Self-generated persuasion: effects of the target and direction of arguments

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102.5 (2012): 925-940 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0027231

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Self-Generated Persuasion:

Effects of the Target and Direction of Arguments

Pablo Brin˜ol

Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid

Michael J. McCaslin and Richard E. Petty

Ohio State University

Previous research has revealed that self-persuasion can occur either through role-playing (i.e., when arguments are generated to convince another person) or, more directly, through trying to convince oneself (i.e., when arguments are generated with oneself as the target). Combining these 2 traditions in the domain of attitude change, the present research investigated the impact on self-persuasion of the specific target of one’s own persuasive attempt (i.e., others vs. oneself). We found that the efficacy of self-persuasion depended on whether people believed that they would have to put more or less effort in convincing the self or others. Specifically, we found opposite effects for self-generated arguments depending on whether the topic of persuasion was proattitudinal or counterattitudinal. Across 4 studies, it was shown that when the topic of the message was counterattitudinal, people were more effective in convincing themselves when the intended target of the arguments was themselves versus another person.

However, the opposite was the case when the topic was proattitudinal. These effects were shown to stem from the differential effort perceived as necessary and actually exerted in trying to produce persuasion under these conditions.

Keywords: self-persuasion, role-playing, attitude change, self-knowledge, target

Although most work on persuasion focuses on messages that come from other people (e.g., advertisers), messages that people generate themselves can also be quite effective in producing attitude change. The persuasive effect of completely self-generated messages was shown clearly in the now classic research on role playing (Janis & King, 1954; King & Janis, 1956 ). For example, in one study, individuals who were assigned to play the role of a person trying to convince a friend to stop smoking were more turned off to cigarettes than were those who received the same information passively (Elms, 1966; see also Huesmann, Eron, Klein, Brice, & Fischer, 1983; Watts, 1967). Similar findings have been found when people generate thoughts in anticipation of the actual role-playing performance (e.g., Cialdini & Petty, 1981).

Although a variety of explanations have been given for the persuasive effect of role playing, the most common is that when people generate arguments, they tend to come up with reasons that they find the most compelling (Greenwald & Albert, 1968; see also, Slamecka & Graf, 1978). That is, people are effective in tailoring the message for themselves, even if the goal is to persuade another person. Notably, it does not seem to matter whether people generate the thoughts because they are explicitly told to come up with arguments on a topic (e.g., Killeya & Johnson, 1998) or whether they come up with thoughts by merely thinking about

some issue (e.g., Tesser, 1978; see Tesser, Martin, & Mendolia, 1995, for a review). In general, whenever people engage in active construction and/or delivery of a persuasive message, it can lead to attitude change in the transmitter (see also, Higgins, McCann, &

Fondacaro, 1982).

In addition to traditional work on persuasion, research on im- pression management also provides evidence suggesting that the self-generation of thoughts to convince other people can be an effective path to self-persuasion. Specifically, studies on self- presentation have shown that the self-concept of individuals changes according to the direction in which people are asked to present themselves (e.g., Baumeister, 1982; Fazio, Effrein, &

Falender, 1981; Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982). For example, if people are asked to present themselves favorably to others, their self-evaluation increases, but if they are asked to present themselves in a negative light, their self-evaluation decreases (e.g., McGuire & McGuire, 1996; Tice, 1992). The effect of self- presentation on subsequent self-ratings is enhanced when people actively generate their thoughts, improvising and drawing on ep- isodes from their own past rather than relying on a previously provided script (Tice, 1992).

In sum, the available research clearly suggests that the act of generating arguments can lead to attitude change and that generating arguments oneself can lead to more change in one’s own attitudes than passively receiving arguments from another person.

