Encyclopedia of Sociology Vol

have been told they are by those who are most meaningful to them. The principle of Harry Stack Sullivan that our self-concept is the image that we see reflected in the eyes of those who are making appraisals of us had its antecedents in the concept of the ‘‘looking-glass’’ self, developed by Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and James Mark Baldwin at the beginning of the twentieth century. A broadly systemic view of the development of the human person has come into focus, and it is profoundly sociologized.

THE FEMINIST DYNAMIC

It is a commonplace notion of modern psychology that nomothetic models of the person have in the past been formulated by Caucasian males who unreflectively based them on male psychological norms. If, as Nietzsche said, all theory is autobiographical, it would follow that theories of personality developed by males reflect in part their personal and culturally circumscribed experiences. Sigmund Freud’s, Lawrence Kohlberg’s, and Erik Erikson’s theories of moral development and evolution of human identity have been identified, among others, as based on male norms. Deviations from this male template have been considered abnormal. Karen Horney was among the first to repudiate psychoanalytic assertions that women were endowed with a moral sense inferior to that of males because they could not as children resolve the ‘‘Oedipal conflict’’ in the univocal sense that boys could. Feminists, including Inge K. Broverman, Pat Chesler, Carol Gilligan, and Carolyn Z. Enns have detailed the distortions implicit in characterizations of the typical female personality as submissive, conformist, masochistic, depression-prone, and so forth. The internalization of social roles by both men and women inevitably results in personality profiles that reflect those roles. The argument is made that establishing a template for normality that derives from a culture-circumscribed social role for men necessarily casts the typical feminine personality in the realm of the deficient, at least to the extent that it is laden with the deficits of the roles in which women have been socialized.

Whether there are universal, that is, nomothetic psychological differences between men and women arising from genetic determinants of genderrelated behavior is an empirical question that is

still being studied by behavioral geneticists. If indeed there is no significant difference in the psychological development of the two sexes independent of fluid, relativistic cultural variables, it would not seem to matter which sex one used as the nomothetic template for healthy human development. The focus of analysis would necessarily shift to the socially constructed roles that are imposed on females. Assessing women as inferior by virtue of their possession of personality traits they have internalized in a society that has prescribed them would seem patently unjust.

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCES IN

PERSONOLOGY

Just as there are no two Coke bottles and no two newly minted pennies that are perfectly identical, a fortiori there are no two humans beings who are truly identical. Reminded that the preponderance of the human genome endows each of us with characteristics that are universal, we must also acknowledge that there are at least 20,000 genes, called ‘‘polymorphic genes,’’ that come in many varieties, that get randomly assorted at conception, and that endow us in part with our individuality. The genes that define us as human are called ‘‘monomorphic genes.’’ They account for the fact that we all look recognizably human and normally act so. Whatever nomothetic principles have been truly (or purportedly) established relative to the psychobiological and behavioral properties of the human, they derive, by definition, from these genes.

Behavioral geneticists such as Robert Plomin and Thomas Bouchard (among other researchers in this field) have established the contribution of heredity to personality. For example, Bouchard has done well-regarded studies on twins reared apart that have shed light on the heritability of personality traits. Although his findings and those of other behavioral geneticists have excited controversy and negative comment, there is a convergence of evidence to show that indeed some of the variance one finds in certain personality traits is of genetic origin. But one needs to recognize that the controversy is fraught as much with ideological and political concerns as with strictly scientific ones, and the values embedded in these conflicting opinions can tilt arguments in one direction as well as another. The flashpoint, par excellence, for

this controversy is the position taken on the personality trait ‘‘intelligence,’’ a construct referring to certain adaptive and creative human capabilities. That these capabilities are still imperfectly understood ensures that the various constructs purported to define them are even more imperfectly formulated. Psychometricians are placed at an even further remove from these nebulous realities when they attempt to measure them, often by paper-and-pencil instruments.

