William A. Watts

Persistence of opinion change induced under conditions of forewarning and distraction.

Ninety-six high school students participated in a study investigating the immediate and delayed effects of forewarning of persuasive intent. It was predicted that subjects would change less immediately after reading persuasive communications because the forewarning would serve as a discounting cue, but that over time, they would tend to forget or dissociate this cue, thus allowing the full impact of the communication to emerge. The results strongly supported this hypothesis. A second experiment involving 104 high school students was conducted to replicate the first study and to extend the same reasoning to the case of distraction. Distraction was expected to facilitate immediate opinion change, presumably because of interference with counterarguments; but because of its detrimental effect on comprehension and a presumed tendency for subjects to think of opposing arguments after leaving the experimental situation, the change was expected to dissipate more rapidly than in the nondistracted conditions. The data confirmed predictions regarding both forewarning and distraction.

Distributed Monitoring of Steady-State System Performance Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks provide a cost-effective alternative to monitoring system performance in real-time. In addition to the ability to communicate data without wires, the sensor nodes possess computing and memory capabilities that can be harnessed to execute signal processing and state-tracking algorithms. This paper describes the architecture and application layer protocols for the distributed monitoring of the steady-state performance of systems that have a finite number of states. Protocols are defined for two phases — the learning phase and the monitoring phase. In the learning phase, an expert user trains the wireless network to define the acceptable states of the system. The nodes are programmed with a set of algorithms for processing their readings. The nodes use these algorithms to compute invariant metrics on the sensor readings, which are then used to define the internal state of the node. In the monitoring phase, the nodes track their individual states by computing their state based on the sensor readings and then comparing them with the pre-determined values. If the system properties change, the nodes communicate with each other to determine the new state. If the new state is not one of the acceptable states determined in the learning phase, an alert is raised. This approach de-centralizes the monitoring and detection process by distributing both the state information and the computing throughout the network. The paper presents algorithms for the various processes of the system and also the results of testing the sensor network architecture on real-time models. The sensor network can be used in automotive engine test rigs to carry out long term performance analysis.© 2004 ASME

Intelligence and susceptibility to persuasion under conditions of active and passive participation

Abstract An experiment was conducted to test the prediction that verbal intelligence facilitates opinion change induced by active participation (improvising arguments). Seventy-one subjects were randomly assigned to improvise arguments or read persuasive messages advocating the same point of view (passive, control condition) about one of three topics. A short test of verbal intelligence was administered during the experiment; also, American College Test scores were obtained from the files of all subjects for whom they were available. Analysis of variance (with subjects partitioned into high and low intelligence groups) and correlational analyses supported the above prediction. There was some evidence that quality of the arguments improvised mediated the relationship between intelligence and opinion change, but the results were not totally consistent.

Appropriateness of anxiety and drive for affiliation

Abstract Anxiety was induced in first/only born and later born subjects by the threatened injection of a harmless drug. Perceived appropriateness of the induced anxiety was manipulated by the experimenters suggestion that anxiety over an injection was either perfectly natural (appropriate condition) or to be found only in rather nervous and effeminate men (inappropriate condition). The results indicated that the anxiety induction was successful, but that the perceived appropriateness of the anxiety determined the tendency to affiliate. Subjects in the appropriate condition showed a significantly greater tendency to affiliate than did subjects in the inappropriate condition. Birth order was related to anxiety on one of two measures, but was not implicated in the determination of the affiliative tendency.

Immediate and Delayed Effects of Distraction and Forewarning of Persuasive Intent

However, with the passage of time, subjects tend to forget, or disassociate, the discounting cue, thus allowing the full impact of the persuasive material to emerge, providing that the forewarning did not interfere with comprehension. This reasoning parallels the original interpretation of the sleeper effect (Hovland, Lumsdaine & Sheffield, 1949). Despite the fact that Gillig & Greenwald (197~+) have written the obituary of the sleeper effect, and indeed it may be dead if limited to the classic negative-source manipulation, the data in the first sb4y fully supported this hypothesis even to the extent that comprehension and memory were slighfly better for the forewarned than the non-forewarned subjects at both time intervals.