To trust or not to trust: How self‐construal affects consumer responses to interpersonal influence

Although people generally prefer persuasive messages that align with their self-construal, the present research explores a seemingly paradoxical situation wherein mismatched message that does not align with people's self-construal is positively received. Given sufficient cognitive capacity to trigger persuasion knowledge—the knowledge of persuasion tactics that are encountered in the marketplace, the use of an individually focused persuasion attempt on consumers with an interdependent self-construal results in greater levels of trust in the sales agent. In contrast, consumers with an independent self-construal respond similarly to different types of persuasion attempts. Persuasion knowledge is a mechanism for variations in trust. The findings replicate those of prior work, and the robustness of the effects is confirmed via small-scale meta-analysis.