THE MEDIATING ROLE OF COUNTERARGUMENT DISRUPTION AND SOURCE JUDGMENTS IN TWO KINDS OF VIVID COMMUNICATIONS

Recent attitude change research has examined the persuasive impact of vivid communications. Current approaches to the study of this variable have neglected to conceptualize adequately the variety of operations by which messages are made vivid and have relied upon the mediator of message learning despite strong evidence of a functional dissociation between contemporaneous measures of learning and attitude change. The dissertation proposes that vividness operations be partitioned into subsets characterized by unique combinations of specified attitude change mediators. Two kinds of vividness operations are examined by this approach. The persuasive enhancement of illustrative pictures is hypothesized to result primarily from distraction and counterargument disruption. In contrast, the effect of the speech dynamism operation is hypothesized to result primarily by affecting message receivers' judgments of the communication source. Issue involvement and source expertise are hypothesized as interacting variables respectively.;The results lent strong support to the operation of different mediators for the two kinds of vividness investigated. When illustrative pictures were added to a persuasive sound track, negative argument related cognitive responses were significantly reduced and judgments of message argument quality increased. No effect on these responses was produced by the speech style manipulation. By contrast, when speech style was enlivened, negative thoughts about the source were sharply increased. No effect on source related thoughts was due to the pictures manipulation. For the key dependent measure of message agreement, high expert sources elicited greater acceptance, but neither of the two vividness independent variables nor the hypothesized interactions produced consistent, significant effects across the three messages. It is suggested that a floor effect on counterargument production may have operated and that the hypothesized effect of the illustrative pictures variable will be strongest for highly counterattitudinal messages.;Seventy-two Yale University undergraduates listened to three tape-recorded counterattitudinal persuasive messages which were delivered with or without illustrative pictures, from a source who spoke in a subdued or dynamic style of speech, and was indentified as low or high expert in the subject of his or her topic. Following exposure to each message, participants listed their cognitive responses, rated agreement with the position advocated, and judged the source's personality, among other measures.