The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion

by James Price Dillard

  Contextually-Based Dual-Process Theories

  The most well-known variant of dual-process theories outlines the role of processing in explaining persuasive message outcomes (ELM) (see chapter 9 in this volume). To explain why variables (e.g., credibility) seemed to sometimes effect persuasion outcomes and sometimes not, Petty and Cacioppo (1986), borrowing from more general cognitive response theories, set forth the idea that persuasion works through a variety of mechanisms, some of which involve cognitive elaboration and some of which do not involve much thinking at all to accomplish. Grounded in this approach, my doctoral committee chair and I (Bodie & Burleson, 2008) organized the variables found to moderate the effects of message content on outcomes, suggesting these variables have their effects by either (1) influencing the recipient’s ability and/or motivation to systematically process these messages or (2) serving as cues that quickly trigger responses to the message.

  To date, the general logic of dual-process thinking has been applied to the processing and outcomes of varied forms of support, including informational support (Feng & MacGeorge, 2010), everyday emotional support (Bodie, in press-a; Bodie, Burleson, Gill-Rosier, et al., 2011; Bodie, Burleson, Holmstrom, et al., 2011, Study 2; Holmstrom et al., 2011), grief management (Bodie, Burleson, Holmstrom, et al., 2011, Study 1; Rack, Burleson, Bodie, Holmstrom, & Servaty, 2008), and the management of stress during a public speaking task (Bodie, in press-b). The theory aims to explain why various elements of supportive interactions have the effects they do with particular others on specific occasions. The core thesis of this theory is that the elements of supportive interactions produce certain effects as a joint function of the intrinsic properties of these elements (e.g., the sophistication of supportive messages) and how these elements are processed cognitively by their recipients (e.g., systematically vs. superficially).

  Dual-process theories of persuasion like the ELM have been accurately critiqued for several reasons. First, these theories often treat the nature of message quality as a methodological as opposed to theoretical concern (see chapter 9 in this volume). The dual-process theory of supportive message outcomes borrows from the extensive research in the context of supportive communication on message quality and shows that effects predicted by the general dual-process framework are supported. By using a strong theory of supportive message content, our theory does “more than [providing] a means of indirectly assessing the amount of elaboration that has occurred” (D. J. O’Keefe, 2002, p. 156); thus, dual-process theories of persuasive message effects might borrow from our research to help fill a lack of “understanding quality-related message features [and] their roles in persuasion” (p. 166).

  Second, dual-process theories have been critiqued for assuming that high elaboration processes operate when motivation and ability are high as opposed to actually testing the underlying change processes. Our theory also borrows extensively from theories of emotion and coping to pinpoint when and why certain operative mechanisms will underlie affect change and other important outcomes. In particular, current research suggests specific mechanisms and attempts to set forth a priori hypotheses to test whether those mechanisms are primarily responsible for mediating the relationship between various aspects of the supportive environment and various effects and outcomes. For instance, I (Bodie, in press-a) recently explored the degree to which the cognitively demanding affect change mechanism reappraisal is more likely to operate when processing motivation is high than when low. To manipulate motivation, I exposed participants to either a moderately severe academic failure situation (students imagined failing a class required for entry into the major) or a mildly severe academic failure situation (students imagined receiving a “C” on an in-class reading quiz constituting 1% of the course grade). The key test was whether motivation moderated the degree to which reappraisal mediated the impact of PC on anticipated affect improvement (AAI). Results showed that, similar to the Jones and Wirtz (2006) study that originally tested Burleson and Goldsmith’s theory, the combination of positive emotion words and situation reappraisal partially mediated the PC-AAI effect; however, this was only true for participants exposed to a moderately severe academic stressor. The mediated model did not fit for low motivation participants.

  Summary

  When communication scholars discuss social support or persuasion, it is almost always within the context of interaction (Barbee & Cunningham, 1995; Burleson, Albrecht, et al., 1994; Dillard et al., 2001; Sanders & Fitch, 2001; Wilson, 2002, 2010). In general, the focus on interaction draws attention to how people seek, produce, receive, process, and respond to comfort and influence. The sequential structure of these interactions also highlights the need to investigate how they unfold over time, the multiple variables likely to moderate the impact of message quality on outcomes, and the mediating variables that link messages and effects. As this work has been conducted, we have learned valuable information, including the role of these interactions in initiating, maintaining, and transforming the relationships within which they are nested.

  The Role of Support and Influence in Relationships

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  Just as individuals produce and process messages in the pursuit of relevant interaction goals, so too do individuals pursue relationships for particular reasons. This perspective, typically called the functional approach to interpersonal relationships, “stresses what certain relationships typically do for people and, consequently, what people come to look to those relationships for” (Burleson, Metts, & Kirch, 2000, p. 245). Although people come to and remain in relationships for a variety of reasons, interpersonal needs theory (Schutz, 1958) suggests that close relationships primarily serve needs for affection (the need to love and feel loved), inclusion (the need to belong), and control (the need to feel in control of one’s life). Since communication is “the means through which people both pursue and service relevant relationship functions” (Burleson & Samter, 1994, p. 62), it seems likely that both supportive and persuasive communication allow relational partners to meet individual and relational needs. Indeed, people value the ability of relational partners to influence and support appropriately and both are used frequently by relational partners having real implications for relationship quality.

