The preference for potential

When people seek to impress others, they often do so by highlighting individual achievements. Despite the intuitive appeal of this strategy, we demonstrate that people often prefer potential rather than achievement when evaluating others. Indeed, compared with references to achievement (e.g., "this person has won an award for his work"), references to potential (e.g., "this person could win an award for his work") appear to stimulate greater interest and processing, which can translate into more favorable reactions. This tendency creates a phenomenon whereby the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing. We document this preference for potential in laboratory and field experiments, using targets ranging from athletes to comedians to graduate school applicants and measures ranging from salary allocations to online ad clicks to admission decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Resisting persuasion by the skin of one's teeth: the hidden success of resisted persuasive messages

Recent research has suggested that when people resist persuasion they can perceive this resistance and, under specifiable conditions, become more certain of their initial attitudes (e.g., Z. L. Tormala & R. E. Petty, 2002). Within the same metacognitive framework, the present research provides evidence for the opposite phenomenon--that is, when people resist persuasion, they sometimes become less certain of their initial attitudes. Four experiments demonstrate that when people perceive that they have done a poor job resisting persuasion (e.g., they believe they generated weak arguments against a persuasive message), they lose attitude certainty, show reduced attitude-behavioral intention correspondence, and become more vulnerable to subsequent persuasive attacks. These findings suggest that resisted persuasive attacks can sometimes have a hidden yet important success by reducing the strength of the target attitude.     

Perceiving stability as a means to attitude certainty: The role of implicit theories of attitudes

This research introduces the concept of implicit theories of attitude stability. Across three studies, individuals are shown to vary both naturally and situationally in their lay theories about the stability of attitudes. Furthermore, these general theories are shown to impact people's certainty in their specific attitudes by shaping their perceptions of the stability of the attitude under consideration. By affecting attitude certainty, implicit theories of attitude stability also influence the extent to which people rely on their attitude when committing to future attitude-relevant behavior. Moreover, following exposure to a persuasive attack, implicit theories are shown to interact with situational perceptions of attitude stability to determine attitude certainty. Collectively, these findings suggest that implicit theories of attitude stability have an important influence on people's attitude certainty, subsequent behavioral intentions, and resistance to persuasive messages. Future directions concerning the potential impact of these theories for other attitudinal phenomena are discussed.     

Source Credibility and Attitude Certainty: A Metacognitive Analysis of Resistance to Persuasion

Recent research (Tormala & Petty, 2002) has demonstrated that when people resist persuasion, they can perceive this resistance and become more certain of their initial attitudes. This research explores the role of source credibility in determining when this effect occurs. In two experiments, participants received a counterattitudinal persuasive message. When participants counterargued this message, they became more certain of their attitudes, but only when it came from a source with high expertise. When the message came from a source with low expertise, resisting it had no impact on attitude certainty. This effect was shown using both a traditional measure of attitude certainty (Experiment 1) and a well‐established consequence of certainty—the correspondence between attitudes and behavioral intentions (Experiment 2). In addition, the effect was confined to high elaboration conditions, and occurred even when participants were not explicitly instructed to counterargue. These results are consistent with a metacognitive framework proposed to understand resistance to persuasion.     

When increased confidence yields increased thought: A confidence-matching hypothesis

Traditional theories of confidence and information processing suggest that people engage in greater processing activity when they feel doubtful as opposed to confident. Recent research, however, has hinted at the possibility that this effect might be malleable. The current research tests a confidence-matching hypothesis to determine when increased confidence yields increased processing and when increased confidence yields decreased processing. Based on recent advances in research on matching effects, it is proposed that the classic negative effect of confidence on information processing will reverse when messages are framed in terms of confidence. This hypothesis is tested by presenting participants with a persuasive message containing strong or weak arguments under confidence or doubt conditions. As predicted, when the message is framed in confidence terms, participants engage in greater message processing when they feel confident rather than doubtful, as indicated by greater argument quality effects on attitudes and thought favorability.     