The power of environment to shape or misshape personality is incontestable. Attachment Theory, associated with the work of John Bowlby, among others, offers a cogent explanation of the conditions for healthful psychological development. This theory has an affinity with the principles evolved by such ethologists as Tinbergen, Lorenz, Hinde, and other students of the social life of animals. Failure to develop a strong infant– primary caregiver bond during the period of primary socialization (that is, between the appearance of the first social smile at several weeks of age and the appearance of stranger anxiety at, say, six to eight months of age) is thought to lay the groundwork for developmental psychopathy—and the rupture of this bond in the first years of life, is thought to lay the groundwork for later affective disorders. A related perspective is that of ObjectRelations theorists, whose views on ‘‘mothering’’ and its influence on development are more (human) relational and less instinctor drive-based than the classical psychoanalytic model.

Although the influence of childhood experiences, both positive and negative, on adult personality is not in dispute, the partial reversibility of these effects is asserted by Michael Rutter, Jerome Kagan, and others. The variables at issue, for example, bonding in infancy to a primary caregiver and stimulus deprivation in toddlerhood are, after all, continuous and complex. The strength and duration of the variables, and their interaction with genetic variables of an idiographic and often unknown character, produce personality effects that are not predictable with any accuracy. The principle of neoteny, that is, the slowing of developmental rates and the retention of plasticity and developmental capabilities well into adulthood, is at issue here. Humans enjoy a relatively long period of growth from infancy to adulthood, a period in which earlier psychological deformity can be mitigated, if not entirely undone. In the wake of a

traumatic infancy and childhood, prolonged immaturity provides humans with the affordances of redemption.

HOMUNCULARISM

Theories of personality development range on a continuum from the most rigidly preformationist at one end to the most malleable and environmentally sensitive at the other. Historically, Western psychology has been shifting toward the latter. In his remarkable work, Centuries of Childhood (1962), Philippe Ariès has demonstrated the long tradition of viewing children as miniature adults, homunculi, so to speak. The homuncular theory in its most primitive form postulated that the human organism, a little man (i.e., homunculus), contained in the semen of the male, is deposited in the uterus of the mother. It is presumedly organically and morphologically complete. It merely needs to be nurtured to a mature status. The term has been extended as we know to embrace the postulate that not only the organic features of the mature human reside in the neonate but also the psychological features.

Children are, in this view, born with preformed characters and the cognitive structures of adults. To quote Ausubel et al.,

The basic human properties and

behavioral capacities—personality, values, and motives; perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social reaction tendencies—are not conceived as undergoing qualitative differentiation and transformation over the life-span but are presumed to exist preformed at birth. (1980 p. 15).

Vestiges of homuncularism remain in the work of twentieth-century personality theorists who attribute to infants and older children cognitions and emotions that, in a univocal sense, can only be the product of adult mentation. Confusing infantile sexuality with adult sexuality, as in classical psychoanalysis, is an example of this (cf., e.g., Thomas and Chess 1980, chap. IV, for a broader look at this issue). Among the more important of these innate schemas are the ‘‘racial unconscious’’ of Carl Gustav Jung and the ‘‘phylogenetic unconscious’’ of Sigmund Freud. They both have important implications for personological features and specific behaviors that are predicated on them.

It is widely recognized that the younger the organism, the more plastic it is in terms of acquiring and altering the learnings and adaptations it needs in order to thrive. Early-twentieth-century theories of human development postulated rigid and clearly delineated stages. These stages are no longer considered to have the rigid boundaries they were once supposed to have. In the earlier stage models it was presumed, but never demonstrated, that personality structure was established and firmly set by the age of, say, six or seven. In this view, the principal features of the personality did not change; they were only elaborated. This prescientific homuncularism has yielded to lifespan developmental models.

There exists a countervailing point of view. Research has revealed the profound and subtle possibilities for change in the human personality that exist throughout the maturational process. Critical to this process of differentiation are education and other environmental factors, not excluding the benign and nurturant conditions that need to prevail during infancy in the home. Relevant to this orientation to human development is, again, the principle of neoten. The slowing of humans’ development from infancy to adulthood, has afforded humans the opportunity for evolving the complex and diverse personalities that, in the view of these theorists, is the hallmark of this species.

