Origins of Attitude Certainty and their Impact on Resistance To Persuasion: The Roles of Evidence Quality and Value-Relevance

The purpose of the current study was to explore the formation and consequences of attitude certainty based on good or poor evidence and having varying degrees of value-relevance. Specifically, it was proposed that attitudes would be held with high attitude certainty when value-relevant, regardless of the quality of evidence by which the attitude was first formed. However, if the attitude is not value-relevant, certainty would be greater for attitudes based on good, as opposed to poor, evidence. The consequences of attitude certainty, formed from good versus poor evidence at varying levels of value-relevance, were also explored by testing how well such attitudes resist persuasion, as well as the favorability of thoughts in response to a persuasive message. Both consequences were expected to be greatest when value-relevance was low and the initial evidence relevant to the attitude during formation was poor. The results showed that the predictions were only partly supported by the data. Although the value-relevance manipulation affected attitude certainty in the direction expected, the interaction between value-relevance and evidence quality only emerged for the thought favorability index data and not the attitude certainty and attitude change data. Limitations of the current study and future directions are discussed.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Statzer, Johnathan

• attitudes

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/30424

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/30424