The effectiveness of self-generated persuasion does not appear to be affected by whether people are explicitly asked to self-generate the arguments or whether the arguments are elicited more naturally in the course of thinking. Furthermore, attitude change appears to occur regardless of the object of thoughts (e.g., cigarette smoking, the self, etc.). The current research tackles a different and novel question in the domain of self-generated persuasion. Instead of focusing on the source of the arguments (self or other), the impetus Pablo Brin˜ol, Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Mi-

chael J. McCaslin and Richard E. Petty, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Pablo Brin˜ol, Department of Psychology, Universidad Auto´noma de Madrid, Campus de Cantoblanco, Carrerta de Colmenar, KM 15, Madrid 28049, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]

2012, Vol.●●, No. ●, 000–000 0022-3514/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027231

1 AQ: 18

tapraid5/z2g-perpsy/z2g-perpsy/z2g00412/z2g3902d12z xppws S⫽1 1/24/12 20:12 Art: A-2010-0044

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for argument generation (mandated or natural), or variations in the object or content of persuasion (e.g., social issue or oneself), we focus on the previously unexplored topic of who the intended target or recipient of persuasion is when the self-generation of arguments occurs.

As just noted, prior research on role playing has generally focused on situations in which people aim to convince another person (e.g., a friend to stop smoking) but end up persuading themselves in the process. Yet, in everyday life, individuals sometimes have the explicit goal of convincing themselves to believe something. Maio and Thomas (2007) recently reviewed how people sometimes work hard to talk themselves into a diverse range of conclusions. For example, a person might genuinely like high fat food but want to change to have a negative attitude so less will be consumed. As suggested by Maio and Thomas (2007), people might try to convince themselves for many reasons (e.g., to feel better, to be coherent) and through multiple tactics (e.g., including the generation of biased thoughts, as in the classic role-playing research). At other times, an external agent (e.g., a therapist, a parent) might want the person to change and ask the person to generate arguments opposite to their initial opinion.

Interestingly, no prior research has examined whether it matters whether people are asked to generate arguments in an effort to try to convince themselves or another person. This is the central focus of the current research. For example, if a parent wanted a child to shift from a positive attitude to a negative attitude toward smoking, would it be better to ask the child to try and generate arguments to convince a friend to stop smoking or should the goal in argument generation be to convince the child him or herself?

In accord with much of the literature, we use the term self- persuasion to refer to situations in which people end up persuading themselves as a function of generating their own arguments for some issue. Previous research on self-persuasion via role playing examined self-generation of arguments exclusively in cases in which the target was another person or was unspecified. However, as noted, self-generated arguments can be also constructed with the goal of convincing oneself rather than another person. Although Maio and Thomas (2007) acknowledged that people sometimes might self-generate arguments in an effort to convince themselves, they did not address whether it matters whether people generate arguments to try to convince themselves or another person. That is, their discussion focused on the possibility that the self-generation of arguments exclusively targeting the self could be effective and on the mechanisms that could bring it about. The present research explicitly compares two different targets (i.e., self vs. others) of self-generated arguments and examines the conditions under which each target is particularly likely to be effective in producing self-persuasion.

What Target of Self-Generated Arguments Leads to More Persuasion?

Why might attitude change be different as a function of the intended target of persuasion, and which target would produce greater influence? On the one hand, it might be that focusing on another person as the target of persuasion would generally be more effective than thinking of oneself as the target. One reason for this is that when trying to convince another, the explicit persuasive intent for the self is relatively low and the resultant self-change is

incidental to the attempt to persuade someone else. Prior research on forewarning shows that when persuasive intent is salient, people often raise their defenses and ultimately show more resistance to change than when persuasive intent is low (e.g., Petty &

Cacioppo, 1979a). For instance, in one study (Walster & Festinger, 1962), people were more persuaded when they incidentally “over- heard” the persuasive message than when it was targeted to try and change them. If people are more resistant when they are the explicit target of persuasion (even when they are also the source), then self-persuasion would be greater when people generate messages for others than for the self.

