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Personality and Persuasion
Mark Hamilton and Paul Mineo
This chapter examines the role of individual difference variables in persuasion. Two
main topics are considered. The first topic is the role of personality in persuasion. The second
topic is the role of receiver gender in persuasion.
Beliefs fall within three regions along this continuum, characterized by their degree
connectedness. The most connected beliefs fall in what Rokeach calls a central region. These
are the beliefs associated with personality. Their connections with other parts of the belief
system give these beliefs influence that permeates the belief system, and their pervasiveness
generates inertia that gives the impression that certain aspects of the person are persistent over
time. The Intermediate Region consists of justification processes that allow the derivation of
beliefs from personality. Figure 7.2 shows the Central Region associated with personality, the
Intermediate Region associated with justification processes, and the Peripheral Region associated
with derived beliefs and attitudes.
Personality consists of primitive beliefs -- those that serve as primitives for the rest of the
belief system.
Personality
Personality as defined by the Central Region consists of primitive beliefs formed by an
individual's interaction with the environment. Belief Systems Theory (BST) describes a
progressive development of personality in which the secondary primitives of self-concept follow
from the primary primitives that are the cognitive competencies, and the tertiary primitives of
generalized other beliefs follow from the self-concept beliefs. This developmental progression
of beliefs is shown in Figure 7.3.
We can deconstruct the hierarchical structure shown in Figure 7.4 to better illustrate how
that structure develops over time, as depicted in Figure 7.5. The longer that cognitive practices
initiated during childhood (primary primitives) continue, the more firmly anchored they become.
This allows the primary primitives to exert a continuous and systematic effect on the self-concept
(secondary primitives) and the concept of the generalized other (tertiary primitives). These
developmental processes are depicted in Figure 7.5.
The most central of the primitives, the primary primitives related to cognitive
competence, are related to the person's management of the physical world. These primitives are
related to the cognitive dimensions of aptitude, motivation, and activity. Cognitive aptitude is
conceptualized as intellect (measured as scores on intelligence and mental ability tests) and
analytic ability. Motivation is conceptualized as Need for Cognition (NC) and curiosity.
Activity is conceptualized as cognitive differentiation (measured as contrast reactivity, field
independence, person and object differentiation, and equivalence range), cognitive integration
(measured as schematizing, tolerance for unrealistic experiences), and the reflective control over
impulses (measured as scanning and color-word interference).
Cognitive activity. Cognitive control (Klein, 1954) can be thought of as an intervening
variable, a hypothetical process that directs the expression of need in socially acceptable ways, as
required by the situation. In this sense it is similar to Freud's concept of the ego. We prefer the
term cognitive activity to cognitive control as a rubric under which the following dimensions can
be placed:
1. tolerance for unrealistic experiences: this is a person's ability to accept and report experiences
at variance with conventional reality
Constricted Flexible
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compulsiveness values
meticulous information
value order
hate disorder
easily distracted
Leveling Sharpening
5. Scanning: the extent to which people attempt to verify the judgments they make
7. Field articulation: a person’s ability to selectively attend to relevant rather than compellingly
irrelevant stimuli.
Intelligence should increase self-esteem in several respects. First, greater aptitude should
increase cognitive motivation and subsequent cognitive activity. Second, greater aptitude should
lead to greater achievement. As shown in Figure 7.6, achievement can be used as an indicator of
self-worth. A central tenet of BST is that stronger cognitive ability and motivation improves
self-worth, and that greater self-worth inhibits the authoritarian justification of beliefs.
Intelligence and Need for Cognition should have negative effects on anxiety. Suppose
that Need for Cognition has a positive effect on self-esteem and a negative effect on anxiety.
This would explain at least a portion of the negative correlation between self-esteem and anxiety
observed in the literature. The progression model proposed by BST shown in Figure 7.3 predicts
that variables such as self-esteem, anxiety, and suspiciousness will mediate the effect of
intelligence on authoritarian justification. We will show that intelligence does have a small
negative effect on dogmatism. By comparison, Need for Cognition will be shown to have a
somewhat larger negative correlation with dogmatism than intelligence. Given that the
correlation between intelligence and dogmatism is approximately the same as the average
correlation between Need for Cognition and dogmatism reported in these studies, it appears that
Need for Cognition does not completely mediate the effect of intelligence on dogmatism.
