... claimed that the degree to which someone's attitude is changed depends on a number of variables relating to the source of the message, the message its self, the audience to which the message is presented, and the context in which the message is heard. Their claims were supported by a vast range of research, which identified a large number of variables. For example, Hovland and Weiss (1951) investigated whether source credibility influences attitude change. In their study, participants had to read an article which claimed that it would soon be possible to create a nuclear submarine. Participants in the high credibility condition were told that the article had been written by J. Robert Oppenheimer, a leading atomic scientist, while those in the low credibility condition were told that it had been written by Pravda, the official Soviet newspaper. They found that attitude change was greater when they had been told ...

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