Research Note: The Influence of Exemplars on Recipients' Judgements

Abstract

Exemplars are short quotations (verbal or visual) from concerned or interested people that illustrate a particular problem or a particular view on a problem. They are frequently used in journalism because of their authenticity and their vividness. Past research shows that exemplars influence opinions and attitudes more strongly than statistics, comprehensive overviews or official information, although the latter are doubtlessly more valid. This study tackles the question of why exemplars have such a strong persuasive power. This is done on the basis of Bandura's social learning theory. An experiment with 159 subjects tests whether a growing similarity between the exemplar and the recipient increases the persuasive power of the exemplar. If that were the case, the effect of exemplars could be traced back to their function as agents for identification or models for the recipient. Results, however, show that variations of the similarity between exemplar and recipient do not influence the effect of the exemplars. Independent of similarity, exemplars considerably affect the recipients' judgements. Therefore, it has to be assumed that their persuasive power depends on other factors.