Abstract
An experiment tested the hypothesis that the more subjective the audience thinks the issue of the communication is, the greater will be the relative effectiveness of a communicator they think is similar to themselves compared to a communicator they think is dissimilar. College women ranked poetry after inspecting rankings attributed to another girl. They were led to believe that rankings of the poetry were either a matter of taste (subjective issue) or artistic knowledge (objective issue) and that the other was either similar or dissimilar to themselves. On a measure of agreement with the other’s rankings, a significant interaction was found between whether the other was similar or dissimilar and whether the issue was subjective or objective, as predicted by the hypothesis.
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Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelly, H. H. Communication and persuasion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953
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This study was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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Mills, J., Kimble, C.E. Opinion change as a function of perceived similarity of the communicator and subjectivity of the issue. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 2, 35–36 (1973). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03327707
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03327707