A new look at the consequences of attitude certainty: the amplification hypothesis

It is well established that increasing attitude certainty makes attitudes more resistant to attack and more predictive of behavior. This finding has been interpreted as indicating that attitude certainty crystallizes attitudes, making them more durable and impactful. The current research challenges this crystallization hypothesis and proposes an amplification hypothesis, which suggests that instead of invariably strengthening an attitude, attitude certainty amplifies the dominant effect of the attitude on thought, judgment, and behavior. In 3 experiments, the authors test these competing hypotheses by comparing the effects of attitude certainty manipulations on univalent versus ambivalent attitudes. Across experiments, it is demonstrated that increasing attitude certainty strengthens attitudes (e.g., increases their resistance to persuasion) when attitudes are univalent but weakens attitudes (e.g., decreases their resistance to persuasion) when attitudes are ambivalent. These results are consistent with the amplification hypothesis.     

When credibility attacks: The reverse impact of source credibility on persuasion

Recent research on the self-validation hypothesis suggests that source credibility identified after message processing can influence the confidence people have in their own thoughts generated in response to persuasive messages (Briñol, Petty, & Tormala, 2004). The present research explored the implications of this effect for the possibility that high credibility sources can be associated with more or less persuasion than low credibility sources. In two experiments, it is demonstrated that when people generate primarily positive thoughts in response to a message (e.g., because the message contains strong arguments) and then learn of the source, high source credibility leads to more favorable attitudes than does low source credibility. When people have primarily negative thoughts in response to a message (e.g., because it contains weak arguments), however, this effect is reversed—that is, high source credibility leads to less favorable attitudes than does low source credibility.     

Attitude Certainty: A Review of Past Findings and Emerging Perspectives

Attitude certainty, or the sense of conviction with which one holds one's attitude, has been the subject of considerable research attention. This article provides an overview of past, present, and future research on this topic. First, we review past work on attitude certainty, focusing on what has been learned about the antecedents and consequences of feeling certain or uncertain of one's attitude. Following this review, we examine emerging perspectives on attitude certainty. In particular, we describe recent work exploring the metacognitive appraisals that shape attitude certainty, the different meanings attitude certainty can have, and the dynamic effects of attitude certainty on attitude strength. Along the way, we also highlight important questions that have yet be answered about the certainty construct.     

The malleable meaning of subjective ease

People can generate the same thoughts or process the same information with different degrees of ease, and this subjective experience has implications for attitudes and social judgment. In prior research, it has generally been assumed that the experience of ease or fluency is interpreted by people as something good. In the two experiments reported here, the meaning or value of ease was directly manipulated, and the implications for evaluative judgments were explored. Across experiments, we replicated the traditional ease-of-retrieval effect (more thought-congruent attitudes when thoughts were easy rather than difficult to generate) when ease was described as positive, but we reversed this effect when ease was described as negative. These findings suggest that it is important to consider both the content of metacognition (e.g., "those thoughts were easy to generate") and the value associated with that content (e.g., "ease is good" or "ease is bad").     

Cognitive and affective matching effects in persuasion: an amplification perspective

Past research suggests that cognitive and affective attitudes are more open to change toward cognitive and affective (i.e., matched) persuasive attacks, respectively. The present research investigates how attitude certainty influences this openness. Although an extensive literature suggests that certainty generally reduces an attitude's openness to change, the authors explore the possibility that certainty might increase an attitude's openness to change in the context of affective or cognitive appeals. Based on the recently proposed amplification hypothesis, the authors posit that high (vs. low) attitude certainty will boost the resistance of attitudes to mismatched attacks (e.g., affective attitudes attacked by cognitive messages) but boost the openness of attitudes to matched attacks (e.g., affective attitudes attacked by affective messages). Two experiments provide support for this hypothesis. Implications for increasing the openness of attitudes to both matched and mismatched attacks are discussed.