Flattery and Persuasion: A Dual Attitudes Perspective

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Several studies have shown that the target of flattery evaluates the flatterer positively, because people have a basic desire to believe good things about themselves (e.g., Vonk 2002). Recent research, however, suggests a caveat. Namely, when people are aware of an ulterior motive (e.g., the consumer who suspects that a salesperson is offering a compliment just to close the sale), they discount the flattery and correct their otherwise favorable opinions (e.g., Campbell and Kirmani 2000; Main, Dahl and Darke 2007). The current research offers some new insights into flattery and its consequences. In particular, we use the dual attitudes perspective (Wilson, Lindsey and Schooler 2000) to show that even when the target of flattery perceives an ulterior motive and corrects for it, the original positive reaction (the implicit attitude) co-exists with, rather than being replaced by, the discounted evaluation (the explicit attitude). The implicit attitude, which takes the form of a relatively automatic reaction, is then likely to be manifested upon subsequent exposure to the source of flattery if capacity is constrained at the point of measurement; otherwise, it is the explicit evaluation that is reported. Second, we draw on the attitude strength literature (e.g., Krosnick and Petty 1995) to show that the implicit attitude, because of its relatively automatic activation, is more likely to persist over time and also resist negative information, compared to the explicit attitude. The implicit effects of flattery, therefore, can be particularly insidious. A third goal of our research is to establish theoretically derived boundary conditions for the posited discrepancy between the implicit and explicit attitudes produced by flattery, in order to illuminate the processes underlying this discrepancy. Four experiments were run to test our hypotheses. Experiment 1A used a simple one factor between-subjects design (Implicit vs. Explicit attitudes measure) to examine the basic thesis that flattery induces two distinct attitudes. Participants were asked to imagine they had received a leaflet from a new department store; the leaflet contained some store details and an invitation to visit, along with fulsome compliments on the participants' fashion sense. The key dependent measures, administered on a computer, comprised a set of items assessing store evaluations. Responses were collected under either time-constrained (5 seconds per item; implicit measure) or unconstrained conditions (unlimited time; explicit measure). The predicted difference was observed between the two attitude measures (M implicit =5.71, M explicit = 5.02, F(1, 53)=4.03, p<.05). Also of …