The influences of receivers' resistance on persuaders' verbal aggressiveness

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Abstract
This study examined persuaders' decision processes which were activated by receivers' resistance, specifically, the roles of friendliness and intensity of resistance on verbal aggressiveness in persuaders' subsequent compliance‐gaining attempts. Seventy six participants were asked to gain compliance from a confederate who randomly performed one of four different types of resistance, i.e., friendly and strong, friendly and weak, unfriendly and strong, and unfriendly and weak. The conversations were audiotaped. The first five minutes of each conversation, segmented into one minute intervals, were analyzed. Findings include (1) persuaders confronted with unfriendly resistance showed higher average verbal aggressiveness than those confronted with friendly resistance, and (2) persuaders confronted with stronger resistance became verbally aggressive more rapidly than those confronted with weaker resistance.