Balanced vs. One-Sided Communications about Drugs

Abstract

This experiment compared the effectiveness of a dissuasive message about illicit drugs alone (one-sided condition), and combined with similar material about licit drugs (balanced conditions). The subjects were high-school students. Contrary to expectation, the one-sided message proved effective while its balanced counterparts did not. Explanations in terms of reactance and demand characteristics were found inadequate. It was suggested that the licit-referent content of the balanced messages offered subjects a worse-peril rationalization for permissive attitudes to illicit drugs.

Expectancy-Violation, Similarity, and Unexpected Similarity as Sources of Credibility and Persuasiveness

“…Rebellious scorers were more permissive about youthful illicit drug use than authoritarian scorers, as in previous studies (13,14,15).…”

“…These data were, of course, collected in the context of a particular population (community college students) with a particular kind of communication (a written message, deliberately composed to be highly comprehensible, which opposed illicit drug use). Nonetheless, two other recent studies on persuasive messages about illicit drug use which sampled other populations also produced results that support the importance of yielding over that of reception (12,15). It is perhaps time to direct concentrated research attention at the relative importance of yielding and reception in attitude change.…”