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Distraction, counterarguing and the internalization of attitude change
Author(s) -
Romer Daniel
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420090102
Subject(s) - distraction , psychology , internalization , social psychology , apprehension , cognitive psychology , chemistry , biochemistry , cell
The hypothesis that distraction during a persuasive communication enhances the resulting attitude change by disrupting counterarguing was critically examined. Although previous research using Brock's postcommunication counterarguing index has shown that distraction inhibits counterarguing, the relationship was re‐evaluated in the present experiments with a more direct measure of counterarguing. In these experiments, the direct measure of counterarguing was shown to increase with distraction, contradicting hypotheses that attribute the distraction effect to counterarguing disruption. Furthermore, with a wide range of distraction, Brock's measure was nonmonotonically related to distraction. Since observed attitude change is also predicted to be nonmonotonically related to distraction, Brock's index was interpreted us a correlate rather than a mediator of measured attitude change. The results suggested that distraction actually inhibits the internalization of the message and that the apparently enhancing effects of distraction are a result of the demand characteristics and/or evaluation apprehension created by the experimental task of paying attention to both a message and a distractor. The implications of the results for the theoretical role of counterarguing in mediating the internalization of persuasive communications were discussed.