Page 118 - The Social Animal

100 The Social Animal

Carlsmith—I began to speculate about what factor or factors might
make such a difference. We began by accepting the notion discussed
above: The greater the discrepancy, the greater the discomfort for the
members of the audience. But we reasoned that this does not neces-
sarily mean the members of an audience will change their opinion.
There are at least four ways in which the members of an audience
can reduce their discomfort: (1) they can change their opinion; (2)
they can induce the communicator to change his or her opinion; (3)
they can seek support for their original opinion by finding other peo-
ple who share their views, in spite of what the communicator says; or
(4) they can derogate the communicator—convince themselves the
communicator is stupid or immoral—and thereby invalidate that
person’s opinion.
In many communication situations, including those in these ex-
periments, the message is delivered either as a written statement (as
a newspaper or magazine article, for example) or by a communicator
who is not approachable by the audience (as on television, on the lec-
ture platform, and so on). Also, the participant is often alone or part
of an audience whose members have no opportunity to interact with
one another. Thus, under these circumstances, it is virtually impossi-
ble for the recipients of the communication either to have immedi-
ate impact on the communicator’s opinion or to seek immediate
social support. This leaves the recipients two major ways of reducing
this discomfort: They can change their opinion, or they can derogate
the communicator.
Under what circumstances would an individual find it easy or
difficult to derogate the communicator? It would be very difficult to
derogate a liked and respected personal friend; it would also be dif-
ficult to derogate someone who is a highly trustworthy expert on the
issue under discussion. But if the communicator’s credibility were
questionable, it would be difficult not to derogate him or her. Fol-
lowing this line of reasoning, we suggested that, if a communicator’s
credibility were high, the greater the discrepancy between the com-
municator’s opinions and the audience’s opinions, the greater the in-
fluence exerted on the opinions of the audience. However, if the
communicator’s credibility were not very high, he or she would be,
by definition, subject to derogation. This is not to say that the com-
municator couldn’t influence the opinions of the audience.The com-
municator would probably be able to influence people to change
their opinions if his or her opinions were not too different from