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Congruity
Theory
Congruity
Theory - Overview
Heider's
Balance Theory
Osgood
and Tannenbaum's Congruity Theory
Strengths
and Weaknesses of the Congruity Theory
Glossary
References
Self-test
Figure
1
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Congruity Theory
One
important advantage is that Congruity Theory makes specific
predictions about the direction and amount of attitude change
that will occur from persuasive communication. Research tells
us that these predictions are not perfect but fairly accurate.
These predictions are even better when the two corrections are
made to the formula. Balance theory makes no specific
predictions about attitude change, so Congruity Theory’s
ability to predict the direction and amount of attitude change
is a definite improvement.
For those who are specifically interested in persuasion,
Congruity Theory is much more focused than Balance Theory.
Congruity Theory is aimed directly at situations in which a
Source makes an Assertion (gives a message) about an Attitude
Object. This is exactly the kind of situation that persuasion
studies.
Congruity Theory also has some unexpected advantages. It
predicts that incongruity can change the audience’s attitude
toward the concept and their attitude toward the source. No
theory had predicted that the audience’s attitude toward the
source of the message would change too. Research demonstrated
that in fact attitudes toward both the concept and the source
changed. Second, Congruity Theory predicts that more polarized
(extreme) attitudes will change less than moderate attitudes.
That prediction was also confirmed by their research.
Another advantage of Congruity Theory is that it explains why
some messages fall flat. If a message makes an unreasonable
claim (e.g., Eisenhower likes communism or dislikes democracy;
Kruchev likes democracy or dislikes communism), that message
will be ineffective even though it might appear to create a
great deal of incongruity.
However, this theory has its limitations. First, like all
consistency theories, Congruity Theory ignores message
content. It says that the Source makes an Assertion, which is
a message, but the theory tells us nothing about the nature of
that message. There is ample evidence that message factors --
like strong arguments or evidence -- influence persuasion.
However, Congruity Theory classifies all messages as either
associative or disassociative, with no provision for stronger
or weaker messages. It would be easy to propose that messages
with strong arguments would produce more incongruity and
therefore more attitude change than messages with weak
arguments. Similarly, we could predict that messages with
evidence would produce more incongruity and more attitude
change than messages without evidence. However, congruity
theory ignores everything about the message except whether the
source is favorable or unfavorable toward the attitude object.
Second, the corrections it proposes means that the theory is
incomplete. The theory did not predict that attitudes toward
the source would change less than predicted. The theory does
not explain why messages that do not appear genuine
(Eisenhower praising communism) are ignored and unpersuasive.
Rather than revise the theory so that it made better
predictions, they fiddled with the formula to make it fit the
data. This is not how theory is supposed to improve. Still,
Congruity Theory is a clear advance over Balance Theory.
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