stage. Stage two is where the experience is evaluated for internal and external coherence, compared to other facts and knowledge. The evaluative stage is where augmenting and discounting occur in attributions, where counterarguing is initiated. Grice (1975) made a similar point about language comprehension involving an appreciation of the literal meaning of an utterance, followed by an evaluation of the implication of the utterance. Grice argued that because it is impossible for a dog to be a Buddhist in the literal sense, we would search the statement more deeply for some metaphorical or ironic meaning.
In Gilbert’s (1991) Spinozan theory, the two stages also differ in how easily they occur. The comprehension stage occurs automatically as an inherent part of meaning acquisition. It can’t be avoided. The evaluation stage is under more cog-nitive and motivational control, and it requires more mental effort to accomplish.
Because of this effort differential, a cognitive load, a distraction, or a lack of vo-lition will interfere with the second stage, but not the first. A disruption of the sec-ond stage would leave intact the uncritical acceptance of the situation or utterance from the first stage. Thus, Gilbert’s (1991) theory implies that a message disrup-tion that occupies attendisrup-tion and interferes with evaluadisrup-tion would promote an un-critical acceptance of the message.
One of our recent studies began to assess this process (Linn & Knowles, 2002a). We showed people a very short, 30-second, home-made commercial for Tom’s of Maine toothpaste. We chose Tom’s toothpaste because it was com-mercially available but not widely known among our participants. (We appre-ciate the support and assistance that Tom’s of Maine gave us in this project).
Half the people saw an advertisement that ended with a statement that Tom’s toothpaste was as effective as other toothpastes in fighting cavities. The other half heard the same thing about Tom’s “mouthpaste.” We selected “mouthpaste”
as a disruptive, novel, and unexpected statement. Our purpose was to see whether the disruptive statement would create a general arousal or attentiveness to the message, or if it would take attention away from the message. Participants were asked to watch the commercial, but also to watch for a flash of yellow light. They were told to press a key as soon as they detected a flash. For half the participants the flash occurred early in the commercial; for the other half it occurred near the end of the commercial, immediately after the word “mouth-paste” or “toothpaste.” Participants took longer to push the button after the disruptive word (1059 msec) than after the normal word (896 msec). It seems that a small disruption draws some attention away from the message. Our current research continues to investigate the role that Gilbert’s (1991) Spinozan process plays in producing these subtle disruption effects.
Muraven and Baumeister (2000; Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000) pro-posed that self-regulation is a limited ego resource that can become depleted with use. It seems to us that resistance to change is another form of self-regulation that is governed by this theory. Muraven and Baumeister (2000) out-lined four assumptions of the ego-depletion model: (a) self-regulation is a limited resource, not infinite (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), (b) exercising self-control consumes this limited resource (Muraven, Tice, &
Baumeister, 1998), (c) self-regulatory energy can be replenished, but at a slower rate than it is consumed, and (d) repeated exercise of self-control increases the capacity of the resource pool, just as exercise of a muscle strengthens the muscle (Muraven & Baumeiseter, 2000).
Muraven and Baumeister’s ego-depletion theory of self-control, if it applies to resistance, implies that people should be less able to resist second requests than first requests (Dillard, 1991). Another way of saying this is that a request should be more effective later in a sequence than earlier in a sequence.
Political Advertisement Study. To evaluate this process, we con-ducted a study of reactions to political advertisements (Knowles, Brennan, &
Linn, 2002). We asked friends and family from around the country to videotape evening television shows the week before the November 2000 general elections in the United States. From these videotapes we identified a number of 30- to 45-second political ads that showed state or local candidates. We eliminated attack ads and used only ads that described the candidate and where he or she stood on issues. We showed the ads to some students and chose nine focal ads that were fairly noncontroversial, that were easily criticized or counterargued, and that were not strongly identified with a political party.
Undergraduate research participants viewed seven ads. They were asked to watch each ad and to tell their reaction to the advertisement (1 ⫽ terrible to 9 ⫽ wonderful) and to the candidate (1 ⫽ extremely unfavorable to 9 ⫽ ex-tremely favorable). We thought that this rating task would introduce a critical evaluative stance toward each advertisement.
One of the seven advertisements was selected for more extensive evaluation, including completion of a Bivariate Evaluation and Ambivalence Measure (BEAMs; Cacioppo, Gardner, & Bernston, 1997) of feelings about the candidate.
