Hovland - Communicator

Credibility

The principal characteristic of the Communicator affecting his or her persuasiveness is his or her credibility. Credibility itself is made up of a variety of factors:

In a 1953 experiment conducted by Kelman and Hovland subjects were played a message which recommended more lenient treatment of juvenile offenders. In the one case, the source of the message was said to be a judge in a juvenile court, in the other case an alleged drug dealer. Unsurprisingly, when the subjects were assessed immediately after hearing the messages, they found the high-credibility source (the judge) to be more persuasive). Three weeks later they were again assessed. This time, half the subjects were reminded who the source was. It turned out that where there was a reminder, the subjects maintained their original position, but, where there was none, there was a significant decrease in the persuasion of the high-credibility condition. (There was also a very minor, but insignificant, increase in the low-credibility condition.) Hovland argued that over the course of time the connexion between the 'cue' (i.e. the communicator's credibility) and the message became dissociated. He termed this the sleeper effect.

Sorokin and Baldyreff played listeners two records of a classical music piece, each bearing exactly the same performance. Listeners were told in advance that one of the performances had been jusged as significantly better by music critics. 96% of subjects considered the performances were different and 59% agreed with the alleged opinion of the experts.

Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast was doubtless also effective in part because of the perceived prestige of those allegedly commenting on the 'invasion' - the fictitious Prof. Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Prof. Morse of McMillan University, General Montgomery Smith, commander of the Trenton state militia and others.

The perceived expertise of the source is likely to be more persuasive if the audience have no particular commitment to the subject under discussion. If people have some knowledge of the subject, then they probably have some arguments or counterarguments already prepared. If not, then they'll probably use some general rule of thumb, like 'This bloke's paid to teach Communication Studies, so I suppose he knows what he's talking about.' (!)

The recognition of this used to be apparent in just about every ad for soap powder, soap, shampoo and cars, where white-coated scientists kept popping up to tell us how good the wonder product was, how thoroughly it had been tested and how the essential hexachlorophene guaranteed it better performance than its competitors. That seems less common now than a few years ago, probably reflecting the advertisers' awareness that the public are more suspicious of science than they once were. Nevertheless, shampoos and anti-wrinkle creams still are sold as having some important ingredient with a 'scientific' name, pronounced by some unwrinkled woman who seems to know what she's talking about.

Attractiveness is not only a matter of physical attractiveness, though. Other factors such as similarity and familiarity are important: 'Is he my sort of person?', 'I've never heard of her before.' 'Does he look like my sort of person?' 'He sounds like a complete idiot' and so on. So, a Yorkshire miners' leader might use a strong Yorkshire accent when addressing a rally of Yorkshire miners, though he uses an RP accent when being interviewed on TV.

There are numerous factors which influence attractiveness, for example the paralinguistic aspects of speech, which led Prime Minister Thatcher to take lessons in voice control, so that she appeared less strident and developed the sound of measured, breathy sincerity which became her hallmark. Humour is another factor, which explains why we find comedians being used for the voice-overs on a variety of commercials.

There is an exception to this general rule of attractiveness, though. If a liked communicator's recommendations are seen as stemming from internal factors (e.g. her special interests, her bias, her self-interest), but those of a disliked communicator are seen as stemming from external factors ('that's the way things are'), then the disliked communicator can be more persuasive.

If the source of a message was perceived as having low credibility, then the message would be interpreted as biased and unfair. That effect could probably be explained by the need to maintain cognitive consistency. High credibility sources were shown by Hovland and his colleagues to be likely to have a significant effect on the positive reception of the message. However, the effects of high and low credibility sources were demonstrated to disappear after a period of some weeks - a potential problem for the propagandist. However, Hovland's research does suggest that a rational presentation of the arguments for or against a particular. position might be less important than who presents them. More recent investigations into cognitive response theory may also shed some light on this.

Forcing people to do what you want may bring about compliance, but does not guarantee internalization. In other words, people comply with your demands, but they retain the values they had before and continue to see your behaviour as wrong and therefore comply grudgingly or attempt to subvert your demands or even revolt.

This is a complex question. Some light is thrown on it by the various investigations that have been conducted into social influence, including obedience and rebellion. It is also connected with cognitive consistency theory.

Hovland: introduction

Hovland: the Message

Hovland: the Channel

Hovland: the Receiver

Attitudes and attitude change:

Consistency theory

Attitudes

Cognitive dissonance

Mass Media:

For an overview of each 'tradition', please click below:

The hypodermic needle model

Empiricist tradition

Cultural effects

Recent developments

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