An Integrative Balance Notation for the Attractiveness-Persuasiveness Relationship in Persuasive Communication Versus Forced Compliance

Abstract

The present paper attempts to employ aspects of the incentive-dissonance controversy regarding the effects of monetary reward in a discussion of the relationship between the likeability or attractiveness of a source and his persuasiveness. To this end 'persuasive communication' and 'forced compliance' are distinguished as two paradigms of social influence. The case is made that a positive attractiveness-persuasiveness relationship follows an incentive rule and has been most strongly supported in the persuasive communication context. In contrast, a negative attractiveness-persuasiveness relation follows a dissonance rule and emerges from the forced-compliance literature. Balance terminology is utilized to molecularly analyze this problem, the separation of 'liking' and 'unit' relations being especially useful in our attempts to diagram the dynamics of forced compliance. Such analysis allows a diagrammatical comparison of the persuasive communication and forced compliance paradigms. In general, our interpretation suggests that the traditional 'positive product' rule for balance is best applied to the persuasive communication paradigm while a 'negative product' rule is most profitably applied to the forced compliance paradigm. What mediates these diverse situations, we suggest, is the formation of a personal unit relation (i.e., p produces the discrepant event through his own actions). Antecedents to personal unit formation are discussed for both paradigms as are applications of our analysis to the general dissonance-incentive controversy.

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