolve around their choice of heterosexual partners and investment in romantic relationships. Although they question the viability of the nuclear family for single pregnant women, these films represent new iterations of post-feminism that ultimately restore conservative ideas that valorize pregnancy and motherhood as women's imperatives. We conclude by addressing how these movies present a distorted and short-sighted depiction of the politics of reproductive agency and the challenges that single mothers face.     

Abstracts of theses in the field of speech and drama,VII 1

Psychological reactance theory suggests that a persuasive message which is perceived as a threat to a receiver's attitudinal freedom will produce attitude change away from the recommended position. Prior research has demonstrated that the boomerang effect is prominent particularly among receivers in extreme disagreement with a persuasive message. This experiment focused on the extreme opponent and explored a method of attenuating the boomerang effect. Some subjects were given the opportunity to argue in support of their initial opinions prior to exposure to a threatening message, while others were not afforded this opportunity. It was assumed that prior bolstering would amount to an exercise of the opinion freedom to be threatened by the forthcoming message, and thereby eliminate the otherwise expected negative effects. Results strongly supported this assumption. The threat variable reduced persuasivness only among subjects who did not bolster their initial opinions. In contrast, no boomerang effect was observed among subjects given the chance to exercise their attitudinal freedom prior to exposure to a threatening message.     

The Implications of Vantage Point in Parental Mediation of Television and Child's Attitudes Toward Drinking Alcohol

A survey of 273 children in grades 3, 6, and 9, and their parents investigated parental mediation effects on a child's message interpretation process both from a child's and from a parent's perspective. The study found that children's reports of positive mediation (parental reinforcement of media messages) were significantly higher than parents' reports. Parents and children agreed more closely on reports of negative mediation (counter-reinforcement of media messages). Only the children's reports predicted variables influencing their decision-making for drinking alcohol. The results suggest that children's reports are probably more useful than parents' reports for predicting a child's cognition and behavior.     

Intertribal dance and cross cultural communication: Traditional powwows in Ohio

Greater fear arousal is associated with greater engagement with persuasive messages, and negative information and events are more potent than their positive counterparts. Hence loss-framed persuasive appeals, which emphasize the undesirable outcomes of noncompliance with the communicator's recommendations, should elicit greater message processing than do gain-framed appeals, which emphasize the desirable outcomes of compliance. But a meta-analytic review (based on 42 effect sizes, N = 6,378) finds that gain-framed messages engender slightly but significantly greater message engagement than do loss-framed messages. This effect is apparently not a result of whether the appeals refer to obtaining or averting negative (e.g., “skin cancer”) rather than positive (e.g., “attractive skin”) outcomes.     

Moderating effects of collectivism on customized communication: a test with tailored and targeted messages

A growing body of research has shown that customized messages have certain advantages over non-customized ones such as being more memorable and more persuasive. However, most prior studies tested customization effects with American participants only. It remains a mystery in the literature how people from other cultures may process customized messages. The current article examined the effects of two types of customized information, tailored and targeted, through two studies. Thirty Chinese working professionals and students in the US participated in study 1 and 56 Asian students in Hong Kong participated in study 2. In both studies, participants' tendencies toward collectivistic and individualistic cultures were measured. It was found that more collectivism-oriented participants generated higher recall and more favorable attitudes toward targeted messages, whereas less collectivism-oriented participants generated higher recall and more favorable attitudes toward tailored messages.     

An uninformed electorate: identity-motivated elaboration,partisan cues,and learning

ABSTRACT

A deliberative democracy is reliant on an informed electorate discussing issues and presenting persuasive arguments. Individuals acquire information from exposure to political messages. Partisan cues, however, undermine learning outcomes. The current study experimentally examines the social cognitive processes that underlie this learning process. Integrating the social identity theory, elaboration likelihood model, and the theory of motivated reasoning to construct the theoretical concept of identity-motivated elaboration, the results indicate that partisan social identities motivate biased processing of new information, which subsequently influences the valence of elaboration. Positively and negatively valenced elaboration are situated as mediating variables in the structural model, which predicts learning from a persuasive political message. The current study extends the partisan social identity hypothesis to the elaborative and learning outcomes of political messages.     

Matching messages to the values underlying value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes: reconciling an old theory with a contemporary measurement approach

Functional theory defines value-expressive attitudes as attitudes that are formed to aid in the achievement of one's values, and social-adjustive attitudes as attitudes that are formed from the desire to affiliate with others. The current investigation argues that both functions are based in a person's values, with the social-adjustive function being a specific form of a value-expressive attitude. Contemporary approaches to this theory have argued that these attitude functions can be inferred from scores on the self-monitoring scale, thus eliminating the need to measure the values underlying these functions. The current investigation argues that the success of studies using the self-monitoring scale to infer these functions should be due to the covariance of the other-directedness dimension of the scale with the values underlying those attitudes. Overall, the findings of the investigation indicate that the formation of these functional attitudes depends more on the match between the value-content of the persuasive messages and the extent to which the message recipients hold those values than their level of other-directedness. Other-directedness did not covary with the values that underlie value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes, but did aid in the reception of the social-adjustive message. Thus, the research using the self-monitoring scale to infer functions cannot be fully reconciled with the conceptualizations of value-expressive and social-adjustive attitudes.     