THE NOMOTHETIC AND THE

IDIOGRAPHIC

That the psychologist as scientist has, in the past, inclined to a nomothetic and deterministic understanding of human beings is understandable. After all, it is difficult to build a science on the idiographic. Nevertheless, the concern of rank- and-file persons not to see themselves simply as one of billions of ‘‘knock-off’s’’ from a universal template is also understandable. This may underlie some of the concern about cloning. ‘‘If there are clones about, how will you know who people really are?’’ ask some. Though there is a misconception about the phenomenon of cloning that underlies that question (after all, identical twins meet the definition of clones, and we come to know who they are), it indicates the concern about personal identity found in Western society. More specifically, the need to be an individual and to be

different (but not too different) from everyone else is evident in many Western and Westernized cultures. This plays out in the theorizing of personologists who have developed personality theories that give emphasis to the environmental factors that impinge on individuals in all phases of their lives, and that individuate them. It is this diversity in personal histories that accounts to a large extent for the uniqueness of each person. That members of the same family who have similar histories still mature to adulthood with very different personality profiles attests to the interaction of genetic factors with education, not excluding stochastic events that may have powerful formative impact on development.

THEORIES: DICHOTOMIES AND STAGES

The study of personality has addressed the question of what dynamics operate in all human beings to shape their behavior throughout the life span. This question assumes that there are some specieswide principles governing the development of human traits from conception to demise. It also addresses the question of what factors effect the individuation of human beings such that no one person is like any other person though they all share the same monomorphic genic substrate. Social scientists will recognize the ancient dichotomy for conceptualizing the relative contributions of nature as distinguished from life experiences. The code for this derives from Shakespeare’s characterization of Caliban in The Tempest. Prospero refers to him as ‘‘a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick.’’ The expressions ‘‘nomothetic’’ and ‘‘idiographic’’ also refer to this dual factor—to wit, the universal principles governing the set ‘‘human beings’’ vis-à-vis relative principles governing the development of individuals within the set. In reality these are not true dichotomies except insofar as we wish to logically make them so. As in other conceptual polarities, explaining the emergence of a human being into adulthood admits of varying theoretical frameworks. A comparable perspective is reflected in the anthropological and linguistic distinctions between the etic (that is, the most general, often universal, frame for analyzing cultural behavior) and the emic frame (which examines social subsets of the species). An example of the former is Francis Galton’s hypothesis, recently labeled ‘‘fundamental lexical hypothesis (cf. Goldberg 1990, p.

1216), which affirms that the world’s languages all contain terms describing similar personality traits, albeit traits that, although they have the same meaning, are valued differently, and present themselves with varying intensity and frequencies. An example of the latter is the principle (inherent in most multicultural perspectives on personality development) that the geohistorical background of any distinct society profoundly shapes the ideals of human behavior, morals, and social conduct, which get incarnated as ‘‘personality’’ in the majority of its members. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis goes even further and states that the very structure of the language that a cultural subset of the human race speaks affects the character of their ideation and the consequent conduct of the group’s affairs. But earlier, Nietzsche affirmed that ‘‘philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages’’ look into the world differently and take different paths than ‘‘Indo-Germans and Moslems: the spell of grammatical functions is in the last resort the spell of physiological value judgments and racial conditions’’ ([1885]1952, p. 472)

There have been zealous partisans of theories explaining human behavior that have, for reasons ideological as much as scientific, conceptualized personality into sets of dichotomies, in which they have emphasized one polarity rather than another. This antipodal schema has been with us since antiquity. The motifs of heroism and cowardice, of altruism and selfishness, of loyalty and betrayal, of candor and duplicity, of anguish and ecstatic joy, among other descriptors of the human experience that can play out in all human lives, received their finest expression in the works of such tragedians as Sophocles and Shakespeare. On the other hand, the uniqueness of each person and the passion for establishing one’s personal identity is no less prominent in the great literature of the West. One has only to review, for example, the plays of Tennessee Williams, the great oeuvre of Cervantes, the vast range of characters in the novels of Balzac or Dickens, or in, say, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, to grasp the diversity that artists have displayed in limning the contours of these distinct personalities, to which readers have been able to resonate.

That human personality evolves and becomes different as an individual proceeds through a series of life stages would seem to be self-evident.

