Resistance and persuasion
Week 1
The importance of resistance to persuasion
Webster’s New World College Dictionary includes four definitions of resistance:
a) The act of resisting, opposing, withstanding, etc.
b) Power or capacity to resist
c) Opposition of some force to another or others
d) A force that retards, hinders, or opposes motion.
The first of these four definitions references resistance as a behavioural outcome, the act of
withstanding influence. The other three reference more motivational aspects of resistance, as a
power or oppositional force. The clear core of the definition of resistance is that it is a reaction
against change.
Resistance has acquired a dual definition in psychology. On the one hand, it defines an outcome:
the outcome of not being moved by pressures to change. On the other hand, it identifies a
motivational state: the motivation to oppose and counter pressures to change.
Three components of resistance:
- Affective component: ‘I don’t like it’
- Cognitive component: ‘I don’t believe it’
- Behavioural component: ‘I won’t do it’
Studies of counterarguing to a persuasive message or evaluating outcomes in the future
reference resistance primarily through the cognitive component. Studies of changes in
preferences for alternatives or action seem to place more emphasis on the affective components
of resistance.
Many studies perceive resistance to be a quality of a person. However, within reactance,
resistance is seen as an external threats to one’s freedom of choice. The more numerous and
important the freedoms, the greater the reactance to losing them.
Four faces of resistance: reactance, distrust, scrutiny and inertia. These are not different kinds
of resistance, but different perceptual stances toward it.
Reactance: recognizes the influence attempt as an integral element of resistance. Reactance is
initiated only when the influence is directly perceived and when it threatens a person’s choice
alternatives. This view of resistance also emphasizes the affective and motivational sides of
resistance.
Distrust: underlies both affective and cognitive reactions to influence. It is about the general
distrust of proposals. People might wonder what the motive behind the proposal might be.
Scrutiny: when people become aware that they are target of an influence attempt, a natural
reaction is to attend more carefully and thoughtfully to every aspect of the situation. The careful
scrutiny of the proposal means that each point is examined more carefully and questioned more
thoroughly.
Inertia: a quality that focuses more on staying put than on resisting change. Attempts to keep
the attitude system in balance. To the extent that a request, an offer, or a persuasive message
asks for change in affect, behaviour or belief, the inertia of personality and attitude frustrates
that change.
Lecture 1
What is resistance to persuasion?
, - A reaction against change (‘I don’t like it’ or ‘I don’t want it’)
- The ability to withstand a persuasive attack
- An outcome: not being moved by pressure to change
- A motivational state: motivation to oppose and counter pressures to change
Week 2
Resistance to persuasion as self-regulation: Ego-depletion and its effects on attitude
change processes
People are often motivated to resist persuasion in order to hold correct attitudes, restore
freedom, or maintain psychological consistency and sense of control. Resistance to persuasion
is influenced by a wide variety of factors such as characteristics of the attitude under attack
(e.g., its accessibility or importance) but also characteristics of the message recipient (e.g.,
motivation and ability to resist the persuasive appeal.
The term ego-depletion refers to a state in which one’s self-regulatory resources are diminished,
and this diminishment is proposed to occur because acts of self-regulation and volition draw
upon a single, limited intrapsychic resource. Theory in this area draws upon a strength
metaphor, whereby exertion in one situation is followed by a period of reduced ability in a
subsequent situation. Accordingly, any exertion of willpower or self-regulation in one task, so
long as it is sufficiently demanding, should reduce any subsequent self-regulation on a second,
seemingly unrelated task. Results were analyzed using a 2 (ego-depletion condition: depleted
or not depleted) x 2 (argument quality: strong or weak) ANOVAs.
Counterarguing persuasive messages involves actively processing the message information,
retrieving or generating new contradictory information, and applying it to the message content
to refute it.
This research supports the notion that self-regulatory resources are involved in resisting
counter-attitudinal messages and that such resistance can be thwarted by reduced self-
regulatory capacity. More specifically, individuals who engaged in a task designed to reduce
their self-regulatory resources reported more positive attitudes toward a counter-attitudinal
policy than those not so depleted.
Because self-regulation can be affected by motivation just as resistance to persuasion can, ego-
depletion seems most likely to lead to observable reductions in resistance under circumstances
when motivation to resist is present but not sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the effects of
ego-depletion.
Similar to the lack of impulse control for behavior observed late at night (e.g., drinking,
gambling, and overeating), failures of mental self-regulation might be also more likely to occur
at the end of the day, making people more vulnerable to persuasion.
Acts of benevolence: A limited-resource account of compliance with charitable requests.
In this article, the internal process that takes place when consumers are approached by a
fundraiser or social marketer who asks for a contribution to a charitable cause is examined.
They often use a scripted social influence technique: a tactic specifically designed to increase
the odds of yielding to a charitable request. Most often subtle, indirect and processes outside
conscious awareness of the target consumer are effective. The effectiveness of influence
techniques hinges on the notion of consumer automaticity or mindlessness. One of the origins
of mindlessness can be found in a characteristic that almost all successful techniques have in
,common: multiple decision moments or sequential requests. It is proposed that these sequential
request techniques trigger one underlying psychological mechanism that accounts for their
impact on compliance: self-regulation failure brought about by self-regulatory resource
depletion. The active self becomes weakened, a state that paves the way for subsequent
acquiescence due to a lack of regulatory resources available to deny the target request.