In addition to the forewarning literature, work on perceived accountability (Tetlock, Skitka, & Boettger, 1989) points to an- other reason for why generating messages for others versus the self could result in more persuasion. This is because people might anticipate that such arguments would be scrutinized more carefully by others, leading to more effort in generating high-quality messages.¹If it is generally better to direct messages at others than at oneself, then one practical implication of this view is that therapists should ask clients to dispute their own dysfunctional beliefs by trying to convince others with similar beliefs to change them (as in the classic research on role playing). They should not focus their clients on trying to persuade themselves. That is, trying to convince others would generally produce more change in the clients than if the clients were explicitly trying to convince themselves.

On the other hand, some prior research suggests that it might generally be more effective to generate messages for the self than to generate messages for another person. For example, people might put more effort into generating the message when it is intended for themselves than when it is meant for another person.

This could be because the self is viewed as a more important, valuable, and worthy target than any other person. Indeed, the literature on persuasion has revealed that people pay more atten- tion and dedicate more effort to process arguments that are self- relevant (Brin˜ol & Petty, 2006; Petty & Cacioppo, 1979b; Petty, Wheeler, & Bizer, 2000). Research on the ownness bias (Perloff &

Brock, 1980), the mere ownership effect (Nuttin, 1985), and the endowment effect (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991) are also consistent with this view. Another reason people might exert more effort and do a better job when attempting to persuade themselves is that people know their own opinions better than the opinions of others (e.g., Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004). By knowing precisely how and why they feel the way that they do, they can generate arguments for themselves that are appropriately tailored. By not knowing the attitudes of others as well, when trying to convince these others, people might generate rather generic arguments that are not as effective in persuading themselves. According to this

1There are other lines of research that have looked at various differences in self versus others when attempting to persuade others. For example, messages addressed for one’s own use have been found to communicate less well to others than messages formulated for other people (Fussell &

Krauss, 1989). Similarly, other work has shown that linguistic choices are also affected by the communicative intentions and the intended audience (for a review, see H. H. Clark, 1985). Another paradigm suggests that people generate more abstract messages when thinking about others than when thinking about the self (McGuire & McGuire, 1996). It is important to note that these frameworks deal with persuasion in other people rather than the self, which is the focus of the present research.

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view, therapists would be more effective by asking their clients to talk themselves into something rather than trying to convince other people of the same thing.

Finally, a third possibility and the one we highlight in our studies is that the target of persuasion (i.e., self vs. other) can interact with the direction of the persuasion topic—whether it is pro or counterattitudinal.² Our logic begins with the assumption that people generally know and can be more sure of their own likes and dislikes than of the likes and dislikes of others. When people are confident that they oppose something (counterattitudinal issue), they know that they have to work very hard to generate arguments that are convincing in order to be effective in persuading themselves. They cannot be as certain that another person dislikes the topic, and thus they work harder to generate arguments when the self is the focus of persuasion rather than someone else.

In contrast, when people are sure that they already favor something (proattitudinal issue), they know that they do not have to work very hard at all to convince themselves since they already approve.

Because they cannot be as certain that another person favors the issue, they work harder to generate arguments when another is the focus of persuasion rather than the self.

In brief, our logic is that people are likely to be more confident in knowing what their own attitudes are than what the opinions of other people are and, thus, how much effort needs to be exerted to be successful. Indeed, a person’s own attitude is often the starting point in making inferences about others (e.g., Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004), and people often overestimate how well they know their own opinions (e.g., Dunning et al., 2004). As a function of believing that they know their own views better than the views of others, people would invest more or less effort in the persuasion task, depending on how difficult the task is expected to be. When the topic is clearly counterattitudinal for oneself and self-persuasion would be difficult, people will exert more effort when generating arguments for themselves than another person because they cannot be as sure that the other person is opposed. In contrast, when the topic is clearly proattitudinal for oneself and self-persuasion would be easy, people will exert less effort when generating arguments for themselves than another person because they cannot be as sure that the other person agrees with the proposal.³

If people are more confident of what their own opinions are versus those of other people, there are important implications for different domains in terms of selecting self-persuasion strategies.

