Effect of Response Involvement, Quality of Arguments, Number of Arguments, and Style of Introduction on Persuasion

Summary.-The present study added rhetorical questions to prior exploration of the relationship between response involvement, quality of argument, and number of arguments. A 2 (response involvement) x 2 (quality of argument) x 2 (number of arguments) x 2 (style of introduction) design was used. Subjects were involved by dowing them to vote on their find examination questions. Good arguments were superior to bad arguments on all dependent variables. There were no more significant interactions than would be attributed to chance. Leippe and Etkin (1987) have demonstrated that issue and response involvement interact differently with quality of argument. The present author (Pentony, 1989) has shown that response involvement does not interact with quality or number of arguments. The purpose of the present study was to extend research on response involvement by adding style of introduction to variables as studied previously. Method.-Subjects were 28 male and female students in four psychology courses. The design was a 2 (response involvement: high-low) x 2 (argument quality: good-bad) x 2 (number of arguments: six-two) x 2 (style of introduction: rehtorical question-statement) within-subjects design. The power of a statistical design is determined by the n per cell and not the total N; see Winer (1971, pp. 152-153, 220-222) so 28 subjects tested four times is equal to 112 observations in a between-subjects design, which is the same number of observations as used by kippe and Elkin (1987). During class subjects were given booklets with directions very similar to those used by Pentony (1989). Subjects were informed that they were going to have an opportunity to vote on their final examination question. The next eight pages contained four written persuasions, each followed by a page with eight measurements about the persuasions. A four-way analysis of variance was done on all variables except the vote. A chi squared was used to test significance on the vote variable, and interactions were tested by a stepwise logistic regression. The first three independent variables (quality of argument, number of arguments, and response involvement) were almost identical to those in Pentony (1989). The new variable added in the present study was an introduction with either a rhetorical question or a direct statement. Each of the four persuasion pages was followed by a page containing dependent variables. The first two were on an 11-point scale: (a) "How likely do you think this vote will affect you?" and (b) "Please rate the persuasiveness of the preceding statement by placing an 'X' in the proper box." The next four scales were seven-point semantic differential items, goodbad, beneficial/harmful, wise/foolish, and favorable/unfavorable. The last measure was a vote for one of the two alternative questions on the final examination. Results.-Means for high involvement were significantly higher than those for low involvement (M = 8.3 to 5.4; SD = 3.0, p < ,001) so manipulation of involvement worked. It can be seen From Tables 1 and 2 that the good arguments were sigdicantly superior to the bad ones on all