University of Alabama, Department of Psychology,Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0848, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2011 May;37(5):626-38. doi: 10.1177/0146167211399585. Epub 2011 Mar 7.
Despite the widespread belief that the use of vividness in persuasive communications is effective, many laboratory studies have failed to find vividness effects. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is that many laboratory tests have not vivified solely the central thesis of the message but have vivified irrelevant portions of the message as well or instead. Two experiments examined the effect of vivifying the central ("figure") or noncentral ("ground") features of a message on persuasion. In both experiments, the formerly "elusive vividness effect" of superior persuasion was found, but only in vivid-figure communications. A mediation analysis revealed the salutary role of supportive cognitive elaborations, rather than memory for the communication, in mediating the vividness effect. The findings caution against attempts to persuade by increasing overall message vividness because off-thesis vividness has the unintended and undercutting consequence of distracting recipients from the point of the communication.
尽管人们普遍认为在有说服力的交流中使用生动性是有效的，但许多实验室研究都未能发现生动性的影响。造成这种差异的一个可能原因是，许多实验室测试不仅生动地呈现了信息的中心论点，而且还生动地呈现了信息不相关的部分，或者取而代之。两项实验检验了生动化信息的中心（“图”）或非中心（“底”）特征对说服的影响。在这两项实验中，都发现了先前“难以捉摸的生动性效应”，即更有力的说服力，但这只出现在生动的图形信息中。中介分析表明，支持性认知阐述的有益作用，而不是对信息的记忆，在中介生动性效应中起着中介作用。这些发现告诫人们，不要试图通过增加整体信息的生动性来进行说服，因为非主题的生动性会产生意想不到的、削弱的后果，即分散接收者对信息要点的注意力。
