Individual Differences in the Pursuit and Securement of Multiple Objectives in Interpersonal Persuasive Interactions (Attitudes, Conversation)

140 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.Traditional investigations of persuasive communication have focussed primarily on the pursuit and securement of only an instrumental (persuasive) objective. But in interpersonal persuasive interactions, interactants may pursue multiple objectives in atttempts to secure multiple intentions (effects). This study investigated the pursuit and securement of instrumental, relational, and overall communicative objectives by examining the production and effects of messages exchanged in dyadic persuasive interactions. Subjects were paired to discuss a controversial issue on which they strongly disagreed. The messages produced in those interactions were characterized according to the extent to which they reconciled and pursued the competing instrumental, relational, and overall communicative objectives. Prior to the interactions, subjects completed measures designed to assess (a) attitude toward the controversial issue, (b) confidence in that attitude, and (c) level of interpersonal construct system development. Following the persuasive interactions, subjects completed measures designed to assess various interaction outcomes (dimensions of effectiveness): subjects recorded impressions of their interactional partners, and responded to scaled questionnaire indices of effectiveness relating to the securement of the instrumental, relational, and overall communicative objectives. Though the situation dictated that subjects pursue the instrumental objective (and hence all produced primarily single intentioned persuasive messages that rejected the other interactant's position on the issue), significant and systematic differences in the production of messages were discovered for individuals who differed in interpersonal construct system development (e.g., persons with relatively developed interpersonal construct systems were more disposed to pursue the relational objective in these interactions). Those differences were found to be consequential to attaining broad based effectiveness--securing multiple objectives. So, for example, messages found to be effective in securing one objective were sometimes detrimental to the securement of other objectives; only messages that fully reconciled (integrated) the various objectives were effective in promoting broad based effectiveness--multiple objective securement--and persons with relatively developed interpersonal construct systems were more apt to produce such messages than were relatively undeveloped interactants. The results of the investigation supported constructivist theory and its approach to communication.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD