People often remotely observe when others resist and reject persuasive messages. Two studies examined participants' perceptions of two strategies, counterarguing and source derogation that people commonly use when resisting persuasive attempts. Additionally, the target resisted a message with which the participants either agreed or disagreed (Studies 1 and 2) and one which contained either strong or weak logic (Study 2). In both studies the strategy of source derogation was evaluated more negatively than counterarguing. Additionally, participants evaluated the target more negatively when he resisted a message with which the participants agreed, even when the target resisted using counterarguing or strong logic. The implications of these different perceptions of attitude resistance techniques is discussed. | 195 MUNRO et al. responding to a logical argument, but until recently few have empirically investigated these techniques, their prevalence, or their effectiveness in resisting persuasion. Recently, researchers have documented several techniques including avoiding thinking about information that threatens a strongly held belief or attitude (Wiersema, van Harreveld, & van der Pligt, 2012), coming to believe that belief-threatening scientific evidence is impotent in being able to inform the topic (Munro, 2010), and using the strawman argument to oversimplify the threatening arguments of others (Bizer, Kozak, & Holterman, 2009). The most comprehensive empirical investigation of resistance techniques was conducted by Jacks and Cameron (2003). Operating under the assumption that people are aware of the different resistance strategies that they might employ, Jacks and Cameron investigated the strategies that resistors themselves identify. They found that participants identified the seven strategies of attitude bolstering, negative affect, assertions of confidence, selective exposure, counterarguing, source derogation, and social validation. Interestingly, participants reported using some of these techniques (e.g., counterarguing) more frequently than others (e.g., source derogation). However, in a study assessing the actual strategies used when participants were faced with a counter-attitudinal message about the death penalty, source derogation was used almost as frequently as counterarguing. This raises the possibility that some techniques are judged to be more socially undesirable than otherspeople avoid admitting to using some techniques even though it can be shown that they do use them.
