The parametric unimodel as a theory of persuasion

In a persuasion context, recipients (1) typically confront a message (2) originating from some source (3) and the essential question researchers have been posing is whether recipients’ attitudes or opinions will change under these circumstances. To address this issue, early persuasion studies focused on the foregoing three, “phenotypically” salient, features of the persuasion context-the recipients, the source, and the message (c.f. Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953; Lasswell, 1948), and treated them as relatively sequestered classes of factors relevant to persuasion. This has led to the compilation of variable lists in each of the “source,” the “message” or the “recipient” categories and to an empirical investigation of their persuasive effects (for a review see e.g., McGuire, 1968).