Message Order Effects in Persuasion: An Attitude Strength Perspective

Contemporary research on attitude change processes is reviewed for implications regarding the relative influence of successive opposing messages on final judgments. Based on this review, extent of message relevant elaboration is offered as a moderator of primacy versus recency effects in prior research. Support for this view is derived from the ability to explain the results of previous studies and from two experiments in which message presentation order and personal relevance of the topic are manipulated in a factorial design. We find that situations that foster high levels of message elaboration lead to greater influence of an initial message on final judgments (a primacy effect) whereas situations that foster low levels of message relevant elaboration lead to greater influence of a second message on final judgments (a recency effect).