Processing Minority and Majority Communications: The Role of Conflict with Prior Attitudes

The authors studied the effects of recipients’ prior attitudes on message scrutiny in minority and majority influence situations. Based on the objective consensus approach and on conversion theory, the authors derived the hypothesis that cognitive effort dedicated to the processing of minority and majority communications depends on recipients’ prior attitudes. In Experiment 1, prior attitudes were experimentally induced, and in Experiment 2, prior attitudes were measured. Both studies found that majority messages were processed more extensively than minority messages when recipients held a moderate prior attitude. When recipients held an opposing prior attitude, however, the minority message was processed more extensively than the majority message. These findings supported the authors’ predictions and reconciled seemingly contradictory findings in the literature. Theoretical implications as well as avenues for future research are discussed.