Type of Message, Personality, and Attitude Change
This experiment was designed to test the hypotheses that the relationship between personality and attitude change is affected by the type of persuasive communication and that the relationship between personality, attitude change, and type of appeal would be different for the two sexes. 280 college students were randomly divided into three treatment conditions. Each group received either a factual, emotional, or conforming appeal. Measures of anxiety (MAS), self-concept (S-C), authoritarianism (F), and intolerance of ambiguity (IA) were obtained for each student. A multiple regression analysis was conducted for each treatment and sex group with attitude change scores used as the dependent variable. Significant F ratios for the cumulative regression were found for males receiving the conforming message and for females receiving the conforming and emotional appeals. No personality measure was associated with attitude change following the factual appeal for either sex, or for the emotional appeal for the males. For the males in the con forming-appeal treatment IA was positively correlated with attitude change, while MAS and F were negatively correlated. For females in the conforming-appeal treatment S-C was positively correlated and MAS negatively correlated, while MAS was positively correlated in the emotional treatment. The results were interpreted as supporting the basic hypotheses and suggest that considerable attention must be given to the appeal used to induce attitude change in studies investigating personality and persuasibility.