If no tension was felt between the two people, or there were no conflicting opinions there would be no need to persuade each other. If you think about it, persuasion occurs only because there is tension between two facts, ideas or people.
In Charles Larson's book, Persuasion, Reception and Responsibility, it is noted: " another approach to the consistency theory is the congruency theory, by Charles Osgood and Percy Tennenbaum (1955, pg. 89)." This theory states that we want to have balance in our lives and there is a logical way figure it out.
When two attitudes collide we must strive to strike a balance between the two attitudes. The balance varies depending on the intensity we feel about each attitude and our pre-disposed positions concerning the attitude. We either have a favorable, neutral or unfavorable opinion concerning ideas. When two attitudes collide we will attempt to downgrade the favorable position and upgrade the unfavorable position so that we feel a balance. For example, suppose someone thought of Mel Gibson as a good role model. Later on they come to find out Mel Gibson does not like football. If the person were to like both football and Mel Gibson, one of three things would happen: 1) The individual would downgrade their opinion of Mel Gibson, or 2) downgrade football, or 3) downgrade both.
In the following articles, a comparison was made between people who had.
been affected by alcoholism to people who had not. In one article, D.M. Wright, and his colleague, P.P. Heppener, tested to see if Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA's), mostly consisting of college students, differ from non-clinical ACA college students on problem solving appraisal, perceived social support, suicidal thoughts, or substance abuse.
They determined that there was no difference between the two (1993). .
A. Cooper and A. W. McCormick tested to see if individual therapy in short-term groups would help to improve test scores.
