Convergent and divergent processing of majority and minority arguments: effects on focal and related attitudes

This research concerned attitude change towards a majority or minority posi tion as a function of convergent and divergent message processing. Results of a 2 (majority/minority support for persuasive arguments) x 3 (convergent /divergent/no-processing instructions) experiment showed that recipients id entified more with a majority rather than minority, and identification was positively correlated with articles on the focal, but not the related issue . More importantly, results showed that in the no-processing condition, cou nter-attitudinal majority arguments produced more positive attitudes on the focal rather than related issue, minority arguments had no effects on eith er issue. A similar pattern emerged under convergent processing: major it!, support produced more positive attitudes on focal than related issues, whi le minority support had no effect on either issue. Divergent processing ins tructions, finally, produced more positive attitudes on the related issue t han on the focal issue, especially in the case of minority support. Unexpec tedly, majority arguments under divergent processing had ilo effect on foca l or related attitudes whatsoever. Overall, results support the conclusion that majority arguments affect attitudes on focal issues more than on relat ed issues because of convergent message processing, while minority argument s affect attitudes on related issues more than on focal issues because of d ivergent message processing and a desire to avoid identification with the s ource. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.