Abstract

Taking the Unimodel of Persuasion (Kruglanski and Thompson, 1999) as a point of reference, two studies are presented, that start from the hypothesis that if the source of a persuasive communication adheres to a culturally accepted and socially shared stereotype, this communication will generate more relevant inferences in subjects' perception compared to the characteristics traditionally considered within the research concerning the properties of a source, that is, physical beauty in the strict sense of the word and reliability. We manipulated the presence/absence of a stylist name on the T-shirt of two pictured young women (one less and one more attractive) to whom two persuasive messages, regarding two different products, were attributed and we measured the purchasing intentions about the two products. The results show that the stylist's name presence on the T-shirt induces systematic differences on the dimensions of the impressions of the source and a better judgement of the product. In the second study we assumed that the persuasive effect of a source who fits a automatically activated positive stereotype disappears when the same stereotype is explicitly activated trough its contents. The results show again a strong effect of the name presence both on the preference for the product and on the purchasing intention but no significant effects emerge when we manipulate the same stereotype in an explicit way.