ABSTRACT

Reduced counterarguing – the generation of questions and arguments in response to a message – has been proposed to be a mechanism of persuasion in a variety of contexts, yet many questions remain unanswered regarding the factors that influence this process. Building upon past theorizing in narrative persuasion, this present work investigates whether signaling of persuasive intent (signaling vs. no signaling) and the fictional presentation of texts (fact vs. fiction) decrease counterarguing and, in turn, increase persuasion. Using a 2 × 2 factorial design across four topics at three time points, hypotheses were tested with narratives regarding four controversial political issues, presented either with or without signaling of persuasive intent and in either a news or short fiction format. The online experiment demonstrated that the narratives impacted political attitudes, even when captured in a later follow-up session. However, neither persuasive signaling nor fictional presentation influenced counterarguing or the extent of attitude change, captured both immediately after narrative exposure and again in a follow-up survey two days later.

摘要

减少反驳——针对信息产生问题和争论——已被提议作为各种背景下的一种说服机制，但关于影响这一过程的因素，许多问题仍未得到解答。在过去的叙事说服理论基础上，这项目前的工作调查了说服意图的信号（信号与无信号）和文本的虚构呈现（事实与虚构）是否会减少反驳，进而增加说服力。在三个时间点对四个主题使用 2 × 2 因子设计，通过关于四个有争议的政治问题的叙述来测试假设，这些问题以新闻或短篇小说的形式呈现或不带有说服意图的信号。在线实验表明，这些叙述影响了政治态度，即使是在后来的后续会议中捕捉到的。然而，无论是有说服力的信号还是虚构的呈现，都不会影响反驳或态度改变的程度，在叙述暴露后立即捕捉到，并在两天后的后续调查中再次捕捉到。