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Delayed Persuasion as a Consequence of

Associative Interference: A Context Confusion Effect

Adelphi University

Anthony G. Greenwald

Ohio State University

Michael H. Baumgardner

Burke Marketing Services, Inc.

Previous research (e.g., Tannenbaum, 1967) indicates that a persuasive message directed at one attitude object may alter opinion toward another, unrelated object. A process of generalization of a learned affective response to objects with some similar qualities might contribute to this indirect effect. Under some conditions, however, associative interference might cause a "spread of persuasion." For instance, when evaluating a particular object, a person who has encountered numerous messages about highly similar and previously unfamiliar attitude objects may occasionally retrieve from memory an evaluative conclusion learned from a message about a different object. To explore this possibility, subjects were exposed to a message-dense setting (48 messages within I hour) in which they received neutral messages about some consumer product brands in a context of either predominantly positive or predominantly negative messages about other, similar brands. Consistent with predictions, subjects' ratings of the neutral brands shifted within minutes toward the evaluation provided by the context. This result is interpreted in terms of an associative learning/interference model of persuasion.

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