The BEAMs involved ratings (0 ⫽ Not at all to 4 ⫽ Extremely) on 16 adjec-tives, eight positive (e.g., “favorable,” “pleasant,” “comfortable”) and eight neg-ative (e.g., “negneg-ative,” “bad,” “opposing”). Although Cacioppo et al. (1997) suggest using the positive and negative adjectives as separate scales, we found them to be substantially correlated, r ⫽ ⫺.51, and so combined them into a single scale by reverse scoring the negative adjectives.
Participants saw these ads under four conditions. One-fourth of the partici-pants saw the focal ad first in the sequence. In this “First Ad” condition, par-ticipant’s resistance should be strong and undiminished, and thus ready to apply wholeheartedly to the advertisements. Strong resistance here means that partic-ipants should have a relatively low evaluation of the first ad.
Other participants saw the focal ad last in the sequence of seven ads. In this
“Last Ad” condition, participants had critically evaluated six other ads before seeing the focal ad. If their resistance had been depleted by this task, these participants should be less critical of the last ad.
Two other conditions followed the same pattern as the “Last Ad” condition, except that before the last ad, participants viewed a 12-minute travelogue about Fiji. This travelogue described a vacation to Fiji and showed many things to do.
In the “Last Ad Accepting” condition, we asked participants to view the vide-otape and record what they liked about the vacation and which activities they found fun. In the “Last Ad Critical” condition, we asked participants to view the travelogue critically, listing when the narrator was deceptive and how the vacation as shown could go wrong. Whereas we expected the Last Ad condition to have a positive evaluation of the political advertisement because the six prior ads had consumed resistance, we expected the Last Ad Accepting condition to free participants from their critical stance and thereby allow the resistance to rebuild. The Last Ad Critical condition, which continued to use up a person’s resistance, would not see this rebuilding. This thinking led to the expectation that evaluation of the political candidates should be relatively positive in the Last Ad and Last Ad Critical conditions, and relatively negative in the First Ad and Last Ad Accepting conditions. Eighty-seven people saw one of these four conditions. In addition, each participant saw one of three different ads as the focal ad for their more extensive judgments. The three ads, although liked dif-ferently, showed the same effects of conditions and therefore aren’t discussed further.
The first analysis of the BEAMs evaluation showed disappointing results.
The First Ad (M ⫽ 11.67) and Last Ad (M ⫽ 9.01) had very similar and not significantly different evaluations. However, when we took into account the participant’s general level of skepticism about political advertisements, a differ-ent picture emerged. Participants had indicated their agreemdiffer-ent with two state-ments: “I am skeptical of what a political advertisements says” and “Political advertisements can’t be trusted.” People who agreed with both statements were classified as high on skepticism (n⫽ 47) and the remainder were classified as low on skepticism (n⫽ 40).
When the level of skepticism was included in the analysis, the patterns showed an interesting interaction of condition with skepticism, F(3, 62)⫽ 3.20, p ⫽ .029. As shown in Table 7.4, the participants low in skepticism showed the predicted pattern of results. These people, who told us they had relatively little resistance to political ads, were able to be critical of the first ad, leading to a moderate evaluation of the candidate (M ⫽ 9.23), but were not able to sustain this level of resistance through the series of seven ads, coming to like the same ad when it appeared in the last position (M⫽ 15.98). However, giving them a rest period of 12 minutes where they looked at a travelogue uncritically allowed them to again become critical (M⫽ 3.06). In contrast, when they were asked to continue being critical, by disparaging the travelogue, these low-skepticism participants were more positive about the final political ad (M ⫽
TABLE 7.4
Effects of Repeated Exposure to Political Ads on BEAMs Evaluation of Candidate
Condition
Low-skepticism participants
High-skepticism participants
All participants
First ad 9.23 14.00 11.61
Last ad 15.98 2.17 9.07
Last after acceptance 3.06 2.43 2.74
Last after criticism 12.25 5.22 8.74
12.25). These results are entirely consistent with the pattern expected from the idea that resistance is a quickly consumable but slowly replenishable resource.
The highly skeptical participants showed a very different pattern. Their most accepting evaluation was for the ad that came first (M⫽ 14.00). Ads that came later, after these skeptical participants had evaluated six advertisements, were invariably given very low evaluations. The repeated experience of criticizing ads seemed only to warm participants up to their resistance. A lag of 12 minutes was not enough to dissipate it. These skeptical people seemed to have a much deeper resource of resistance to apply to these ads and to the travelogue film.
Our tasks did not deplete it, as they did for less skeptical participants.
Invoking resistance in the hopes of consuming it may work for people who have little resistance or little practice at using their resistance. Offering the same opportunity to skeptical people, however, may prime the pump of a deep res-ervoir of resistance.