  Meeting Relational Needs Through Persuasion and Support

  Individuals meet relational needs and fulfill relational functions through a variety of behaviors, each of which can be classified as either affective or instrumental in orientation (Burleson & Samter, 1990). Affectively oriented skills like comforting and ego-support primarily reference abilities to effectively manage feelings and emotions, whereas instrumentally oriented skills like informing and persuading are primarily focused on the management of activities and behaviors. In general, people report both affective and instrumental communication skills as important for close relationships, though people typically rate affectively oriented skills like comforting as more important than instrumental skills like persuading. These main effects are, however, qualified by characteristics of the relationship under question. In general, the importance of communication skills increases linearly as a function of relational closeness from casual friendships or acquaintanceships to best friends (Westmyer & Myers, 1996).

  Likewise, Burleson et al. (1996) reported that affectively oriented skills were seen as substantially more important in romantic partners than in friends, whereas instrumental skills of romantic partners were seen as only somewhat more important than those of friends. Finally, Holmstrom (2009) found that although affectively oriented skills were more important for female friends than for male friends, instrumental skills did not differ as a function of sex of friend. These latter results suggest that the communication skills relevant to meeting relational needs depend on relationship type (perhaps because different relationships serve different functions), but that affectively oriented communication skills are especially relevant in and are an expected part of highly intimate relationships (see also Cunningham & Barbee, 2000; Sprecher & Regan, 200
2).

  Of course, this does not mean that influence is an unimportant part of highly intimate relationships. In addition to being supportive, individuals expect their friends, romantic partners, and other close relational partners to provide a positive source of influence (Dillard et al., 2001). So, during initial interactions, we are likely primed to look for both supportive and persuasive behaviors and to assess the degree to which these behaviors signal a “good” friend or partner. Likewise, over the course of our friendship or romantic involvement, our close others influence us with respect to a range of important and consequential behaviors and attitudes. The famous MBRS study (Miller, Boster, Roloff, & Seibold, 1977), which set the agenda for compliance gaining throughout the 1980s, was born out of the developmental perspective on interpersonal communication and provided the first evidence that individuals tailor their influence tactics based on perceived relational intimacy (see Baxter & Bylund, 2004; Wilson, 2010).

  Interestingly, and contrary to politeness theory, research suggests that greater politeness is used in relationships that are marked by more closeness (Baxter, 1984). In a similar manner, the way in which individuals go about influencing others signals how they feel about their relationship. For instance, relational partners who feel more subjectively close are more likely to use influence tactics that invoke the importance of the relationship to the behavior or attitude under question (Orina, Wood, & Simpson, 2002). So, it appears that both supportive and persuasive communication are used within relationships of various types and help fulfill different functions in those relationships. Likewise, supportive and persuasive messages display a fundamental feature of human communication more generally—they “[function] to establish relationships when … produced or processed in ways that suggest the formation or escalation of a personal bond between interaction partners … [and] maintain relationships when … production or processing reinforces and sustains preexisting levels of involvement” (Solomon & Vangelisti, 2010, p. 327).

  Directions for Future Research

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  The purpose of this final section is to identify specific areas for future research. I have organized these areas of future research within the same framework as earlier, first exploring needed work on the nature of messages and their effects, followed by needed work on interaction, and ending with needed work on relationships. A final, short section proposes a more general set of questions aiming to point future work toward discovering broader connections.

  The Nature of Messages and Their Effects

  Both supportive communication and persuasion scholars have generated useful theories of messages that outline potential ways in which messages can vary and, thus, have their effects. As the sections in this chapter suggest, change—whether it be therapeutic or attitudinal—is fostered by messages that are tailored to meet multiple goals and perceived as useful, feasible, absent of limitations, and efficacious. Of course, aspects of messages such as argument explicitness or person centeredness are context dependent, and our field would undeniably profit from investigating how specific messages invoke these broad concepts across a range of contexts. Indeed, the call to move compliance gaining research from a strategy-based to a feature-based approach was not made recently (D. J. O’Keefe, 1994), though persuasion research still seems to lag behind support research in investigating specific features of messages likely to impact recipients. Thus, persuasion scholars are likely to gain from recognizing and utilizing the rich research of support scholars who, for the past 30 years, have “emphasized theoretically driven descriptions of … messages, descriptions focused on underlying differentiating features” (D. J. O’Keefe, 1994, p. 63).