For example, if a person wanted to change the attitude of a friend who was opposed to being a vegetarian to become more favorable, the present framework suggests that asking the friend to generate possible arguments to convince himself or herself would be more effective than asking the friend to generate arguments to convince another person because the message position is counterattitudinal.

However, if the friend already supported vegetarianism and the parent person wanted him or her to become even more favorable, then asking the friend to generate arguments to convince another person would be more effective than requesting that arguments be generated for himself or herself. Similarly, according to this ap- proach, a therapist would be more effective in convincing clients by using a “convince-other” technique only for aspects with which the person already agrees, but it would be more effective to ask clients to try to directly persuade themselves for issues with which they disagree.

Overview of the Present Research

The goals of the current research was to examine whether the intended target of persuasion matters when persuasive messages are self-generated and whether the effectiveness of different targets is moderated by the direction of the advocacy (i.e., pro or counterattitudinal). In all of our studies, participants were asked to generate arguments about an issue, and these arguments were said to be for the self or for another person. In Experiment 1, the position of the advocacy (counter vs. pro) was manipulated by having participants generate arguments about a proposal to increase (counterattitudinal) or decrease tuition (proattitudinal). The target of persuasion was manipulated by having participants generate these arguments in order to convince either themselves or another student about the value of the tuition proposal. As noted, examining the intended target of persuasion using different pro- posals (proattitudinal vs. counterattitudinal topic) allows us to distinguish between the plausible explanations based on main effects (i.e., persuasion will always be greater when the self or the other is the target, regardless of the direction of topic) and our proposed mechanism (i.e., persuasion will be an interactive function of the persuasion target and the direction of the topic).

Experiment 2 addressed our assumption regarding the perceived effort involved in producing each kind of persuasion by assessing how hard participants felt they tried when aiming to convincing the self versus another person regarding a pro issue versus a counterattitudinal issue. This study also examined the mediating role of those perceptions of effort in predicting self-generated persuasion.

The next two studies further addressed the issue of mechanism, with Experiment 3 relying on an experimental (moderation) ap- proach and the final experiment providing evidence regarding mediation of the effect as a function of the actual number of self-generated arguments.

Experiment 1: Which Target Is More Persuasive, and When?

Experiment 1 was conducted to provide an initial test of whether the target and direction of persuasion matter when arguments are self-generated. In order to examine the three possible plausible outcomes described, our first study manipulated both the target of persuasion and the direction of the proposal. Thus, this study used a manipulation of the position taken (pro or counter) on a given

2This hypothesis was suggested by two additional studies we conducted in which opposite results for target of the message were obtained depending on whether the message was pro or counterattitudinal. These results (mentioned in the final discussion) led to the development of a rationale for why message position would matter.

3In order to check our assumption that people are more confident in knowing their own opinions than those of others, we asked 75 undergraduates to provide their own attitudes and to estimate the opinions of an average fellow student on the issues of a tuition increase (counterattitudinal) and decrease (proattitudinal). Although participants estimated that average other student held similar opinions, when asked how confident they were of their reports of their own opinion and how confident they were in their estimates of the opinion of an average fellow student, confidence in the opinions of others was significantly less than for oneself for both the proattitudinal, F(1, 34)⫽ 67.62, p ⬍ .001, and the counter- attitudinal, F(1, 39)⫽ 106.27, p ⬍ .001, topics.

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topic (university tuition) to examine whether an opposite pattern of persuasion findings for different targets of persuasion would emerge under different advocacies or whether one target of persuasion would be more effective regardless of the direction of the advocacy.

