Using Inoculation to Protect Value-in-Diversity Attitudes: An Unsuccessful Test and a Nuanced Antidote

This study tests McGuire’s (1961, 1962, 1964, 1970) inoculation theory as a strategy to protect value-in-diversity attitudes and investigates the impact of inoculation messages on minority and non-minority issue involvement. Results failed to support an overall inoculation effect, but instead indicate a more nuanced path to resistance within the organizational diversity context. Minority members experienced greater susceptibility of their pro-diversity attitudes, and inoculation posed a viable strategy for conferring attitudinal resistance with higher involvement levels

Communicating Value-in-Diversity Campaigns: The Role of Reactance and Inoculation in Accomplishing Organizational Aims

This investigation seeks to illuminate important considerations for carrying out value-in-diversity campaigns with the eventual aim of helping organizational messages be more persuasive, more influential, and less likely to generate reactance. Using Brehm's (1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981) psychological reactance, it is predicted that value-in-diversity campaign messages provoke reactance among majority members of an organization. The magnitude of reactance, the impact of reactance upon attitudes, and the impact of reactance upon attraction of the restricted freedoms is explored as well as implicit/explicit message strategies and the restoration of freedoms. In addition, using McGuire's (1961, 1962, 1964, 1970) inoculation theory, this research investigates avenues for protecting value-in-diversity attitudes from slippage once organizational diversity initiatives are underway. Also, this investigation offers schemas as an alternative mechanism for the way in which inoculation promotes resistance. In the areas of psychological reactance, results indicated that value-in-diversity campaign messages do generate some symptoms of reactance (greater threat to freedom and more anger-related negative affect) with all manifestations of reactance (greater threat to freedom, more anger-related negative affect, more negative source evaluations and less favorable attitudes) being experienced by majority organizational members as compared to minority members. Campaign messages with explicit language elicit greater threat to freedom with no negative attitudinal implications, while campaign messages with a restoration postscript reduce threat to freedom. For inoculation, results failed to support an overall inoculation effect, but instead indicate a more nuanced path to resistance within the organizational diversity context. Minority members experienced greater threat to susceptibility of their pro-diversity attitudes, and inoculation posed as a viable strategy for conferring attitudinal resistance to attack among organizational members with higher involvement levels. No support for the predictions related to schemas was found in this investigation

Diversity Initiative Schemas: Students’ Cognitive Representations of Managing Diversity on College Campuses

Using schemas as a theoretical framework, this paper explores students’ cognitive representations of managing gender and racio-ethnic diversity initiatives on college and university campuses. Exploration of student schemas is necessary to inform higher education administrators of the existing expectations present among students since these expectations interplay with student responses and reactions to diversity management efforts. Using content analysis of students’ narratives, results concerning students’ cognitive representations are offered, and key managerial implications are shared for those in higher education leadership

The Impact of Message Sequencing in the New Product Introduction Process: Boosting Message Retention and its Impact on Product Attitude

This study focused on providing a more nuanced understanding of the message retention-attitude (cognition-affect) relationship in new product introductions. Using advertising and publicity as independent and combined promotional tools, this study aims to determine an effective approach to strengthen the retention-attitude relationship as well as the level of new product information retention and, through it, the attitude toward the product. To that end, a two-phase experiment was conducted involving 423 participants. The results revealed that publicity, compared to advertising, in general, was a more effective strategy in boosting retention and that the publicity-publicity sequence strategy was the most effective in boosting the attitude toward the product as its consistent message content and format produced both direct and mediated effects of message retention on the product attitude

The Influence of Corporate Front-Group Stealth Campaigns

This research examined corporate front-group stealth campaigns. An experiment was conducted to examine the influence of front-group stealth campaigns on a variety of measures. It was anticipated that corporate front-group stealth campaigns, which feature names that mask the true interests of sponsors, positively affect public opinion, unless they are exposed as intentionally misleading, in which case they boomerang against sponsors. The experiment examined the potential of the inoculation strategy to preempt the influence of corporate front-group stealth campaigns. The pattern of results supported all of these expectations. Front-group stealth campaigns proved to be effective, at least in the short term. Front-group stealth campaigns eroded public attitudes toward the issue in question and boosted perceptions of the front group, but not the corporate sponsor. However, when front-group stealth campaigns were subsequently exposed, positive effects dissipated and perceptions of corporate sponsors boomeranged. Results revealed that inoculation can protect against the influence of front-group stealth campaigns.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline