THE IMPACT OF PRIMING DIFFERENT PERSONALI TY DIMENSIONS ON PROCESSES OF ATTITUDE-CHANGE AND ON JUDGMENTS ABOUT THE COMMUNICATOR

Research on person perception has shown that judgments about a target person who displays ambiguous behavior can be influenced by previously primed, concepts. This paradigm was used in a persuasion study: Subje cts read short texts, ostensibly newspaper articles, that were compose d to prime either competence or selfishness. In an ostensibly independ ent second study, subjects read an article that argued in favor of a f luoridation of drinking-water in Germany with either strong or weak ar guments that were attributed to a chemist. Information about this chem ist were ambiguous insofar as they allowed to categorize him as either competent or selfish. Dependent variables were attitudes to fluoridat ion. cognitive responses to the message, and judgments about the commu nicator. When competence had been primed, nearly all dependent measure s were influenced more strongly by argument quality than when:selfishn ess had been primed. In the competence priming condition, subjects pro cessed message content systematically and attributed greater competenc e to the communicator when argumentation was strong rather than weak. In the selfishness priming condition, attitudes to fluoridation and ju dgments about the communicator were independent of argument strength. Results are discussed referring to recent dual process models of persu asion.