Persuasive Effects of Early and Late Mention of Credible and Noncredible Sources

Summary

A standard persuasive communication was presented to 248 subjects in an attitude-change experiment containing a 2 × 2 after-only design. The credibility of the communication's source was varied (low versus high) along with the sequence in which the credibility information was presented (before the persuasive communication versus after). Early mention of the noncredible source was found to inhibit attitude change relative to late mention and to no mention. Neither source, when mentioned late, resulted in attitude change different from the no-mention control. The implications of these results for understanding the effects of source credibility were discussed.