How Messages Affect Their Senders: A More General Model of Message Effects and Implications for Deliberation

This paper argues that in all areas of communication theory, we should give greater consideration to the possibility of expression affecting the expresser. A general model of the effects of messages on both senders and receivers is introduced, organizing and resolving contradictions in past research by distinguishing between effects of the expectation of expression, effects of message composition, and effects of a message being released to others. When applied to deliberation, the model results in several experimentally testable explanations of causal mechanisms involved in deliberation’s predicted effects, a stronger basis for the distinction between deliberative and argumentative discussion, and several tentative practical recommendations for encouraging open-mindedness in deliberation.