Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to submit your manuscript to SPPS

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Saucier, D. A.
Right arrow Articles by Webster, R. J.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Saucier, D. A.
Right arrow Articles by Webster, R. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Article

Social Vigilantism: Measuring Individual Differences in Belief Superiority and Resistance to Persuasion

Donald A. Saucier, Dr.* and Russell J. Webster

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: saucier{at}ksu.edu.


  Abstract
Social vigilantism (SV) is an enduring individual difference that assesses the tendency of individuals to impress and propagate their " superior" beliefs onto others to correct others' more "ignorant" opinions. After establishing a reliable measure of SV, three studies showed that SV was associated with greater expressions of belief superiority (whether reacting to others holding dissimilar or similar beliefs) and greater resistance to persuasion (via increased rates of counterarguing and greater attitude stability after persuasion appeals) even after controlling for relevant individual differences (narcissism, dogmatism, psychological reactance, and need for cognition), as well as attitude importance and extremity. Thus, SV predicts expressions of belief superiority and resistance to persuasion above and beyond characteristics of the attitude and individual difference variables previously studied in the attitude literature. SV is a meaningful construct in increasing the understanding of persuasion, attitude resistance, and attitude dissemination that can be applied in a variety of psychological domains.

First published on September 23, 2009
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2009, doi:10.1177/0146167209346170
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?