AUTHOR=Blankenship Kevin L. , Machacek Marielle G. , Standefer Jack 

TITLE=Resistance strategies and attitude certainty in persuasion: bolstering vs. counterarguing

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1191293

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1191293

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Although resistance to persuasion has been of interest in psychology, relatively little research has examined how different resistance strategies can affect the strength-related features of attitudes. The current research presents a metacognitive account of two resistance strategies, and their effect on attitude certainty and intentions. Specifically, two experiments examine how the strategies of counterarguing and bolstering can differentially affect attitude certainty and intentions to act on the attitude under attack. In Experiment 1 (N = 241), participants’ thoughts perceived as counterarguments elicited attitude certainty that was more sensitive to the quality of the attacking information than when thoughts were perceived as bolstering one’s opinion.  Experiment 2 (N = 287) replicated the effect with a different topic and demonstrated a similar pattern on intentions to act on the attacked attitude. Moreover, these effects were not due to differences in the number of thoughts generated or perceived amount of message processing.