Abstract
The present study was designed to investigate forewarning effects on postcommunication attitude change following fear-arousing communications and on the postwarning-precommunication psychological processes which were mediators of the persuasion-inhibiting effects of forewarnings. In this study, seven single and joint types of forewarnings were used which consisted of combination of the three kinds of forewarnings: the topic and position of the upcoming communication (TP type), the communicator's persuasive intent (PI type), and the communicator's fear-arousing intent (FI type). The FI type forewarning proved to be a potential persuasion-inhibiting factor mediated by psychological reactance and feeling of defensive avoidance. Though the single FI type forewarning didn't show a significant resistance to persuasion, joint FI-PI type forewarning showed significant resistance to persuasion in the high fear-arousing communication. Other single or joint types of three forewarnings showed no clear resistance to persuasion. But, the PI type forewarning tended to produce psychological reactance and TP type forewarning tended to produce feeling of defensive avoidance.
