Healthy Influence Blog

Consider this problem.  You are perceived as a doofus, but in this particular case you actually know what you are talking about it and if people would just listen to you, they would make the Right Choice.

Now, let’s turn it around.  You are a World Class Expert, the Master of The Domain, but everyone knows that so they don’t listen – “There she goes again!”

In each instance, you have the strong Argument, the knowledge that would benefit other people, but because of your Credibility, people tune out your Arguments.  How can you use your Credibility, High or Low to motivate High WATT processing when you’ve got strong Arguments?

Certainty.

Or unCertainty.

Turns out that the combination of Credibility and Certainty generates WATTage.  If you are the Master of the Domain, add a little bit of unCertainty to your pronouncements.  Hedge, qualify, maybe, kinda, sorta, could be.  If you are the Doofus, stand tall, speak strong, be confident.  That crossed combination creates a violation of expectation in the receiver that provokes high WATT processing of Argument quality, which is exactly what you want IF YOU’VE GOT STRONG ARGUMENTS.

Here’s the research setup.  You’re reading restaurant reviews of joints in your neighborhood.  We’ve secretly (heh-heh-heh) created different combinations of Argument quality (strong or weak) Source Credibility (high or low) and Source Certainty (high or low), a total of 8 different conditions.  You are randomly assigned to one of the conditions, read the review, then provide your attitude and intentions toward the reviewed restaurant.  Here’s the description of the three variables, torn from the pages of the journal!

Argument Quality. In the strong arguments condition, the review contained several cogent arguments directly relevant to the core merits of the target restaurant (e.g., wonderful ambience, delicious food, excellent service). In the weak arguments condition, the review contained more specious and idiosyncratic arguments that had little to do with the quality of the restaurant itself (e.g., colorful menu, fun dish names, excellent conversation during the meal). Of importance, both sets of arguments were unambiguously favorable toward the restaurant, but they differed in perceived quality.

Source Expertise. According to random assignment, the author of the restaurant review (Daniel Christiansen) was either high or low in expertise. In the high expertise condition, he was described as a nationally renowned food critic and regular contributor to the food and dining section of a major area newspaper. Moreover, the opening line of his review indicated that he was highly familiar with local Italian restaurants. In contrast, in the low expertise condition, the author was described as a networks administrator at a nearby community college who kept a personal Web journal. The opening line of this review indicated that he normally ate fast food.

Source Certainty. Participants were also randomly assigned to source certainty conditions. In the high certainty condition, the title of the review was “La Scarola—a confident 4 out of 5,” and the author expressed certainty about his evaluation of the food and the restaurant at two points in the review (e.g., “Having eaten there for dinner, I can confidently give La Scarola a rating of 4 [out of 5] stars.”). In the low certainty condition, the title of the review was “La Scarola—a tentative 4 out of 5,” and the author expressed uncertainty at these same points (e.g., “Having eaten there only once, I don’t have complete confidence in my opinion, but I suppose I would give La Scarola a rating of 4 [out of 5] stars.”).

Here are 2 examples of the 8 possible combinations.

Now, the results are going to be a little complicated because we have a 3 variable experiment, 2 X 2 X 2, which means we’ve got to display triple interaction which sounds like a threeway which could be fun under the right circumstances, but this isn’t one of them.  Stay with me.  Look at the line charts of the results (I modified the publication bar charts to line charts because it’s just the way I’ve been trained).

First, notice the fan effects of the means.  The fan opens for Low Credibility and closes for High Credibility which is exactly what ELM theory predicts when WATTage moves from Low to High (or vice versa depending upon the experiment).  The closed end of the fan demonstrates that receivers are not carefully reading the Arguments, because each group, strong and weak, shows the same attitude score.  The open end of the fan shows that receivers are now carefully reading the Arguments because the group means for strong and weak diverge.  For the Low Credible source, Argument scrutiny increases as Certainty moves from low to high.  For the High Credible source, the effect reverses so that Argument scrutiny decreases as Certainty moves from low to high.  And, this interaction is statistically significant and more importantly is probably a medium-ish or Windowpane of 35/65 effect size (I’m kludging this from various statistics in the paper since the authors did not report an exact effect size.)

This is a gorgeous effect and something that is rare to see in any experimental research result.  Triple interactions move like the hand of God over the data, making me believe in the theory even more strongly.  You just cannot make this happen easily and you are either extremely dumb lucky or else you’ve got a pretty good theory.  This is like finding the Mate of Your Dreams, winning the Lottery, and getting a parking space by your building on a rainy day all on the same day!

Now, past all the geek I’m showing, what’s the practical persuasion play?

If you have strong Arguments and you are a high Credible source:  Relax the biblical prophecy, master of the universe style, and offer uncertainty in your presentation.  Offer the strong Arguments clearly and directly, but hedge your conclusions, honestly suggest you could be wrong, there’s probably more to the story than I know and on and on.

If you have strong Arguments and you’re are a low Credible source: Bring confidence and certainty to your conclusions.  Assert that you really looked hard at this and know it’s the right thing.  Then hit them with the strong Arguments and let them go after it.

The whole point of this play is to get your receivers High WATT about your strong Arguments, so you’d better have strong Arguments or else you’re killing yourself.

Hey, this is a fabulous research study and if you’re in the game, you should read it.  It’s a three study package and I’m just sharing the main points.  And if you’re just interested you might contact the authors and ask for more details.  Here’s the title they chose:

Believe Me, I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About: The Effects of Source Certainty on Consumer Involvement and Persuasion

Uma R. Karmarkar and Zakary L. Tormala are pretty good at this.