The model in Figure 7.6 proposes that the effect of cognitive competency (primary
primitives) variables on authoritarian justification is mediated by variables in the self-worth
cluster such as self-esteem, achievement, adjustment (e.g., neuroticism, depression) and
generalized other primitives (e.g., anxiety). Study 1 allowed us to test the supposition that
intelligence and NC predispose a person to high self-worth, and that a sense of high self-worth
inhibits dogmatic tendencies. In fact, Rokeach and Fruchter (1956) had supposed that low self-
esteem is a component of the dogmatic personality.
The next most central beliefs are the secondary primitives -- those related to the self-
concept. These primitives enable the orienting of the self in physical space, the identity and
worth of the self, and self-sufficiency (Rokeach, 1960). The secondary primitives consist of
subsidiary clusters of beliefs tied to identity, self-worth, and reality testing (Hamilton & Mineo,
1996). The identity cluster consists of the sexual and physical identity variables, gender or sex-
role orientation, and body image. The self-worth cluster consists of achievement, adjustment,
and self-esteem. Achievement is measured as scores on standardized verbal and mathematical
tests, or Grade Point Average (GPA). Adjustment is often measured conversely, as a form of
maladjustment. The two most common types of maladjustment linked with dogmatism in the
literature are depression and neuroticism. The reality-testing cluster consists of superstition and
external locus of control. There should be positive correlations between self-esteem, identity,
and reality testing. Trait anxiety is a chronic, unfocused state of fear. BST predicts that self-
esteem and adjustment are positively correlated, and that adjustment and self-esteem will
decrease anxiety. Study 1 allowed us to estimate the unique contributions of self-esteem and NC
to anxiety.
Dogmatism correlates negatively with the self-worth cluster, specifically self-esteem and
achievement. The effect of the self-worth cluster on dogmatism is substantially larger than the
effect of intelligence on dogmatism, but not the effect of NC on dogmatism. This implies a
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model in which there is a negative path from Need for Cognition to dogmatism that is not
mediated by self-esteem. The studies reviewed in the previous section proposed a model in
which intelligence increases Need for Cognition, with both intelligence and Need for Cognition
increasing self-esteem. Self-esteem, in turn, inhibits dogmatism. The inhibiting effect of Need
for Cognition and self-esteem on dogmatism is in part mediated by anxiety. Yet it was unclear
as to whether the positive effect of anxiety on dogmatism observed by Hamilton and Mineo
(1996) was spurious or indicative of a causal relationship. We now address this issue.
The tertiary and least central of the primitives are related to the concept of the
generalized other. The primitives related to the individual's concept of generalized other allow
anticipation of how the self is likely to be treated by other people, whether others can be trusted,
and whether they are friendly or hostile. Responses to others include cognitive elaboration on
basic emotional reactions, where fear is transformed into anxiety, anger into hostility, sadness
into longing. Within the fear cluster are beliefs about trait anxiety and specific fears such as the
dread of social isolation. Within the anger cluster are beliefs about suspiciousness, resentment,
irritability, negativity, and possibly guilt. BST, like APT, posits that both anxiety and hostility
are key antecedents to authoritarian thought. As shown in Figure 7.6, anxiety increases hostility.
It is unclear the degree to which hostility and anxiety directly increase dogmatism, and how
much of their effects are mediated by the other variable.
Frenkel-Brunswik (1949) proposed that anxiety occurs in children when they observe
flaws in one or both parents but are unable to express their ambivalence toward the flawed
parent. The child who cannot express ambivalence toward the parent experiences inhibited
hostility, which leads to anxiety. In order to cope with the anxiety, the child develops an
authoritarian outlook on life. As we will show, the positive correlation between anxiety and
dogmatism is larger than the negative correlation of self-esteem with anxiety, and larger than the
negative correlation of self-esteem with dogmatism. This implies that anxiety has a positive
effect on dogmatism that is not spurious.
