THE EFFECT OF RELEVANCE ON A CHANGING PROCESS OF ATTITUDE STRUCTURE FOLLOWING THE EXPOSURE TO PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the effect of relevance to the attitudinal object on the changing processes of opinion and affect following the exposure to persuasive communication.
The subjects (130 high school students) were divided into three experimental groups (high, medium, and low relevance conditions) and one control group. Opinion and affect of experimental groups were measured once before the exposure to communication and three times after it (immediately after, two days after, and nine days after). Control group were not exposed expose to commuication but their opinion and affect were also measured four times.
The main results were as follows;
(1) Immediately after the exposure, opinion changed significantly toward the message position in all relevance conditions. In high and medium relevance conditions, affect also changed toward the same direction but not significantly.
(2) Two days after, affect significantly changed toward the subjects' initial position in all relevance conditions. But only in the high relevance condition, opinion significantly changed in the same direction.
(3) Changed opinion was maintained till nine days after in medium and low relevance conditions, but it had been restored by two days after in high relevance condition.
(4) The relationship between opinion and affect was not consistent in all relevance conditions before the exposure, but immediately after it, the high degree of consistency was found only in the high relevance condition and maintained till nine days after.