The Effects of Salient Group Memberships on Persuasion

Abstract

Previous theories of both social influence and persuasion have maintained a dichotomy between influence which is seen as thoughtful, grounded in objective reality and is longlasting, and influence which is impressionistically based and involves more superficial processing. Many theorists have suggested that groups are influential by means of the latter form of influence. Itfollowsfrom such a perspective that differences in the persuasive power of ingroups and outgroups should be mediated by peripheral cues rather than the persuasive nature of the message. In two experiments (Ns = 129 and 90) it was found that outgroups were less persuasive than ingroups when group memberships were made salient by having subjects commit themselves to groups. This is inconsistent with the traditional view but consistent with self-categorization theory. There was also evidence of more accurate recall by subjects in the salient ingroup condition. These effects are evidence against the view that group-based processing involves peripheral processing of the message.