Authors
Richard E Petty, Gary L Wells, Timothy C Brock
Publication date
1976/11
Journal
Journal of Personality and social Psychology
Volume
34
Issue
5
Pages
874
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Description
Two experiments were conducted to test competing accounts of the distraction-persuasion relationship, thought disruption and effort justification, and also to show that the relationship is not limited to counterattitudinal communication. Exp I, with 132 undergraduates, varied distraction and employed 2 discrepant messages differing in how easy they were to counterargue. In accord with the thought disruption account, increasing distraction enhanced persuasion for a message that was readily counterarguable, but reduced persuasion for a message that was difficult to counter-argue. The effort notion implied no interaction with message counterarguability. Exp II, with 54 undergraduates, again varied distraction but the 2 messages took a nondiscrepant position. One message elicited primarily favorable thoughts, and the effect of distraction was to reduce the number of favorable thoughts generated; the other, less …
Total citations
Scholar articles
RE Petty, GL Wells, TC Brock - Journal of Personality and social Psychology, 1976