Justification Processes
In their effort to expand the Intermediate Region beyond that described by Rokeach
(1960), Hamilton and Mineo (1996) identify three types of ethno-logics that people use to derive
peripheral beliefs: authoritarian, critical, and emotional justification. They refer to these
justification processes as informal, personal logics or ethno-logics. This is because the
individual uses these logics for belief justification because they have learned to reason this way,
not necessarily because they represent “good” logic in a formal sense. It seems likely that
patterns of justification that philosophers regard as fallacious would be learned in the same way
as those that philosophers regard as logically correct.
An ethno-logic is conceived as a competency acquired in the practice of evaluating and
justifying beliefs, so that there are likely to be individual differences in justification patterns, just
as there are with respect to any acquired competency. Nevertheless, since belief evaluation and
justification most often occur in the social contexts of persuasion and argumentation, it seems
likely that speakers in a language community would acquire and employ similar ethno-logics in
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order to facilitate communication. Thus, it is assumed that there might be cultural and sub-
cultural differences in ethno-logics. We assume that there will be individual differences in the
complexity and diversity of argument types employed. Argument complexity and diversity will
depend on general linguistic competence, level of education, and expertise on a given topic. One
of the key assumptions of BST is that differences in the Central Region acquired in the
progressive development of personality lead to corresponding differences in the Intermediate
Region manifested as different patterns of justification. The divergent patterns of justification, in
turn, have consequences on beliefs in the Peripheral Region, beliefs related to ethnocentrism and
political conservatism.
Anti-Semitism (A-S) Scale that consisted of 52 Likert items measuring five themes:
offensiveness, perceived threat, intent to discriminate, seclusiveness and intrusiveness.
The A-S scale was found to correlate with prejudice against other ethnic groups. Sumner
(1906) had coined the term ethnocentrism to describe a tendency to accept the culturally similar
and reject the culturally different. Thus, it appeared that the AS scale was tapping into a larger
personality variable, ethnocentrism. Research on the A-S scale was controversial. The Anti-
Defamation League claimed that using the A-S scale perpetuated anti-Semitism. Others objected
that the line of research was pro-Semitic. Controversy plus empirical support for a more general
personality factor called ethnocentrism shifted attention away from the A-S scale towards the
study of ethnocentrism. Levinson developed an ethnocentrism (E) scale that measured attitudes
toward minorities and patriotism, using 20 items and three subscales.
In an effort to determine the personality antecedents to ethnocentrism and prejudice,
Sanford, et al. developed the concept of authoritarianism -- a personality trait that leads to a
preference for antidemocratic tendencies (Sanford, et al., 1950). Frenkle-Brunswick did more
research than the other members of the Berkeley group on the causes of authoritarianism. She
found that high authoritarians are more impressed with themselves than low authoritarians, and
are more concerned with what is proper and conventional, and are more status conscious. These
tendencies lead authoritarians to be stricter in the training of their children, and this causes
children to repress thoughts about the faults and shortcomings of their parents. At the very least
the children are afraid to express such thoughts. This leads to hostility towards the parents, and
this hostility dare not be expressed. The repressed hostility is then displaced onto weaker
minority group members.
The Fascism (F) Scale was designed to measure prejudice without appearing to do so.
Items on the scale were based on fascist writing, speeches of anti-Semitic agitators, and the in-
depth interviews with people they considered to be high and low authoritarians. There were
several different forms of the F Scale, but the best known is Form 40/45.
Development of the Dogmatism Scale. Milton Rokeach, who had worked under the
Berkley group, and had performed many of their analyses, constructed the Dogmatism Scale
(Rokeach, 1960) to measure the dimension of open-closed mindedness. He believed that both
Fascists and communists show indications of being dogmatic or closed-minded. Thus, he argued
that dogmatism was a structural feature of the mind that is unrelated to ideological content.
Nonetheless, dogmatics glorify any authority who supports their belief system, and they are
generally intolerant of those who express opposing beliefs. As a consequence, their belief
system is polarized into sharply distinguished beliefs and disbeliefs.
