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Distraction And Dissonance: A Model Of The Persuasive Process, Davis Albert Foulger

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

After exploring the successes, failures, and conflicting explanations for results in two communications research traditions, distraction and counter-attitudinal advocacy, an attempt was made to explain these results in terms of a more comprehensive theory. Distractions were organized into classes defined by their strength and relevance to the message, demonstrating how these and other factors affected the persuasiveness of a message. On the basis of this theory an untested class of distractions, cognitive distractions, were hypothesized. This class of distraction, related to cognitive dissonance, was then used to integrate the conflicting research in counter-attitudinal advocacy. On the basis of this theory, …