Persuasion: Insights from the Self-Validation Hypothesis

This article describes the basic mechanisms underlying persuasion highlighting the role of a recently discovered new process—called self-validation. Unlike previous mechanisms in attitude change that focus on primary or first-order cognition, this new process emphasizes secondary or meta-cognition. The key notion of self-validation is that generating thoughts is not sufficient for them to have an impact on judgment. Rather, one must also have confidence in them. We review research revealing that this new mechanism can account for some already established outcomes in persuasion, but by a different process than postulated previously, as well as for some new findings. Specifically, we describe how source (e.g., credibility), recipient (e.g., bodily responses), message (e.g., matching), and context (e.g., repetition) variables can influence persuasion by affecting thought-confidence. We also describe how establishing a basic mechanism such as self-validation can provide a novel framework for understanding a variety of additional phenomenon in the domain of persuasion and beyond.