Examination of Psychological Processes Underlying Resistance to Persuasion

Abstract

Three modes of resistance to persuasion (biased assimilation, relative weighting of attributes, and minimization of impact) were examined in the context of a lon-gitudinal field study of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and a lab experiment in the consumer setting. Only two of these modes (biased assimilation and relative weighting) were found to be sensitive to the refutability of the persuasive com-munication; the effectiveness of the remaining one (minimization of impact) was not influenced by this factor. Specifically, committed individuals demonstrated bi-ased assimilation in the face of easy to refute negative information, but this mode of resistance decreased in its effectiveness when the information became difficult to refute. The relative-weighting mode of resistance (decreasing the weight given to attributes influenced by the negative information and increasing the weight given to favorably evaluated attributes), in contrast, emerged only in the face of difficult to refute information, apparently when biased assimilation decreased in its effec-tiveness. The impact mode of resistance was fairly effective in the face of both easy and difficult to refute information. That is, committed respondents attempted to isolate the impact of the negative information to the target attribute, minimizing its spillover to the other attributes in the attitudinal representation in response to both easy and difficult to refute messages. That individuals with strong attitudes resist attitudechange is a well-accepted finding in the consumer behavior and psychology literature (e.g., Eagly and Chaiken 1995; Haugtvedt and Petty 1992; Petty and Cacioppo 1986). However, relatively little attention has been given to the psychological processes that mediate resistance to