Audience response as a heuristic cue in persuasion

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Persuasion Science
• Communication Studies

Background:

• Conflicting findings exist regarding the persuasive impact of overheard audiences.
• The heuristic-systematic model of persuasion offers a framework to understand these effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how audience response cues and argument quality influence persuasion under varying levels of personal involvement.
• To examine the role of need for cognition in moderating audience effects.

Main Methods:

• Subjects evaluated persuasive messages with high or low quality arguments.
• An overheard audience provided enthusiastic or unenthusiastic responses.
• Personal involvement (high vs. low) and need for cognition were manipulated or measured.

Main Results:

• Audience response significantly influenced opinions only under low personal involvement.
• Under high personal involvement, argument quality was the primary driver of persuasion.
• Individuals with a lower need for cognition were more susceptible to audience cues when involvement was low.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the heuristic model of persuasion, differentiating between peripheral (audience cues) and central (argument quality) routes.
• Audience effects in persuasion are contingent on both personal involvement and individual differences like need for cognition.
• This research clarifies the conditions under which social cues from an audience shape attitudes.