Framing of Majority and Minority Source Information in Persuasion

Abstract

Information about source consensus may either create expectancies of message validity that bias subsequent processing, or may determine the amount of message processing. The authors propose that which of the two effects occurs depends on the framing of consensus information. Undergraduates (N = 242) read strong, ambiguous, or weak arguments on an issue; the source was framed as either knowledgeable or similar to participants; source consensus was either low (minority) or high (majority). Dependent variables were the favorability of cognitive responses and postmessage attitudes. As predicted, knowledge framing caused consensus-based assimilation for ambiguous arguments, and contrast for both strong and weak arguments, whereas similarity framing caused extensive processing of minority arguments, but uncritical acceptance of majority arguments.