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The Multiple Source Effect in Persuasion

The Effects of Distraction

Northeastern University

Richard E. Petty

University of Missouri-Columbia

Holding constant information about the number of sources and number of arguments to which they might be exposed, subjects viewed one source presenting three different arguments, three sources presenting different versions of a single argument, or three sources presenting three different arguments (one each) in favor of a counterattitudinal position. For hayf of the subjects, this message was accompanied by a distraction task. In the single task conditions, replicating Harkins and Petty (1981), three-source/three-arguments subjects were more persuaded than subjects in the other two conditions, but when the message was accompanied by a distractor, this persuasive advantage disappeared. Since distraction also led to disruption of favorable thought production, but left recall unaffected, these data are consistent with the view that the enhanced persuasion found in the multiple-source/multiple-argument condition is the result of additional message elaboration elicited by the combination of different sources and different arguments.

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