@article{20.500.12766/472,
year = {2020},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12766/472},
abstract = {It is well established that the physical attractiveness of the source of a message can influence recipients' attitudes
about the message proposal. The current research is the first to examine if attractiveness is also capable of
affecting attitude confidence and resistance to change. Experiment 1 revealed that an attractive source decreased
recipients' attitude confidence, even when it did not affect attitudes. Experiment 2 replicated this novel finding
and identified a critical condition under which this effect is more likely to occur. Specifically, attractiveness only
reduced attitude confidence when it was unrelated to the merits of the persuasive proposal. This moderation by
message relevance suggests that people can correct the confidence in their judgment for inappropriate sources of
bias. Experiment 3 specified the conditions under which correction is more likely to take place on attitudes and
on attitude confidence. Specifically, correction for source attractiveness on attitudes required an explicit correction instruction but correction on attitude confidence occurred regardless of the instruction. Finally,
Experiment 4 demonstrated that the effect of attractiveness in reducing attitude confidence is consequential by
making attitudes less resistant to change when facing counter-attitudinal information. Taken together, the
present research demonstrated that attractiveness can reduce attitude confidence as well as undermine subsequent resistance to counter-attitudinal messages, but only when attractiveness was viewed as an unwanted
biasing factor (i.e., the message topic was unrelated to attractiveness).},
title = {The influence of physical attractiveness on attitude confidence and resistance to change},
doi = {10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104018},
journal = {Journal of Experimental Social Psychology},
keywords = {Attitude confidence},
keywords = {Attitude strength},
keywords = {Attractiveness},
keywords = {Correction},
keywords = {Resistance},
volume = {90},
author = {Mello, Joana and Garcia Marques, Teresa and Briñol, Pablo and Cancela, Ana and Petty, Richard E.},
}