The model holds that these social influence strategies comprise a series of requests that trigger
one underlying process: self-regulatory resource depletion. The two-stage model posits that
responding to an involving initial request (be that answering a series of cognitively demanding
questions or questions that prompt selfpresentational responses) reduces the supply of self-
regulatory resources within the target. A reduced supply of regulatory resources, in turn, fosters
compliance with the charitable request—but not by default. Rather, it is posed to do so through
an overreliance on salient heuristics that facilitate compliance as an efficient behavioral
response. Hence, responding in an effortful way to an initial request induces self-regulatory
resource depletion, which subsequently encourages heuristic decision making. In dyadic
influence settings aimed at fostering charitable giving, the product of this decision-making
process is donating money, time, or effort
Stage 1: Responding to initial requests produces self-regulatory resource depletion
The limited-resource model of self-control posits that any behaviour that involves deliberate
and regulated responses by the self draws on a limited resource, akin to strength or energy.
Therefore, the disrupt-then-reframe (DTR) technique is made up. In this tactic, an offer is
presented to the target, followed by a subtle oddity or twist in the sales script, and finally a
persuasive phrase that concludes the script.
The foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique is most effective when the initial request is highly
involving. These highly involving initial requests entail ether a) active self-presentation or b)
demanding cognitive operations, or both. Active (but not habitual) forms of self-presentation
lead to impaired self-regulation later due to depleted self-regulatory resources.
Stage 2: Depletion-induced mindlessness affects compliance through reliance on heuristics
Stage 2 of the model proposes that the state of self-regulatory resource depletion drives the
mindlessness so often observed in compliance contexts and thereby ups the odds that the target
individual will yield to a charitable request. A state of self-regulatory resource depletion
weakens resistance to temptations and (unwanted) influence attempts. On the other side, people
get less influenced when an influential message is primed by self-regulatory resource depletion.
The heuristic-systematic processing model of persuasion states that under conditions of
mindlessness, recipients of persuasive messages typically resort to simple heuristics to arrive
at a judgment. Many compliance-gaining techniques are assumed to be effective under mindless
, conditions because they trigger a fixed action pattern which encourages acquiescence to the
request. A suitable and compliance-promoting heuristic must be present in the influence context
in order for a state of mindlessness to result in charitable behaviour.
Experiment 1 (stage 1, self-disclosing questions)
- A subtype of the FITD technique was used, called the continuing questions procedure.
This particular procedure heightens impression management motives, which are known
to deplete participants’ regulatory resources. The initial questions sow the seed for
compliance by being conceptually related to the target request.
- Dependent measures were compliance and self-regulatory resource depletion
- It was found that being exposed to the continuing questions procedure resulted in greater
self-regulatory resource depletion.
Experiment 2 (stage 1, cognitively demanding questions)
- Extend the results of experiment 1 in four keyways
- Dependent measures were the number of attempted answers to the cognitive
performance test, the number of correct answers and the proportion of items answered
correctly relative to the answered questions.
- It was found that participants who answered initial questions attempted fewer questions
on the cognitive performance test and answered less questions correctly.
- In line with experiment 1, yielding to an initial request brought about a state of self-
regulatory resource depletion. Answering cognitively demanding questions or questions
that involve effortful self-presentation seems to be an important element in multiple
request encounters in that they deplete self-regulatory resources.
- Four potential alternative explanations for the impact of initial request(s) on regulatory
resource depletion were conducted (e.g., differences in duration of the interaction or the
role of negative affect)
Experiment 3 (bridge stage 1 and 2, formal test of mediation)
- Lab study with the FITD procedure (experiment 2) with questions being conceptually
related to the target request (experiment 1). This time with an equal number of
questions. The duration and extent of the dialogue were therefore equal in both
conditions.
- Dependent measures were the cognitive effort, self-regulatory resource depletion and
compliance.
- It was found that sequential request techniques elicit self-regulatory resource depletion.
This state of reduced self-control in turn promotes yielding to a target request.
Experiment 4 (stage 2, the availability of self-regulatory resources, the principles of reciprocity)
- 2 (self regulatory resource depletion condition: depletion vs no depletion) x 2 (heuristic
activation: reciprocity vs no reciprocity) between-subjects design. Reciprocity =
wederkerigheid. Wat je terug wil doen voor de ander
- The dependent measure was the length of time participants were prepared to volunteer.
- It was found that self-regulatory resource depletion fosters compliance with a charitable
request, namely trough reliance on heuristics.
Experiment 5 (stage 2, situational manipulation of reduced self-control, likability)
- Replicate the results of experiment 4 in a naturalistic setting as well as include different
manipulations of self-regulatory resource depletion (mirror-tracing persistence task)
and heuristic activation (likability).
