A Meta-Analysis and an Experiment Investigating the Effects of Speaker Disfluency on Persuasion

Abstract

A meta-analysis of the speech disfluency literature suggested that the relationship between speaker disfluencies and competence judgments may be mediated. The theory of elaborative resistance production (TERP; Turner & Banas, 2007) was then applied to the effects of disfluencies on speaker persuasiveness. An experiment was conducted such that 240 undergraduate students watched a short video in which a speaker was either high or low reward and produced 0, 1, or 2 verbal disfluencies. Evidence was found consistent with a causal chain running from speaker disfluency to attitude-defensive cognitions, then to ratings of speaker credibility, and then to message acceptance.

Keywords:

• Cognition
• Credibility
• Meta-Analysis
• Nonverbal
• Persuasion

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Joe Walther for his assistance in developing this project and Jill Staunton for serving as the speaker. Thanks also to Bill Eadie and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and helpful feedback on this manuscript.

Notes

Note. Correlations above the diagonal are the raw correlations while correlations below the diagonal are corrected for unreliability.

Note. Standard Deviations are in parentheses.

Note. Correlations above the diagonal are the raw correlations while correlations below the diagonal are corrected for unreliability.

Note. Standard Deviations are in parentheses.

Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this analysis.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher J. Carpenter

Christopher J. Carpenter (PhD, Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Western Illinois University.