The Effects of Persuasive Communications on Attitudes.

The fundamental assumption underlying the research has that much of communication influence is to be understood in terms of cognitive processes and effects consequent on the arousal of uncertainty about the correctness of ones position. This meant that the recipient of a communication is viewed as an active participant in the communication experience, being engaged psychologically by the stimuli encompassing the communication experience and responding implicitly during exposure to them. The tactic followed was to examine post-exposure responses that were assumed to reflect outcomes of cognitive processes aroused during the communication experience. The potential error of attributing mediational significance to such responses was invariably acknowledged but, even if the responses could not be so construed, they could still be interpreted as communication effects coordinate with other assessments of effects. In this way, the research permitted the examination of the relationships between a variety of effects. Author