Rokeach measured dogmatism with 40 Likert items, with the objective of attaining a
scale that ideologically neutral. Critics of the F Scale argued that it was ideologically biased, and
that the correlation between political-economic conservatism and authoritarianism was
misleading. He included three major themes in his D Scale: degree of separation of belief and
disbelief subsystems, organization of the central-peripheral dimension of the belief system, and
the person’s time-perspective. With respect to the second of these themes, he explored the
primitive beliefs of dogmatics, including their sense of self-adequacy, their certainty of the
future, and their judgments of the friendliness of the world. On the second theme Rokeach also
explored the relationship between authoritarianism and intolerance, how dogmatics view
authority as absolute, and their intolerant view of those who would disagree with them. Finally
on the second theme, he explored content-oriented beliefs and disbeliefs that emanate from
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positive and negative authority. With respect to the third theme, Rokeach looked at dogmatics’
conception of the past and the future, and how these are valued as more important than the
present.
The effect of justification processes derived beliefs. Dogmatism has been found to
increase stereotypic attitudes. For example, Hood (1974) found that dogmatism led to much
more stereotypically negative attitudes toward the mentally ill. In the British data reanalyzed by
Hamilton and Mineo, authoritarianism powerfully increased ethnocentrism and had a moderately
strong positive effect on political conservatism. Interestingly, the size of the positive effects of
authoritarianism on attitude toward the mentally ill and minority groups as represented by scores
on the E Scale are approximately the same, suggesting that authoritarians may view the mentally
ill as a low-power minority. Political conservatism in Rokeach's British data was measured with
the Right Opinionation (RO) Scale. Authoritarian justification may be the basis for other types
of conservatism, such as economic, theological, or marital conservatism. But the existence of
critical and emotional justification raises the possibility that some of the effects of personality on
peripheral beliefs may be mediated by justification processes other than authoritarian thought,
represented by either the rationality or emotionalism measures as shown in Figure 2.3. Hamilton
and Mineo (1996) discovered paths from primitive beliefs to peripheral beliefs that were not
mediated by authority beliefs. This important finding implies the existence of non-authoritarian
modes of belief justification.
We expect that there will be negative correlations between the three types of justification
process (see Figure 7.6), because the three classes of ethno-logic are alternative strategies for
deriving beliefs. That is, cognitive processing that deploys a particular type of ethno-logic
reduces the cognitive capacity available for processing other types of ethno-logic. In addition,
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however, there may be causal relationships among the three kinds of ethno-logic. For example,
critical justification could entail the rejection of reliance on authority and reliance on emotional
reaction in the evaluation of beliefs. Conversely, those who rely on authority may reject critical
justification as impious. Our expectations concerning causal relationships between emotional
and authoritarian justification are less clear. It is conceivable that an authoritarian individual
might accept emotional reactions as bolstering accepted beliefs if those responses are consistent
with beliefs derived from authority, but repress responses that are inconsistent with beliefs
derived from authority.
As proposed by Hamilton and Mineo (1996) BST claims that social beliefs influence
political-economic beliefs. This claim, rooted in theories of political culture (Pye, 1985), holds
that social beliefs develop independently of political-economic structures, and that both social
beliefs and political-economic structures influence political and economic beliefs. In fact,
Hamilton and Mineo (1996) found that in Rokeach's British samples, ethnocentrism strongly
increased political conservatism. They tested a model in which political conservatism was
antecedent to ethnocentrism, but found that such a model had extremely poor fit. The British
data indicate that social beliefs strongly influence political and economic beliefs, and not the
other way around (Hamilton & Mineo, 1996).
the Berkeley studies, the correlation between ethnocentrism and economic conservatism is larger
than the correlation between authoritarianism and economic conservatism. Hence, the E-EC
correlation is not simply the spurious consequence of strong effects of F on E and F on EC.
Rather, it would appear that either economic conservatism increases ethnocentrism, or
ethnocentrism increases economic conservatism. Yet the Berkeley studies report a massive
correlation between authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. Hamilton and Mineo used statistical
procedures to determine that conservatism is most likely a consequence of ethnocentrism, and
not the other way around.
Rokeach (1960, Ch. 9) distinguishes dogmatism (the resistance that systems of belief
have to change) from rigidity (the resistance that single beliefs have to change). Rigidity, he
argues, is the difficulty in overcoming single sets or habits encountered in solving particular
tasks or problems. Dogmatism, by contrast, is the structuring of beliefs into a relatively closed
system. On the basis of his content analysis of items on the Gough-Sanford (1952) Rigidity
Scale, Rokeach concluded that the rigidity items measure beliefs about specific tasks or habits.