Participants were asked to generate arguments in favor of re- ducing tuition (pro attitudinal advocacy) or increasing tuition (counter attitudinal topic) at their own university. Furthermore, half of the participants were asked to generate arguments to convince themselves that changes in tuition were a good idea, whereas the other half were asked to generate the arguments to convince another person. In this study, we used another student as the target of persuasion in the “other” conditions. After writing their arguments in favor of increasing or decreasing tuition to convince themselves or another student, all participants reported their own attitudes on the issue of changing tuition. Because there were a number of possible outcomes for this study, as noted earlier, our primary goal was to determine whether there was just a main effect of the intended target of persuasion (and if so, in what direction it occurred) or whether there was an interaction between the target and direction of persuasion such that when the topic was counterattitudinal, there would be more message consistent attitudes in the self than the other condition but when the topic was proattitudinal, the opposite would hold.

Method

Participants and procedure. One-hundred eight undergraduates from Ohio State University participated in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. All sessions were conducted on computers using MediaLab 2006 software (Jarvis, 2006). Participants were first informed either that the university administration was considering a plan to increase tuition or that the university administration was considering a plan to decrease tuition. Then, participants were told to generate four arguments to convince either themselves or another student that this proposal was a good idea.

Afterwards, attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the tuition change proposal were measured. Finally, participants were probed for suspicion and debriefed.

Independent variables.

Proposal direction. The tuition proposal was manipulated to be pro or counterattitudinal by informing half the participants that the university was considering a tuition increase and half that the university was thinking about implementing a tuition decrease.

These different directions of advocacy were pilot tested to be counter versus proattitudinal for the vast majority of the student population participating in the research. Specifically, an initial pool of sixty-three students were randomly assigned to consider the possibility of either increasing or decreasing tuition and to rate their position on that proposal on two 9-point semantic different scales (negative–positive and harmful– beneficial; r ⫽ .85). As expected, participants’ responses were significantly more favor- able toward decreasing tuition (M⫽ 7.37, SD ⫽ 2.15) than toward increasing tuition (M⫽ 2.09, SD ⫽ 1.40), F(1, 63) ⫽ 134.95, p ⬍ .001. Furthermore, the increase proposal was on the positive side of the scale, and the decrease proposal was on the negative side of the scale.

Target of persuasion. The target of persuasion was manipulated by instructing participants to generate four arguments to

convince either themselves or another student that increasing or decreasing tuition was a good idea.

Dependent variables. To assess their favorability toward the tuition change (increase/decrease) proposal, participants com- pleted two 9-point semantic differential scales (negative–positive and harmful– beneficial). Responses to these items were signifi- cantly correlated (r⫽ .79) and were thus standardized and averaged to form an overall evaluation index, in which higher numbers indicated more favorable attitudes. Participants also completed two 9-point behavioral intention items that asked them how willing they were to have their name added to the list of students in favor of the change in tuition (not at all– completely) and how willing they were to let the researchers send them more information about the tuition proposal (not at all– completely). Responses to these items were significantly correlated (r⫽ .74) and were thus standardized and averaged to form an overall behavioral intention index, in which higher numbers indicated a greater willingness to show support for the tuition proposal. Given the evaluative com- ponent shared by attitudes and behavioral intentions, the strong correlation between the measures in this study (r⫽ .82), and the same predictions for each as well as the same results, we collapsed the standardized items from each measure into a single evaluative index for simplicity (␣ ⫽ .92; see, e.g., Labroo & Rucker, 2010;

Litt & Tormala, 2010, for recent examples combining both measures).

Results

Participants’ evaluations of the advocacy were submitted to a 2 (target: self vs. other)⫻ 2 (proposal direction: pro vs. counterattitudinal) analysis of variance (ANOVA). Not surprisingly, participants showed more favorable evaluations of the proposal when they advocated a reduction in tuition (proattitudinal topic) rather than an increase in tuition (counterattitudinal topic), F(1, 104)⫽ 156.88, p⬍ .001 (see Table 1 for all means). More importantly, an interaction emerged between proposal type (pro vs. counterattitu- dinal) and the target of persuasion (self vs. other), F(1, 104) ⫽ 7.92, p⫽ .006.⁴An analysis of the simple effects indicated that when the topic was proattitudinal (tuition decrease), participants evaluated the proposal more favorably when the target of persua- sion was another student than when the target was the self, F(1, 57)⫽ 4.09, p ⫽ .048. However, when the topic was counteratti- tudinal (tuition increase), participants evaluated the proposal more favorably when the target was the self, compared with when it was another student, F(1, 47)⫽ 4.03, p ⫽ .051.

