IMPLICIT THEORIES OF PERSUASION

This research explores whether individuals have implicit theories of p ersuasion. The first study sought to understand how persuasive strateg ies ate cognitively represented. Using multidimensional scaling, two d imensions were identified. The first dimension distinguishes the types of tactics used to bring about attitude change. The second dimension differentiated the social acceptability of the persuasive strategies. The second stage of this research explored the nature of people's impl icit theories of persuasion. Experiment 1 demonstrated that implicit t heories of persuasion are sensitive to the operation of multiple goals in a situation. Experiment 2 found that implicit theories of persuasi on reflect the audience's familiarity with the topic In Experiment 3, implicit theories were demonstrated to be sensitive to the topic-relev ant knowledge of the communicator.