Arguing for conversion: The nature of religious appeals and the audiences receiving them

The purpose of this investigation was to examine participants' perceived agreement with, and persuasiveness of, Christian conversion appeals based on the rationality or emotionality of the appeal and the level of the participants' religiosity. Participants were 324 (136 male, 188 female) students from a large Western university. The appeals were actual conversion appeals made by Christians and were categorized as either rational or emotional in nature. Ratings of the Christian conversion appeals were assessed using a 5-item Likert scale based on participants' religiosity (non-Christian/Christian and high/low religiosity). All respondents with the exception of Christians high in religiosity perceived the rational appeals to be more persuasive. Non-Christians reported more agreement with rational appeals and rated rational appeals as more persuasive than emotional appeals. Also, Christians high in religiosity reported more agreement with both rational and emotional appeals and found all four appeals to be more persuasive than did non-Christian respondents. The type of conversion experience (sudden/gradual) had no effect on the perceived agreement with, or persuasiveness of, each type of appeal. Implications for individual processing of persuasive appeals are discussed.