  Beyond identifying features of individual messages more likely to promote change, scholars should focus their attention to the sequential placement of these various message features and how placement within an interaction can influence outcomes. Compliance gaining research has a rich history of studying strategies, such as door-in-the-face and foot-in-the-door, while work in social support has largely ignored how features like person centeredness might be more or less helpful depending on when they come in an interaction (see Feng, 2009). While doing this important research, scholars should attend to theoretical mechanisms that can explain why certain sequential patterns are more effective than others and attempt to integrate this work within more holistic frameworks that focus on more than a single strategy or set of similar strategies (e.g., Cialdini, 2001).

  Finally, scholars of persuasive and supportive communication have much to learn from each other with respect to the nature of effects and outcomes. Unfortunately, little research in either context attends to distinctions among various evaluations made of messages or to the potential for each unique type of evaluation to be distinctly related to some outcomes but not others. Likewise, there are several important outcomes of both persuasive and supportive messages, though certain outcomes are studied more readily than others. For instance, supportive communication research tends to focus on emotional improvement with less attention afforded to the impact of messages on long-term coping potential, while work in persuasion tends to focus on attitude change with less attention afforded to behaviors. Thus, although each literature has independently generated myriad variables describing message evaluations and message outcomes, the classification of these variables into a more cogent theoretical model and its subsequent testing still await. Indeed, much more attention should be paid to the conceptualization and operationalization of a vast range of evaluations and outcomes and the particular causal sequence of these factors in social interaction (Bodie, Burleson, et al., 2012; Dillard, Weber, et al., 2007). In addition, attention should be afforded to the similarities and differences among outcomes assessed in persuasive and supportive contexts. Doing so should help generate more integrated theoretical accounts of perceived and actual effects of messages of various types.

  Messages Within Interaction

  Just as there is little reason to doubt the importance of mapping various features of messages and how these features impact a range of evaluations and outcomes, there is little reason to doubt the inherently interactive nature of persuasion and support. This interactive nature has most readily been studied from the vantage point of the individual and how she produces and processes messages. Research bearing on the nature of message production has vast implications for supportive and persuasive communication. In general, models of message production and the research exploring them highlight the importance of individual abilities to interpret situations, formulate plans to achieve multiple goals derived from these interpretations, and continually monitor the situation so as to decrease the likelihood plans are thwarted. To date, research has primarily focused on the individual formulation of goals. Thus, focusing more on the planning, monitoring, and reencoding processes should bolster theory development for supportive and persuasive communication as well as, more generally, how people (and their goals) within interaction change over time. Likewise, research should attend to the various types of motivation that provoke a felt need to support or persuade others and the degree to which they are equally salient across contexts.

  The nature of message processing has primarily been examined from the dual-process framework. As reviewed earlier in the chapter, a recently developed dual-process theory of supportive message processing not only addresses concerns raised by critics of this framework in the context of persuasion, but it also extends the scope of the influential dual-process approach outside the realm of persuasion. Indeed, the dual-process framework appears to have general utility in suggesting modifications to theories of supportive interaction, though the specific ways in which thinking influences the supportive encounter may be theory dependent. Likewise, our theory has more general utility and value for addressing a range of important theoretical questions about communication (see also Bodie, Burleson, et al., 2012): Why do particular messages have certain effects with certain people in particular contexts, but different effects with differe
nt people in other contexts? How do messages influence cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes? How and why do these messages work—or fail to work? And, why do some supportive and persuasive episodes and interactions have extended, lasting effects, while others do not?

  These important questions aside, and even with the vast amount of knowledge generated from a focus on supportive and persuasive message production and processing, we know precious little about how these parts work together within interaction. There are certainly a host of useful theories that can effectively frame studies for each context (e.g., attribution theory; MacGeorge, 2001; Wilson, Cruz, Marshall, & Roa, 1993), but more synergistic and ambitious work of theorizing interaction at more global levels should be preferred when possible.

  Interactions Within Relationships

  Scholars of persuasive and supportive communication alike recognize the ubiquity and importance of these episodes to relationships, and research reporting on the importance individuals place on communication skills seems to support this recognition; that is, relational partners value both affectively and instrumentally oriented skills in a variety of close relationships. The importance placed on skills is not without its consequences, either. Research has shown, for instance, that those who highly value affectively oriented skills are less lonely, better accepted, and more liked than those who place less importance on these skills (Burleson & Samter, 1990; Samter, 1992). Results of other studies have indicated that similarity in relational partners’ communication values predicts satisfaction in both friendship and romantic relationships (Burleson, Kunkel, & Birch, 1994). Of course, most of the research and theories directed at understanding relationship formation and maintenance “prominently feature intrapersonal or cognitive processes, whereas the dynamics of interpersonal interaction are often less well developed. Consequently, the corpus of work tends to portray relationships as two individuals coming together, rather than an evolving dyadic social unit” (Solomon & Vangelisti, 2010, p. 338). It seems, therefore, that the degree to which our understanding of supportive and persuasive communication can illuminate the formation and maintenance of relationships is still an issue open for empirical and theoretical scrutiny.