FLEXIBLE CORRECTION PROCESSES IN SOCIAL JUDGMENT - IMPLICATIONS FOR PERSUASION

Two experiments were conducted to examine correction for perceived bia s in persuasion situations. Study 1 showed that, although a manipulati on of source likability had an impact on attitudes when no instruction to remove bias was present, when people were asked to remove any bias from their judgments, the effect of the source likability manipulatio n disappeared. The fact that the correction instruction did not increa se the impact of an argument quality manipulation on attitudes suggest ed that effort aimed at correction is conceptually distinct from effor t aimed at processing a message in general. Study 2 showed that a corr ection for source likability took place under low elaboration conditio ns-where a manipulation of source likability had an impact when no cor rection instructions were provided, and under high elaboration conditi ons-where a manipulation of source likability had no impact when no co rrection instructions were provided. In the high elaboration condition s, correcting for an impact that was not actually present led a dislik able source to be more influential than a likable source.