This view presumes, of course, that the construct ‘‘stage’’ is grounded in something real in human development. There are a number of complications to this view. First, the scope for change gets narrowed in the measure that variance in personality factors is explained by genetic factors. Obversely, the scope for change gets broadened in the measure that it is explained by education and other experience. Obviously, stage theory is less plausible, or less coercive in its implications, in the measure that personality development is fluidly malleable and educationally structured. The opposite seems true if biologically prestructured. But there is a second-order level for explaining personality change in a genetic perspective. One can accept a measure of predetermination in the psychoneurological substrate for personality, but it is not illogical to allow room in this model for a series of hardwired developmental periods. The model of Arnold Gesell, for example, though predeterministic, allows for qualitative stage-based shifts in the cognitive, psycho-motoric, interpersonal, and affective preferences and capabilities of the person.

As Piaget noted, whether or not one ‘‘sees’’ human development progressing from infancy to adulthood in stages is a function of how finegrained and molecular one makes one’s analysis. It is a question of scale. Standing inches from a pointillist painting, say, by Seurat, one sees only a multitude of tiny dots of pigment. It is only in distancing oneself so that the entire painting or large sections of it come into focus that the transitions from beach to sea to boats to trees to bathers become apparent. The phases of the panorama stand out as one macroscopically scans the canvas. It is difficult (but not impossible) to discern the shape of a galaxy when one is part of it.

As the analysis of personality development has assumed a more scientific, microscopic focus, there has been a tendency for the stage-based theories to fall into disrepute. This may account for the decline in popularity of the schemas developed by Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Sullivan, and Kohlberg, for example. Though these conceptualizations of human personality development continue to enjoy widespread support in part, if not in whole, they are partially in eclipse by virtue of advances in the newer human sciences. Cognitive science, psychoneurology, endocrinology, and social and

developmental psychology, among other disciplines, have inevitably superannuated all these grand systems to a greater or lesser degree.

SUMMARY

On entering the twenty-first century, the Zeitgeist will favor, it appears, theories of personality that are life-span developmental, less instinct-driven but more persons-relational, constructivist, proc- ess-oriented and dynamic, that is, Heraclitean, holistic, teleonomic, evolutionary, genetics-based, gender-equal, emic, sociological, and idiographic. Clearly, personality theories that predate World War II are not, by and large, consistent with these descriptors. It appears that the era of the grand systems is past. Personology will reconcile itself to more modest paradigms for describing, explaining, and predicting human behavior.

Students who wish to follow the development of this discipline are urged to regularly consult the

Annual Review of Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the European Journal of Personality, Developmental Psychology, and other respected periodicals that publish articles in this domain. An excellent and more detailed analysis of many of the issues raised above can be found in Theories of Personality by Hall, et al. (1998, chap.1, 15).

REFERENCES

Ariès, P. 1962 Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Random House.

Ausubel, D. P., E. V. Sullivan, and S. W. Ives 1980 The Theory and Problems of Child Development, 3rd ed. Grune and Stratton.

Cattell, R. B. 1964 Personality and Social Psychology. San

Diego: Knapp.

Cattell, R. B. 1965 The Scientific Analysis of Personality. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

Damasio, A. R. 1994 Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books.

Goldberg, L. R. 1990 ‘‘An Alternative ‘Description of Personality’: The Big-Five Factor Structure.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59:1216–1229.

Hall, C. S., G. Lindzey, and J. B. Campbell 1997 Theories of Personality, 4th ed. New York: John Wiley.

Hartshorne, H., and M. A. May 1928 Studies in the Nature of Character, vol. I, Studies in Deceit. New York: Macmillan.

James, W. (1890) 1952 The Principles of Psychology. vol. 53 in Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Kagan, J. 1994 Galen’s Prophecy: Temperament in Human Nature. New York: Basic Books.

Laurence, J. R., D. Day, and L. Gaston 1998 ‘‘From Memories of Abuse to the Abuse of Memories.’’ In S. J. Lynn, ed., Truth in Memory. New York: American Psychological Association Press.

