Persuasion: Motivational Factors Influencing Attitude Change

1. Participant Recruitment

1. Conduct a power analysis and recruit a sufficient number of participants (e.g., the original study used 145) and obtain informed consent from the participants.

2. Data Collection

1. Give participants the cover story for the study.
   1. Explain that the study is about assessing the quality of taped recordings discussing whether the university should institute an academic policy change.
   2. Further explain that the psychology department is cooperating with the university administration and has taped statements about the academic policy change.
      1. The statements should advocate a new policy where seniors would be required to take a comprehensive exam in their major area in order to graduate.
2. Randomly assign participants into groups based on a 2 (high and low relevance) x 2 (strong and weak argument) x 2 (high-source and low-source expertise) factorial design.
   1. Participants in the high-relevance group are told that the academic policy change that is to be described in the taped message is set to be instituted next year.
   2. Participants in the low-relevance group are told that the policy change is set to be instituted in 10 years.
   3. Participants in the strong-argument group hear a taped message that includes an argument describing statistics and data (e.g., the policy led to greater standardized achievement test when implemented at other universities) supporting the policy change.
   4. In the weak-argument group, the argument relies on personal opinion and anecdotes (e.g., a friend of the author took the exam enforced by the policy and now has a prestigious academic position) to support the policy change.
   5. Participants in the high-source expertise group are told that the tape they are about to hear was prepared by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, chaired by a professor of education at Princeton University.
   6. In the low-source expertise group, participants are told that the message was prepared by a class at a local high school.
3. Ask participants to rate on a scale the extent to which they agree with the statement promoting the implementation of the comprehensive exam (1 = Do not agree at all to 11 = Agree completely).
4. Later, standardize the responses and then average them to form one composite "agreement" measure.
5. To maintain the cover story of accessing the quality of taped recordings, also ask them to rate the speaker's voice quality, the quality of their delivery, and the level of enthusiasm.
   1. These ratings should not be used in any statistical tests.
6. Fully debrief participants.