The effectiveness of self-persuasion in media campaigns

Recently, it has been demonstrated that self-persuasion can be activated by media campaigns, which were more effective than those using direct argumentation. Extending these findings, in the present paper we investigated conditions under which self-persuasion can be successfully applied in media campaigns. We examined whether there was a difference in effectiveness of pro- and counter-attitudinal self-persuasive messages in media campaigns. In two studies we tried to facilitate volunteering and donating by means of pro-attitudinal self-persuasive campaigns. Findings revealed that when people are not motivated to process the self-persuasive messages in media campaigns, campaigns, providing people with arguments led to a higher amount of hours people intended to volunteer. However, when processing was facilitated by means of a counter-attitudinal message, self-persuasion led to an increased amount of donation to a good cause. We suggest that active processing is vital for self-persuasive media campaigns and should be stimulated by a message itself.