Mahoney, M. 1991 Human Changes Processes: The Scientific Foundations of Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

Maturana, H. R., and F. J. Varela 1980 Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: Reidel.

Mischel, W. 1968 Personality and Assessment. New York:

John Wiley.

Nietzsche, F. (1885) 1952 Beyond Good and Evil. vol. 43 in

Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Pervin, L. A. 1996 The Science of Personality. New York: John Wiley.

Thomas, A., and S. Chess 1980 The Dynamics of Psychological Development. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

FRANK DUMONT

PERSUASION

The average number of hours the television set is on in American households is 6.8 hours a day (Peterson 1981). When not watching their 6.8 hours of television, most people spend the bulk of their time in talk with others. Much of this talk is geared not just to making oneself understood but to convincing someone else of the value and correctness of one’s viewpoint. The average adult spends the majority of his or her waking hours at work, where, depending on the job, much activity involves efforts to get others to do one’s bidding or being the object of such efforts. All this television watching, conversation, and work takes place in a social and political climate that, in theory if not in practice, encourages the exchange and dissemination of ideas among large numbers of people.

These facts have led some to conclude that this is an era of persuasion in which understanding who says what to whom in what way and with what effect is of critical importance (Lasswell 1948). In fact, some argue that the current era of persuasion is one of the few periods in the four millennia of

Western history characterized by such a degree of openness to argument (McGuire 1985).

Whether or not the present era is unique in this manner, more and more people are becoming conscious of the persuasive contexts in which they spend most of their time. Indeed, if the increasingly ingenious efforts of advertisers to pique interest and shape tastes and habits are any indication, people are becoming increasingly savvy about others’ efforts at persuasion. This means that we have a very practical interest in understanding just how persuasion works. It also means that social scientists, and social psychologists in particular, have an interest in understanding and explaining a pervasive social phenomenon.

As one aspect of understanding persuasion, social psychologists have long studied attitude formation and change. During the 1920s and 1930s psychologists focused on describing the attitudes people hold. This led to the development of techniques for measuring attitudes, primarily scales such as the Likert scale, which continue to be used today by persuasion researchers. The second period of interest in attitude research occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, with the main focus moving from description to the study of attitude change and the effects of attitudes on behavior. (For a review of the research on attitude-behavior consistency, see Ajzen and Fishbein 1977.) This interest waned considerably during the next two decades as social psychologists became increasingly interested in social perception, or how people selectively interpret and respond to their social environments. The resurgence of interest in attitudes, and particularly in persuasion, that followed is thus largely informed by social psychology’s more general emphasis on how people process the information they take in from their environment.

One might speculate that the interest in explaining persuasion and attitude change over mere attitude description reflects the increasing influence of mass media. However, this coincidence of research interest and social change is belied by the lack of communication between those studying the effects of mass media on attitudes and those studying persuasion in more immediately interpersonal contests (Roberts and Maccoby 1985). The discussion here reflects this split in research focuses, concentrating solely on persuasion research in face-to-face, interpersonal contexts and

dealing only peripherally with research on the effects of mass media on attitudes. (See Roberts and Maccoby 1985 for a review of this literature.) The issue of brainwashing, an extreme form and method of persuasion, is considered only when it has direct relevance to less extreme persuasion contests and processes.

Of relevance to research on persuasion is the study of normative compliance occurring in settings where no active attempt is made to influence, but people change their opinions or judgments nonetheless. Asch’s (1951) research on conformity demonstrated that subjects involved in a simple task of judging the length of a line were highly influenced by the judgments of others present, even when no overt influence attempts were made. In these studies people working with the experimenter gave incorrect assessments of the relative lengths of lines viewed. Even in cases of obviously incorrect judgments, most subjects conformed to the majority’s assessment. Normative compliance is found to be greater the closer to unanimity the majority view, the larger the number holding it, and the more the conforming subject is attracted to and invested in group membership.

The persistence of findings of normative compliance, even in the absence of overt influence attempts, raises an obvious question: What happens when such overt attempts at persuasion are made? This and related questions are the focus of persuasion research. The focus in persuasion research is on attitude change ‘‘occurring in people exposed to relatively complex messages consisting of a position advocated by a communicator and usually one or more arguments designed to support that position’’ (Eagly and Chaiken 1984, p. 256). More simply defined, persuasion is an effort to change people’s attitudes, these being the emotional and cognitive responses they have to objects, people, experiences, and so on.