Perceived Message Effectiveness Measures in Tobacco Education Campaigns: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

Target audience ratings of the likely impact of persuasive messages, known as perceived message effectiveness (PME), are commonly used during message development and selection. PME is also used to examine receptivity of messages after they are fully developed or deployed. Despite this, we know little about the conceptual and methodological characteristics of extant PME measures used in the literature. We conducted a systematic review of tobacco education video, print, and audio campaign studies to examine conceptual and methodological characteristics of PME measures. One hundred twenty-six PME measures from 75 studies conducted in 21 countries with more than 61,000 participants were reviewed. Results indicated considerable variability in measures’ focus on general perceptions of a message (i.e., message perceptions) vs. perceptions of expected message effects (i.e., effects perceptions). Considerable variability was also found on underlying persuasive constructs, use of referents, and referencing of behavior in PME items and measures. We conclude with several recommendations for future research on PME measurement and validation.     

Rural Farmers' Exposure to Radio Messages about Sun Protection: Implications for Skin Cancer Prevention

Radio affords the means to reach large audiences with reinforcing messages about health. To date, research-has seldom considered the effects of radio messages on rural or farming populations' health practices. The present study evaluated the impact of exposure to radio messages about sun protection on farmers' (N = 172) perceived knowledge about sun protection, perceptions regarding their families' expectations for farmers to practice sun protection, and farmers' sense of self-efficacy when it comes to practicing sun protection. Farmers' own efforts to promote sun protection, to purchase products to support their own sun protection, and their actual sun protection behaviors were also considered with regard to exposure to radio messages about sun protection. Findings revealed that farmers who recalled having heard a message about sun protection during the previous 12 months were more likely to perceive themselves as knowledgeable about sun protection, to perceive their families as expecting them to practice sun protection, and to believe that sun protection is a relatively easy thing to do. Farmers exposed to radio messages about sun protection were also more likely to promote sun protection to others and to purchase products to support their own sun protection practices. These results suggest that radio is a channel with great potential for achieving health promotion aims among rural farming populations.     

Meta-Analysis of the Persuasive Effects of Metaphorical vs. Literal Messages

This study uses meta-analysis to compare the persuasive effects of metaphorical and literal messages and assess various theoretical explanations for the relatively greater persuasiveness of metaphor. The meta-analysis includes studies from 2001 to 2015 that use various message formats and topics. Results indicate an overall effect size of r = 0.09, p < .001, 95% CI [0.06, 0.12], which supports the conclusion that metaphorical messages are more persuasive than literal messages. Moderator analyses indicate differences in effect sizes based on metaphor target familiarity, message topic, and message format. A meta-regression using the theoretical moderators indicates that message format was the strongest predictor of variation in effect size. This study provides implications related to the theoretical mechanism behind the greater persuasive effects of metaphor.     

How Perceived Persuasive Intent and Reactance Contribute to Third-Person Perceptions: Evidence from Two Experiments

In two experiments, this study presents a process model that explains third-person perceptions (TPP) as a function of perceived persuasive intent and reactance. Using two nonstudent samples, findings were internally replicated for two topics. The study shows that media messages evoking perceptions of persuasive intent also activate reactance, which in turn predicts TPP topic-independently. Remarkably, half of the total stimulus effect on TPP could be explained through reactance, which offers new implications for existing theoretical explanations of strong TPP after undesirable messages but weak effects after, for example, prosocial messages.     

The Relative Credibility of Zoo‐Affiliated Spokespeople for Delivering Conservation Messages

Abstract Zoos aspire to be leaders in environmental conservation through their work in environmental education. This study examined whether a spokesperson's job title impacts credibility when conservation messages are delivered to the public. Visitors to a zoo were presented with seven environmental messages. They then selected—from a list of zoo‐related job titles—the one they deemed most credible and the one considered least credible. Statistical analysis established that three “credible” job titles were selected significantly more often, while three were generally selected as “least credible.” The authors demonstrate that some job titles have greater credibility than others among visitors, and recommend that more attention be given to this variable if attitude and behavior change are desired outcomes. They caution that while source credibility may vary based on job title, the influence it has on persuasiveness is yet to be determined.     

Using the Emotion-in-Relationships Model to Predict Features of Interpersonal Influence Attempts

This paper considers how the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM), a theory designed to predict people's experience of emotion, might explain persuasive messages. A study was conducted in which 248 individuals simulated leaving a date request voicemail message. Consistent with ERM, people's perceptions of interference from partners were positively associated with appraisals of self threat and relationship threat and negatively associated with the fluency of messages. People's perceptions of facilitation from partners were positively associated with identity management strategies, positive politeness, and the affection of messages. These results persisted after covarying relationship satisfaction. Taken together, the findings shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of ERM as a theory of interpersonal communication.     

Becoming More Reflective about the Role of Design in Communication

Robert Craig's constitutive meta-model of communication reminds us that while communication scholarship may feel like discovery of communication's natural properties, it is also often (if not always) on a path to invention of new possibilities and reconstitution. The constitutive meta-model suggests that every theory of communication is also a design language for communication, and that design itself may be a path to theory development. Design inquiry can be conducted in all subdisciplines of communication, incorporating and contributing to widely disparate communication theories. Design work itself takes many forms, producing artifacts as diverse as individual messages, persuasive campaigns, interaction protocols, large-scale participation frameworks for public decision-making, and more. This special issue explores design scholarship in the field of communication, with five original essays representing different subfields and different theoretical approaches. In this introduction, we argue that design work is more than application of theory; design itself is a theory-building enterprise. It is a distinct form of inquiry that builds new knowledge, complementary to, but different in kind from, empirical and critical scholarship.