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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1614

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Petty RE, Brinol P, Tormala ZL.
Thought confidence as a determinant of persuasion: the self-validation hypothesis.
J Pers Soc Psychol 2002 May; 82:(5):722-41
http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/82/5/722


Abstract:

Previous research in the domain of attitude change has described 2 primary dimensions of thinking that impact persuasion processes and outcomes: the extent (amount) of thinking and the direction (valence) of issue-relevant thought. The authors examined the possibility that another, more meta-cognitive aspect of thinking is also important-the degree of confidence people have in their own thoughts. Four studies test the notion that thought confidence affects the extent of persuasion. When positive thoughts dominate in response to a message, increasing confidence in those thoughts increases persuasion, but when negative thoughts dominate, increasing confidence decreases persuasion. In addition, using self-reported and manipulated thought confidence in separate studies, the authors provide evidence that the magnitude of the attitude-thought relationship depends on the confidence people have in their thoughts. Finally, the authors also show that these self-validation effects are most likely in situations that foster high amounts of information processing activity.

Keywords:
Adolescent Adult Awareness Female Humans Internal-External Control* Male Persuasive Communication* Problem Solving Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. Self Concept* Students/psychology Thinking*

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909