FACTORS AFFECTING THE LIKELIHOOD

OF PERSUASION

The guiding question of who says what to whom in what way with what effect has largely determined what factors researchers look to in explaining and predicting persuasion. These factors fall into four general classes: source or communicator variables, message variables, channel variables, and receiver variables. Reflecting two decades of research on

social cognition, studies of the effects of these variables on persuasion investigate how these factors affect persuasion by shaping the way in which people process information in the persuasion context. Indeed, the term process reflects the computer analogy often used to capture the manner in which people perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment.

For example, in studying the effects of source characteristics (the characteristics of the person communicating the persuasive message) researchers might examine how the likability of the source leads the receiver (the object of persuasion) either to attend to or to ignore the quality of the arguments accompanying the message. Similarly, researchers examine other aspects of cognition (e.g., attention, comprehension, receptivity, retention) for the manner in which they mediate the effects on persuasion of source, message, channel, and receiver variables.

Source Variables. The source variable of greatest interest is the credibility of the person communicating the persuasive message, including the communicator’s apparent knowledge, social class, attractiveness, and likability. Consistently with common sense, the more credible the source, the more persuasive the source and the more likely that the receiver will change his or her attitude in the direction of the persuasive message. More interesting, however, is the combination of source credibility with other factors, and their combined effect on persuasion. For example, if the target person is not personally involved with the issue at hand, source credibility is more likely to enhance persuasion than if the person is highly involved in the issue. This is because personal involvement is likely to be associated with greater argument scrutiny by the target person, reducing the likelihood of immediate acceptance of even a credible source’s position (Chaiken 1980).

The effects of source credibility on persuasion are thus mediated by the extent to which the target is motivated to thoughtfully scrutinize the supporting arguments presented by the source. Personal involvement in the issue is one such motivation, but specific knowledge of the topic (without any particularly emotionally charged investment in it) and being educated in general are also factors that mediate the effect of source credibility because of their impact on the manner in which the

target processes information at his or her disposal. Level of involvement, knowledge, and education are all characteristics of the receiver. The above example thus reveals the complex relationships between the factors that affect persuasion and their joint effects on information processing.

Message Variables. Many aspects of the persuasive message itself have been examined by research on persuasion. These include message style, ordering of arguments presented, speed of delivery, and message repetition. The effects of message repetition on persuasion are particularly interesting because they reveal the often unexpected combined effects of variables. For example, a study by Cacioppo and Petty (1979) revealed that only if supporting arguments are strong does repetition enhance persuasion, since repetition leads to greater argument scrutiny by the receiver, which enhances persuasion only to the extent that arguments are convincing.

Common sense might tell us that the use of humor in a message will enhance its persuasiveness by increasing the attractiveness of the source or, in the case of weak supporting arguments, distracting the target’s attention from the content. Researchers have hypothesized that humor should enhance persuasion with a highly credible source, but not with a less credible source, since humor is likely to further reduce credibility in the latter case. However, there is little evidence to support the expected effects of humor on persuasion. The observed effects are rarely significant, and are as often negative as positive. Furthermore, the combined effects of humor with source credibility, or humor’s impact on interest, retention, or source evaluation, are not found (McGuire 1985).

Channel Variables. Channel variables refer to the medium in which the message is communicated. For example, message persuasiveness varies depending on whether the message is given in person or in verbal, written, audio, or video form. In addition, channel variables include factors such as distraction—either direct distraction created by the behavior of the source or indirect distraction such as repeated external noise during the communication.

Petty and Cacioppo (1981) studied the effects of distraction on persuasion and found that its effects are mediated by cognitive factors such as the target’s ability or motivation to scrutinize the

arguments. If the message is accompanied by a distracting noise, for example, this will enhance persuasion if accompanying arguments are weak, since it decreases the receiver’s ability or motivation to pay close attention to the supporting arguments. Conversely, if the supporting arguments are strong, distraction decreases the likelihood of persuasion, especially with knowledgeable targets, since it makes it unlikely they will pay attention to the strong arguments designed to persuade them.