Discussion

The results of Experiment 1 support the interaction hypothesis regarding the different effects of self-persuasion depending on whether the direction of the topic was pro or counterattitudinal.

That is, an opposite pattern of effects emerged that depended on

4The main effect of proposal type was significant for both the attitude index, F(1, 104) ⫽ 131.87, p ⬍ .001, and the behavioral intentions measure, F(1, 104)⫽ 118.06, p ⬍ .001, when those items were analyzed separately. Similarly, the interaction was also significant for both attitudes, F(1, 104)⫽ 5.17, p ⫽ .03, and behavioral intentions, F(1, 104) ⫽ 7.53, p⫽ .007.

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whether the topic was something the participants initially favored or disfavored. When the topic was counterattitudinal, more agreement with the proposal was observed when people generated the arguments to convince themselves than another person. This finding is consistent with an explanation based on the idea that self is considered to be a more important and valuable target as well as an account that holds that people process arguments that are self- relevant more. According to these views, however, people should be more effective in convincing themselves than others all the time, regardless of the topic. In contrast, our results showed the opposite effect for the proattitudinal conditions. That is, when the topic was proattitudinal, more agreement with the proposal was observed when participants generated arguments to convince another person than when participants generated arguments to convince themselves. This finding is consistent with explanations based on persuasive intent and accountability. However, these explanations, though accounting for the proattitudinal message, are not in accord with the findings for the counterattitudinal message.

Overall, then, none of the main effect accounts fared well. The present study clearly demonstrated that the persuasive impact of generating arguments for the self or another person depended on whether the advocacy was pro or counterattitudinal. This interaction finding is consistent with our proposal that people reason that they must put forth considerable effort to persuade themselves on an issue that is clearly counter for them but that they are less confident is equally disagreeable for another person. In contrast, they reason that they do not need to exert as much effort to persuade themselves on an issue that is clearly pro for them but that they are not sure is as agreeable for another person. These findings suggest that people might have different perceptions of the persuasive effort needed, depending on the situation. The main goal of the next study is to examine whether people have differential perceptions of the effort in each case and whether these perceptions of effort mediate the effects observed on message effectiveness.

Experiment 2: Evidence for Effort Assumptions The first study showed that evaluations can vary as a function of the direction of the topic in a pattern predicted by the idea that people put in more persuasive effort where they think they have to work harder. In Experiment 2, we examined whether people actually believe that they have to work harder, depending on the circumstances, and whether those perceptions mediate the persuasion results. The procedure was similar to the previous study.

Participants were asked to try to persuade either themselves or

another person about something they liked (tuition reduction) or disliked (tuition increase). However, in addition to asking people to report their attitudes toward the proposal, in this study we also asked participants’ about how hard they tried while generating the arguments and how persuasive they believed the arguments they generated to be. The goal of working hard is presumably to generate better arguments, so we expected perceived effort to be related to perceived argument quality. In line with our perspective on the role of effort in this research, we predicted that participants would recognize that they put in more effort and developed better arguments to persuade themselves versus another person when the issue was counterattitudinal but put in more effort and developed better arguments to persuade others versus themselves when the issue was proattitudinal. Furthermore, we predicted that these assessments of effort and quality would mediate the impact of target and direction on self-generated persuasion. In short, Study 2 aimed to provide evidence for the effort mechanism that we suggest accounts for the observed persuasion differences.

