Cross-Cultural Investigation of Some Factors in Persuasion and Attitude Change

摘要

In order to determine the effect of communication content upon perceptions of a speaker, data from a questionnaire used in 3 previous experiments designed to measure the reactions of Japanese University students to persuasion on the topics of the Cold War, the Cuban Crisis, and proposed visits by American nuclearpowered submarines were further analyzed. The questionnaire consisted of 9 pairs of bipolar adjectives describing the communicator's personality. The analysis considered the extent to which each of the adjectives was selected to describe the speaker. The results showed several striking variations in evaluation of the speaker under the different conditions, indicating that the content of the communications had an overriding influence on how he or she was perceived. In general, the results indicate that impressions of an unseen communicator are influenced more by subject matter than by his manner of speaking. Where salient political attitudes of Japanese students are involved, reactions to the communicator may be an effective indirect method of gaining information about responses to a persuasive communication that are not revealed in attitude measures. (Author)