Similarly, other channel variables, such as the use of catchy music in television ads, affect persuasion to the extent that they motivate the receiver to generate positive rather than negative thoughts in response to the message. Generating thoughts is distinguished from argument scrutiny because it refers to the additional arguments or ideas the receiver brings to bear in evaluating a message, not to the supporting arguments provided by the communicator. Channel or other variables enhance persuasion to the extent that they generate positive thoughts or supporting arguments in the target (Greenwald 1968). Like other factors affecting persuasion then, the impact of channel variables on persuasion is mediated by the resulting cognitive processes engaged in by the target of the persuasive message.

Receiver Variables. Since persuasion is oriented toward convincing someone to adopt a particular viewpoint or opinion, it makes sense that the person himself or herself has some impact on the persuasion process. Interest in the personality correlates of persuasion was high during the 1950s but waned in the following decades as individuallevel explanations of social phenomena became less popular among social psychologists. However, more recent work has revived interest in the effect of receiver variables on persuasion.

A variety of receiver variables relating to personality characteristics have been studied to determine receiver susceptibility and resistance to persuasion. With respect to self-esteem, researchers predict that greater self-esteem will decrease the likelihood of persuasion to the extent that it increases the likelihood that the receiver will carefully scrutinize the arguments, and decreases the likelihood of the receiver’s being swayed by a credible source in the absence of strong supporting arguments. Therefore, like the other factors

affecting persuasion, self-esteem exerts its effects on persuasion through the variables related to the manner in which the receiver processes the information available in the persuasion context.

Results of studies of self-esteem and persuasion offer mixed results, some indicating negligible effects (Barber 1964) and others suggesting that the lower the self-esteem, the greater the tendency to conform, especially when the aspect of self-esteem involved is closely related to the issue at hand (Endler et al. 1972). The effects of self-esteem are complex, especially when combined with other variables. For example, greater influenceability is associated with higher, not lower, self-esteem as the complexity of the persuasive message increases.

More consistent findings have been produced on the effects of receiver’s mood on responses to persuasive attempts. Interestingly, research has shown that neutral or bad moods decrease susceptibility to persuasive attempts, largely because targets are more likely to scrutinize messages when in a neutral or bad mood than when in a good mood (Wegener et al. 1995; Rosseli et al. 1995).

The effects of authoritarianism or dogmatism have also received considerable research attention. Dogmatism is defined as a general inclination to be closed-minded, intolerant, and deferential to authority. Research has shown that receivers low in dogmatism are persuaded by strong, but not by weak, arguments. Dogmatic receivers, in contrast, are persuaded by strong arguments only when the source is nonexpert. With expert sources, dogmatic individuals are equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments (DeBono and Klein 1993).

Aside from personality characteristics, persuasion researchers, like other social researchers, have shown a longstanding interest in the issue of gender differences. A summary of 148 studies of the effects of gender on persuasion (Eagly and Carli 1981) indicates that women are more easily influenced than men. However, as consistent as these findings are, the magnitude of gender differences in influenceability is small enough to raise doubts about its practical significance for people’s everyday lives (McGuire 1985).

However trivial these differences may be, they have inspired persuasion researchers to search for

an explanation. One plausible account is that ‘‘greater female susceptibility and greater male predictability might derive from socialization differences such that conforming pressures are exerted more strongly and uniformly on women, compressing them into a narrow band of high influenceability’’ (McGuire 1985, p. 288). Thus, the effects of gender on influenceability result from the different social experiences of men and women (for example, the greater likelihood that women will hold jobs in which they will receive more persuasion attempts than they themselves perform).

METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF PERSUASION

While all studies of persuasion tend to focus on some combination of the variables discussed above, more general research orientations have not been uniform. One way of dividing research approaches to persuasion is to distinguish between the descriptive and the mathematical models. The former may focus on any combination of variables affecting persuasion, but their predictions tend to be stated in the form of verbal argument or a set of hypotheses. Mathematical or probabilistic models, on the other hand, cast their predictions about persuasion in the form of equations, with variables and their relationships represented in algebraic terms. While the choice of research approach does not dictate which variables the researcher focuses on, some argue that the greater precision of probabilistic models makes for a more exact understanding of the conditions likely to produce persuasion (McGuire 1985). Others (e.g., Eagly and Chaiken 1984) refer to these models as ‘‘normative,’’ meaning that they describe how persuasion ought to work, not necessarily how it works in reality.

Whatever the relative merits of descriptive and probabilistic approaches, there is some consensus among persuasion researchers that a more general theory of persuasion is necessary if the vast research findings in the area are to be integrated in a meaningful manner (Eagly and Chaiken 1984). As this discussion shows, the research on persuasion is blessed with a large number of well-concep- tualized variables, most of which are easy to operationalize, that is, to create in a laboratory setting. The discussion also shows, however, that even when a small portion of all the possible combinations of these variables are matched with

one or two of the mediating cognitive processes, the resulting insights into persuasion are far from some of the commonsense notions alluded to throughout this discussion. This fact lends support for the call for a more unifying theory of persuasion to integrate the somewhat fragmented picture that emerges from a combining-of-vari- ables approach.

SUSCEPTIBILITY AND RESISTANCE TO

PERSUASION

This discussion raises important questions about issues of susceptibility and resistance to persuasion. When is being easily persuaded good? When is resistance good, and how can it be taught? If Americans are spending between six and seven hours a day in front of their television sets, and the rest of their waking hours in persuasive communications with others on the job or at leisure, teaching resistance to all this persuasion might become a top priority. For example, when research reveals that motivating people to generate reasons for their attitudes toward a product ultimately causes them to change their initial attitude, and even to purchase a product on the basis of their changed attitude (only to regret it later) attention is called to the conditions under which enhancing resistance might be warranted (Wilson et al. 1989). On the other hand, when research shows that two years of viewing Sesame Street caused both black and white children to manifest more positive attitudes towards black and Hispanics, something is learned about the conditions under which enhancing attitude change and persuasion is desirable (Bogatz and Ball 1971).

Whether one values resistance or openness to persuasion, our understanding of resistance to persuasion is enhanced by our understanding of what increases the likelihood of persuasion. As this discussion has shown, source variables (e.g., credibility), channel variables (e.g., distractions), message variables (e.g., argument strength), and receiver variables (e.g. personality characteristics) can all affect the receiver’s susceptibility or resistance to persuasion. In addition, research has shown that when people perceive persuasive messages as threats to their freedom, they resist persuasion and maintain their original position or, in some cases, adopt a position opposite to the one advocated in the message (Brehm 1966).

More recent research on values reveals another factor involved in susceptibility and resistance to persuasion. In general, people are more susceptible to messages which are consistent with their own values, and more resistant to those that are not. For example, Han and Shavitt (1994) have shown that receivers with individualistic values (e.g., Americans) are more persuaded by advertising messages emphasizing individualistic themes (e.g., ‘‘Take care of number one!’’). In contrast, receivers with collectivistic values (e.g., Koreans) are more persuaded by advertising messages emphasizing collectivistic themes (e.g., ‘‘For you and your family!’’). Thus, whether we are interested in enhancing persuasion or increasing resistance to it, understanding the role of values in the persuasion process is crucial.

Ultimately, resistance to the potential loss of autonomy involved in persuasion is not surprising in a culture that places a premium on such individuality and freedom. In addition, such concerns are not unwarranted, given the fact that many of the attempts at persuasion people face in natural settings are specifically designed to minimize the threatening aspects of such attempts and thus to reduce resistance (hence the use of the word ‘‘seductive’’ to refer to arguments, advertisements, etc.). Are people continually at risk, then, of potentially harmful persuasion?

One could argue that in people’s ability to be persuaded lies the possibility of autonomy. If people are easily persuaded, then they are in similar measure unlikely to be overwhelmingly persuaded by a particular viewpoint over all others. They may be likely to resist total indoctrination, if only because they are susceptible to some other credible source sending a convincing message in a captivating medium.

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