Barking up the wrong tree

Pile on the information:

Quantity trumps quality in this instance because ambivalent individuals are likely to accept messages regardless of their source’s perceived reliability, shows Johar’s research, conducted with Martin Zemborain of Austral University in Argentina. Because ambivalent individuals have conflicting positive and negative views, they are seeking a way to resolve that discord and solidify their opinions. This makes them open to persuasion from a variety of sources, reputable and otherwise.

Johar and Zemborain found that people with strong opinions, by contrast, are more likely to evaluate the reliability of a message’s source before accepting it. Their attitudes can also be influenced, however, if they are unable to check for a message source’s validity and are unaware that they are being persuaded. “People know that they shouldn’t be influenced by outside sources, but in today’s world, there is so much clutter out there that we are sometimes influenced without realizing it,” says Johar.

Source: "Attitudinal Ambivalence and Openness to Persuasion: A Framework for Interpersonal Influence"

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. is a good book to help you influence people.

All my past persuasion posts are here. Would it influence you more if I piled on the numerous reasons why you should click?

You should follow me on Twitter here or subscribe to this blog's feed. If you're a regular reader please support the blog by doing your book and movie shopping at the store. You'll find all my recommendations there. Here are the site's most popular posts of all time.