Rhetorical Elicitation of Agreement in Persuasion

The persuasive effect of the rhetorical elicitation of agreement responses was assessed under various conditions of initial attitude relative to the attitudinal position advocated Additionally, the resulting resistance to counterpersuasion was measured. A significant increase in the effectiveness of persuasion was obtained, especially under conditions of initially opposed attitude. No facilitation of effectiveness was found under conditions of initially neutral attitude Resistance to counterpersuasion was not differentially affected by treatments The enhancement of cognitive involvement is discussed as an insufficient explanation. A rationale based mainly on the operant learning of the connotations of significance and certainty associated with verbal constructs such as the rhetorical agreement question was developed and employed to explain the results obtained. Also, an alternative explanation was proposed, maintaining that the findings might be due to a lowering of the communicatee's defenses as a consequence of changes in source perception brought about by the style of language used.