Within BST, this means that rigidity should be a characteristic of the Peripheral Region. As
such, dogmatism should increase rigidity.
Recently, Rhodes and Wood (1992) proposed a curvilinear relationship between self-
esteem and attitude change, in the shape of an inverted-U. This finding is consistent with the
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Men are more likely to be aggressive than women for two reasons. First, male gender
should increase competitiveness, with competitiveness increasing hostility. Hostility, in turn,
increases aggressiveness. Second, male gender should increase physical strength, and physical
strength should increase aggressiveness. These two gender processes are shown in Figure 7.9.
A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the effects of male gender and depression on
hostility, guilt, and aggression. The results of this meta-analysis appear in Figure 7.10. The
results generally support the BST predictions. The results indicate a hierarchical relationship
among the forms of hostility, where resentment increases both irritability and suspiciousness.
The results also indicate a hierarchical relationship among the forms of aggression, where verbal
aggressiveness increases indirect aggression, relational negativity, and physical assault.
increases the odds they will physically assault another person. Thus, men tend to be more
resentful, suspicious, and physically violent, whereas women tend to be more irritable.
on women than on men. Yet a main effect might be a consequence of gender relations rather than
biological frailty. In principle, the same social process responsible for the success of male
sources with women could operate for female sources with men. That is, there could be
circumstances in which female sources might exert more influence on men than on women. Yet
so few studies have been conducted with female speakers that a pattern of small cross-gender
effects would be difficult to detect with a simple narrative review of the literature. Meta-analysis
provides a more powerful method to detect such a pattern (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990).
We compared the size of the mean effect in the persuasion studies, the source-pressure
studies, and the group-pressure studies relative to the amount of variance present in each of the
three categories. Effect sizes for the source-pressure studies were much larger than effect sizes
for persuasion studies (r = .55). Effect sizes for the group-pressure studies were substantially
larger than effect sizes for persuasion studies (r = .80). Finally, effect sizes for group-pressure
studies showed somewhat larger effect sizes than the source-pressure studies (r = .22). The
Eagly and Carli results indicate a small (r = .08) baseline female susceptibility to influence in
persuasion studies. Group pressure to conform approximately doubles the size of this
susceptibility effect. The source-pressure conformity studies show a modest susceptibility effect
(r = .14), presumably because these studies allow receivers who are vulnerable to authoritarian
appeals to buckle under the weight of speaker demands. Group-pressure conformity studies
show a larger susceptibility effect (r = .16), presumably because these studies allow receivers
who are vulnerable to authoritarian appeals to bow to the weight of demands from multiple
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speakers.
As with the Eagly and Carli meta-analysis, we compared the mean effect size for the
persuasion studies, source-pressure studies, and group-pressure studies. The group-pressure
studies showed a larger effect size than persuasion studies (r = .40) in the Becker data, although
the magnitude of this difference is only half of that we found in the Eagly and Carli data. The
group-pressure studies show a somewhat larger effect size than the source-pressure studies (r =
.33), as in the Eagly and Carli data. However, the source-pressure studies showed no more
attitude change than persuasion studies (r = .00). This last finding for the Becker data is at odds
with the finding for the Eagly and Carli data. In general, the Becker data yield smaller effect size
estimates than the Eagly and Carli data. The effect sizes were .02 smaller for the persuasion and
group-pressure conformity studies in the Becker data, and the standard deviations are much
larger in her data than in the Eagly and Carli data. In the Becker analysis, sampling error
explained only about half the variance in the persuasion and group-pressure studies.
receivers. This supposition would be consistent with the male dominion perspective.
The role of vocal cues in moderating the impact of source gender on evaluations by an audience
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Notes
1. BST proposes that these ethno-logics can be distinguished from their antecedent primitives,
even though scales measuring the various types of justification typically contain sets of items
measuring antecedent personality traits. Traditional measures of authoritarian justification
such as the D Scale that assesses dogmatism (Rokeach, 1960) or the F Scale that assesses
authoritarianism (Sanford, Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, & Levinson, 1950) were designed to
measure the personality correlates of individuals who would engage in authoritarian thought.
Similarly, traditional measures of critical justification such as the Rational Belief Inventory
(Himle, Himle, & Thyer, 1989) were designed to measure the personality correlates of
individuals who would engage in irrational thought.