Different types of explanations and their effect on persuasion.

Abstract

Can an explanation help with persuading others? This study investigated that very question. By testing participants on their attitude towards a persuasive message, their attitude towards the behavior, and their intention to perform the behavior, an experiment was conducted to find out if explanations can affect these three types of attitude. This study manipulated the persuasive message by using two different types of explanation, a how and a why explanation, with no explanation as the control group. The context of the advertisement was environmentally friendly behavior. No evidence was found that an explanation could strengthen a persuasive message in the context of environmentally friendly behavior. These results suggest that explanations do not contribute to persuasion, regarding environmentally friendly behavior. These results may be applied to advertisement campaigns and other non-profit goals.