Persuasion at Diﬀ erent Levels of Elaboration: Experimental Eﬀects of Strength, Valence and Ego Depletion

Lucas S Caldas,Renan L Lyra,Fabio Iglesias,Izabella R Melo

doi:10.9788/tp2019.2-20

Abstract

Abstract People are victims of consumer fraud and scams on a daily basis. However, in most cases, the victims could have detected the fraud if only they had checked for inconsistencies in the scammer's message. What makes some people detect and avoid a scam while others fall prey to it? This article investigates, in two experiments, the effects of ego depletion, issue involvement, need for cognition, and strength and valence of arguments on attitudes and attitude change. Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that, in the case of high ego depletion, the participants' attitudes would be similar in both strong and weak argument conditions, whereas in the case of low ego depletion, their attitudes would be significantly more favorable in strong argument conditions. In Experiment 2, we hypothesized that participants' attitudes would follow the direction of the valence of the persuasive message presented to them. The results corroborated the hypothesis of Experiment 2 alone. Overall, the results indicate a low tendency for the participants to agree with the persuasive messages. Future studies could benefit from using different manipulations of the elaboration likelihood and from testing the persuasiveness of fraudulent messages.

Highlights

Pessoas são vítimas de golpes e fraudes contra o consumidor diariamente
In most cases of consumer fraud, the information provided by a scammer, someone who is attempting to defraud others, contains a series of inconsistencies
Contrary to expectations based on the literature (Haugtvedt & Petty, 1992), need for cognition did not have a moderating effect on persuasion, because high-Need for cognition (NFC) individuals were affected in the same way that low-NFC individuals were

Summary

Introduction

Pessoas são vítimas de golpes e fraudes contra o consumidor diariamente. No entanto, na maioria dos casos, a vítima poderia ter detectado a fraude se tivesse dado atenção para as inconsistências na mensagem do estelionatário. En el Experimento 2 se esperaba que las actitudes de los participantes siguieran la dirección de la valencia del mensaje persuasivo. Consumers later on regret their purchase, feel deceived and ask themselves why they bought it in the first place – and in many cases, that was precisely the salesperson’s intention This phenomenon, deceptive persuasion, occurs when a persuasion agent fools his/ her target by fabricating, manipulating or hiding information about a product or service, merely to better convince the target to purchase it (Boush, Friestad, & Wright, 2015). One type of deceptive persuasion is consumer fraud In this case, the product may not exist, and the objective is not selling, but rather appropriating the target’s money or personal information (Parodi, 2008). Such processes are associated with the establishment of long-term goals, analytic processing, and the suppression of Type 1 processes

Methods

Results

Conclusion