Method

Participants and procedure. Seventy-three undergraduates from Ohio State University participated in partial fulfillment of a course requirement. All sessions were conducted on computers using MediaLab 2006 software (Jarvis, 2006), and all sessions followed the basic procedure of Study 1. Participants were informed that the university administration was considering a plan to either increase or decrease tuition. Participants were then instructed to generate four arguments to convince either themselves or another student that increasing or decreasing tuition was a good idea. Participants were randomly assigned to one of these four experimental conditions. Afterwards, participants reported their attitudes toward the proposal change. Next, the perceived amount of effort exerted to generate the arguments and the perceived quality of those arguments were measured. Finally, participants were probed for suspicion and debriefed.

Independent variables.

Proposal direction. As in Experiment 1, the tuition proposal was manipulated to be pro or counterattitudinal by leading half of the participants to believe that the university was considering a tuition increase and half to believe that the university was considering a tuition decrease.

Target of persuasion. The target of persuasion was manipulated by instructing participants to fashion four arguments intended to persuade either themselves or another student that increasing or decreasing tuition was a good idea. This manipulation was also identical to the one used in the previous study.

Dependent variables.

Perceptions of effort and argument quality. After generating their arguments in favor of the tuition change (increase/decrease) proposal, participants completed several questions related to the effort they had exerted. Effort was assessed with several kinds of items. First, participants were directly asked about their perceived effort. They were required to answer three 9-point items that asked how much energy they put into generating their arguments, how deeply they thought about the issue, and how much attention they paid to the task of generating arguments (all anchored as not at all–very much). In addition, participants were asked to respond to three 9-point items assessing the perceived quality of the argu- Table 1

Attitudes Toward the Tuition Change Policy as a Function of the Target of Persuasion and Direction of Topic (Experiment 1)

Target

Proposal direction

Proattitudinal Counterattitudinal

M SD n M SD n

Self .45 .66 28 ⫺.61 .56 28

Other .77 .53 31 ⫺.92 .48 21

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ments. Specifically, they were asked how strong they believed their arguments to be (very weak–very strong), how valid those arguments were (not at all valid– extremely valid), and how satis- fied were they with those arguments (not at all– extremely). These six effort items displayed high reliability (␣ ⫽ .85) and were therefore averaged to form an overall index of perceived effort, in which larger numbers indicated greater effort.

Evaluation of the proposal. To assess their favorability toward the tuition change (increase/decrease) proposal, participants completed a measure of attitudes consisting of a 10-point ther- mometer (10 –100) anchored at extremely unfavorable and ex- tremely favorable. This measure is widely used and is efficient because participants provide a general evaluation of the proposal with a single item.

Results

Perceived effort. Participants’ overall perceptions of the effort they put into the arguments they generated were submitted to a 2 (target: self vs. other)⫻ 2 (proposal direction: pro vs. counterattitudinal) ANOVA. A significant effect of Proposal Direction was found, indicating that greater persuasive effort was exerted when the topic was proattitudinal than when it was counterattitu- dinal, F(1, 69)⫽ 8.81, p ⫽ .004, presumably because participants really liked this novel topic and hoped it would come about (see Table 2 for all means). More importantly, however, this effect was qualified by a significant Target⫻ Proposal Direction interaction, F(1, 69)⫽ 15.86, p ⬍ .001.⁵Participants believed they put forth more persuasive effort when they were told to convince themselves than when instructed to convince another student— but only when the topic was counterattitudinal, F(1, 33)⫽ 6.46, p ⫽ .02.

When the task involved generating arguments in favor of a proattitudinal topic, participants felt they exerted more persuasive effort to convince another student than themselves, F(1, 36)⫽ 9.98, p ⫽ .003.

