Minority versus majority influence and uncertainty orientation: Processing persuasive messages on the basis of situational expectancies

Journal of Social Psychology

Volumn 144, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 127-147

  Shuper, Paul A ^a   Sorrentino, Richard M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Expectancies; Information processing; Minority majority influence; Uncertainty

Indexed keywords

EID: 1842485833     PISSN: 00224545     EISSN: 19401183     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3200/SOCP.144.2.127-148     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Atkinson, J. W., & Feather, N. T. (Eds.). (1966). A theory of achievement motivation. New York: Wiley.
2. Baker, S. M., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Majority and minority influence: Source-position imbalance as a determinant of message scrutiny. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 5–19.
3. Bargh, J. A., & Thein, R. D. (1985). Individual construct accessibility, person memory, and the recall judgement link: The case of information overload. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1129–1146.
4. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1979). Effects of message repetition and position on cognitive responses, recall, and persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 97–109.
5. Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 752–766.
6. Cherry, F., & Byrne, D. (1977). Authoritarianism. In T. Blass (Ed.), Personality variables in social behavior (pp. 109–133). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
7. Crocker, J., Hannah, D. B., & Weber, R. (1983). Person memory and causal attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 55–66.
8. Doms, M., & Von Avermaet, R. (1980). Majority influence, minority influence, and conversion behavior: A replication. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 283–292.
9. Driscoll, D. M., Hamilton, D. L., & Sorrentino, R. M. (1991). Uncertainty orientation and recall of person-descriptive information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,17, 494–500.
10. Hodson, G., & Sorrentino, R. M. (2003). Uncertainty orientation in the group context: Categorization effects on persuasive message processing. The Journal of Social Psychology, 143, 291–312.
11. Kelman, K. C., & Barclay, J. (1963). The F scale as a measure of breadth and perspective. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 608–615.
12. Kirscht, J., & Dillehay, R. (1967). Dimensions of authoritarianism. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
13. Latané, B. (1996a). Dynamic social impact: The creation of culture by communication. Journal of Communication, 46, 13–25.
14. Latané, B. (1996b). Strength from weakness: The fate of opinion minorities in spatially distributed groups. In E. H. Witte & J. H. Davis (Eds.), Understanding group behavior: Consensual action by small groups (Vol. 1, pp. 193–219). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
15. Latané, B., & Wolf, S. (1981). The social impact of majorities and minorities. Psychological Review, 88, 438–453.
16. Mackie, D. M. (1987). Systematic and nonsystematic processing of majority and minority persuasive communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 41–52.
17. Maheswaran, D., & Chaiken, S. (1991). Promoting systematic processing in low motivation settings: Effect of incongruent information on processing and judgement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 13–25.
18. Moscovici, S. (1980). Toward a theory of conversion behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 13, pp. 209–239). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
19. Moscovici, S. (1985). Social influence and conformity. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology, (3rd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 347–412). New York: Random House.
20. Nemeth, C. J. (1986). Differential contributions of majority and minority influence. Psychological Review, 93, 23–32.
21. Olson, J. M., Roese, N. J., & Zanna, M. P. (1996). Expectancies. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 211–238). New York: Guilford Press.
22. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.
23. Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Goldman, R. (1981). Personal involvement as a determinant of argument-based persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 847–855.
24. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind: Investigations into the nature of belief systems and personality systems. New York: Basic Books.
25. Roney, C. J. R., & Sorrentino, R. M. (1995). Self-evaluation motives and uncertainty orientation: Asking the “who” question. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1319–1329.
26. Shuper, P. A. (1999). Uncertainty orientation and minority versus majority influence: Processing persuasive messages based on situational expectancies. Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
27. Smith, S. M., & Petty, R. E. (1996). Message framing and persuasion: A message processing analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 257–268.
28. Sorrentino, R. M. (1977). [Test-retest reliabilities of authoritarianism scores]. Unpublished raw data.
29. Sorrentino, R. M., Bobocel, D. R., Gitta, M. Z., Olson, J. M., & Hewitt, E. C. (1988). Uncertainty orientation and persuasion: Individual differences in the effects of personal relevance on social judgements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 357–371.
30. Sorrentino, R. M., Hanna, S. E., & Roney, C. J. R. (1992). A manual for scoring need for uncertainty. In C. P. Smith (Ed.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 428–439). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
31. Sorrentino, R. M., Holmes, J. G., Hanna, S. E., & Sharp, A. (1995). Uncertainty orientation and trust in close relationships: Individual differences in cognitive styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 314–327.
32. Sorrentino, R. M., King, G., & Leo, G. (1980). The influence of the minority on perception: A note on a possible alternative explanation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 293–301.
33. Sorrentino, R. M., & Roney, C. J. R. (2000). The uncertain mind: Individual differences in facing the unknown. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
34. Sorrentino, R. M., Roney, C. J. R., & Hanna, S. E. (1992). Attributions and cognitive orientations: Uncertainty orientation. In C. P. Smith, J. W. Atkinson, D. C. McClelland, & J. Veroff (Eds.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic content analysis (pp. 419–427). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
35. Sorrentino, R. M., & Short, J. C. (1977). The case of the mysterious moderates: Why motives sometimes fail to predict behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 478–484.
36. Sorrentino, R. M., & Short, J. C. (1986). Uncertainty orientation, motivation, and cognition. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), The handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (pp. 379–403). New York: Guilford Press.
37. Srull, T. K. (1981). Person memory: Some tests of associative storage and retrieval models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 7, 440–462.
38. Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1989). Person memory and social judgement. Psychological Review, 96, 58–83.
39. Winer, B. (1971). Statistical principles in experimental design (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
40. Wolf, S. (1985). Manifest and latent influence of majorities and minorities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 899–908.
41. Wood, W., Lundgren, S., Ouellette, J. A., Busceme, S., & Blackstone, T. (1994). Minority influence: A meta-analytic review of social influence processes. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 323–345.