Effects of experience on matched and mismatched arguments and attitudes

In the present paper it was examined how amount of experience with an attitude object affects the persuasiveness of informational and emotional arguments. It was hypothesized that persons with more experience would agree more with messages that did not match the way in which they were thinking about the attitude object, i.e., an experienced person, with an affect focus will be more persuaded by an informational message than an emotional message. Alternatively, persons with less experience would agree more with messages that matched the way in which they were thinking about the attitude object, i.e., an inexperienced person, with an affect focus will be more persuaded by an emotional message than an informational message. To test this hypothesis, participants were given the opportunity to play either 5 times or once with a group of puzzles under affectively focused conditions. Following this either informational or emotional messages promoting the puzzles were presented. Results supported the hypothesis.