Evaluation of the proposal. Participants’ evaluations of the advocacy were submitted to a 2 (target: self vs. other) ⫻ 2 (proposal direction: pro vs. counterattitudinal) ANOVA. As in the previous study, participants showed more favorable evaluations of the proposal when they advocated a reduction in tuition rather than an increase in tuition, F(1, 69)⫽ 68.28, p ⬍ .001 (see Table 3 for all means). More importantly, the expected interaction emerged between proposal type (pro vs. counterattitudinal) and the target of persuasion (self vs. other), F(1, 69) ⫽ 4.22, p ⫽ .044. This interaction indicated that when the topic was proattitudinal (tuition decrease), participants tended to evaluate the proposal more favor-

ably when the target of persuasion was another student than when the target was the self, F(1, 69)⫽ 1.91, p ⫽ .17. However, when the topic was counterattitudinal (tuition increase), participants tended to evaluate the proposal more favorably when the target was the self than when it was another student, F(1, 69)⫽ 2.33, p ⫽ .13.⁶

Mediation of the target of persuasion effect. Of most im- portance in this study was the determination of whether perceived effort mediated the interaction of target and proposal direction on attitudes. To examine this, we conducted a mediated moderation test (Muller, Judd, Yzerbyt, 2005). Prior to analysis, The Target and Proposal Direction variables were contrast coded (i.e.,⫺1, 1), and perceived effort was mean centered. In a first analysis, Target, Proposal Direction, and the Target⫻ Proposal Direction interaction were entered into a regression equation predicting attitudes.

This analysis revealed a significant main effect of Proposal direction (␤ ⫽ .70), t(69) ⫽ 8.26, p ⬍ .001, and a significant Target ⫻ Proposal Direction interaction (␤ ⫽ ⫺.173), t(69) ⫽ ⫺2.05, p ⫽ .044. In a second analysis, perceived effort was regressed on Target, Proposal Direction, and the Target⫻ Proposal interaction.

A significant main effect of Proposal Direction (␤ ⫽ .31), t(69) ⫽ 2.97, p ⫽ .004, and a significant Target ⫻ Proposal Direction interaction (␤ ⫽ ⫼.41), t(69) ⫽ ⫺3.98, p ⬍ .001, were obtained.

These analyses showed that the interaction affected both the dependent variable—attitudes—and the proposed mediator— per-

5This interaction was significant when the first three effort items were analyzed separately, F(1, 69)⫽ 18.66, p ⬍ .001, and also for the other three items related to perceived quality, F(1, 69)⫽ 7.44, p ⫽ .008.

6Although the critical interaction effect was significant in this study, as it was in Study 1, the paired comparisons were weaker than in Study 1.

This is likely because this study had fewer participants and also had a one item rating scale rather than a multi-item scale. However, we note that if the significant main effect of position (pro/counter) is subtracted from the cell means in this study, the means would display and support the predicted full crossover interaction (see Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991, for explication).

Nevertheless, to ensure the replicability of the effects across studies, we conducted an analysis in which the evaluation items in Studies 1 and 2 were standardized and subjected to a 2 (target: self vs. other)⫻ 2 (proposal direction: pro vs. counterattitudinal)⫻ 2 (Study: 1 vs. 2) ANOVA. This analysis produced a significant two way Target ⫻ Proposal Direction interaction, F(1, 173)⫽ 11.63, p ⫽ .001, that was not further moderated by Study, F(1, 173)⫽ .05, p ⫽ .82. Furthermore, when separate 2 (target) ⫻ 2 (study) analyses were conducted on the pro and counter messages, the main effects of target were significant for both the pro, F(1, 93)⫽ 5.72, p⫽ .02 and the counter, F(1, 80) ⫽ 6.20, p ⫽ .02, advocacies, and this was not further qualified by study.

Table 2

Perceived Effort in Generating Arguments as a Function of the Target of Persuasion and Proposal Direction (Experiment 2)

Target

Proposal direction

M SD n M SD n

Self 6.08 1.30 19 6.38 1.29 18

Other 7.25 .95 19 5.19 1.49 17

Table 3

Attitudes Toward the Tuition Change Policy as a Function of the Target of Persuasion and Proposal Direction (Experiment 2)

Target

Proposal direction

M SD n M SD n

Self 6.53 2.63 19 3.28 2.52 18

Other 7.63 2.19 19 2.24 1.25 17

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