A Behavioral Assessment of Persuasibility: Consistency of Individual Differences

variety of persuasive communications on many diverse topics. The existence of one or more general factors of susceptibility to persuasion would imply that some individuals tend to be indiscriminately influenced by the many persuasive communications to which every modern urban community is continually exposed, while other individuals tend to be generally unresponsive to such communications. Previous studies bearing on general persuasibility have been limited in scope and in generality because of their use of a small number of communications, relatively homogeneous in argumentation and in type of persuasive appeal. An initial study by Janis (5) used three communications which dealt with different topics, but which were relatively homogeneous in that they all advanced predictions of future events and used logical argumentation rather than other possible persuasive appeals (e.g., feararousing appeals or prestigeful endorsements). A second study by the same author (6) used five communications which were heterogeneous in content, but all of them were again limited to predominantly logical argu1 The present research study was conducted in connection with an undergraduate research stipend which was awarded by the Social Science Research Council to the junior author in the summer of 1954. The study was carried out under the auspices of the Yale Communication Research Program, which is supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and which is under the general direction of Professor Carl I. Hovland, to whom the authors are indebted for valuable suggestions and criticisms. Special thanks are also due Dr. Robert P. Abelson for advice on problems of statistical analysis and for valuable suggestions concerning the formulation of the factor analysis findings. The authors also wish to express their thanks to John Forsythe, Lawrence Hilford, and Joyce Montgomery, who assisted the authors in administering the tests; and to Eileen Beier, who carried out the factor analysis computations. The data for this study were obtained from the Milford High School in Milford, Connecticut, and the authors are deeply grateful to Mr. Herbert R. French, principal of the high