Comparing the Impact of Explicit and Implicit Resistance Induction Strategies on Message Persuasiveness

Abstract

Traditional strategies that help people to resist persuasive communication, such as warnings of persuasive intent, are explicit, effortful, and require cognitive capacity. Typically, however, message recipients are unable or unmotivated to allocate their cognitive resources to adopting resistance strategies that help them withstand persuasive messages. Therefore, this study investigates a more implicit, persuasive intent priming strategy that thwarts the need for cognitive capacity. In two experiments, we demonstrate that compared with a no-strategy control condition, a persuasive intent prime is as effective as a traditional persuasive intent forewarning strategy in reducing the influence of heuristic cues in advertising. Interestingly, we show that the persuasive intent prime requires less cognitive resources than the persuasive intent forewarning strategy.