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The Yale persuasion studies and Communication and Persuasion
A coordinated Yale project studied how the communicator affects opinion change, and Hovland, Janis and Kelley published Communication and Persuasion in 1953. In one experiment, source credibility changed opinion at first, but the gap closed within four weeks.
- Where it sits
- Academic psychologyResearch published for other researchers and students.
- Evidence level
- DocumentedThe event or practice is documented by primary or authoritative sources.
- Sources inspected
- 2 of 22 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 0 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
Carl Hovland worked on a coordinated Yale research project on attitude and opinion change, carried out under a Rockefeller Foundation grant. It followed Army film studies by Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield, published in 1949. Hovland, Janis and Kelley published Communication and Persuasion in 1953. Hovland and Weiss reported one of the project's experiments in Public Opinion Quarterly, winter 1951 to 1952.
The psychological idea
The question was how features of the communicator change what people accept. Hovland and Weiss gave Yale history students the same article on four topics, attributed either to a source most students rated trustworthy or to one they rated untrustworthy, for example Oppenheimer against Pravda on atomic submarines. Opinions were measured five days before, immediately after and four weeks after reading.
In practice
No business application is documented in this experiment. Immediately after reading, the net shift toward the article's position was 23.0 per cent for high-credibility sources and 6.6 per cent for low-credibility sources. Four weeks later the high-credibility group had lost 10.7 points and the low-credibility group had gained 7.4. Recall of facts did not differ by source.
Why it mattered
Hovland and Weiss tested the sleeper effect, named in the earlier Army film work, by controlling the source experimentally. Kumkale and Albarracin call that effect an important testing ground for models of attitude change. Their 2004 meta-analysis found persuasion rose over time when the message arguments and the discounting cue had a strong initial impact.
Limits and qualifications
The subjects were college students reading booklets as a captive audience, and some sources were fictitious but plausible. Students were told the first questionnaire was a national opinion survey and the session a guest lecture, so they did not know the real purpose. Only 61 students completed all three questionnaires. Hovland and Weiss said their results were limited to captive-audience exposure. A 1973 review judged the sleeper effect too unreliable to pursue, and the 2004 meta-analysis found it only under certain conditions. The 1953 book was not opened.
Evidence behind the claims
The Hovland and Weiss study was done as part of a coordinated research project on attitude and opinion change at Yale under a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and it followed Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield's study of an Army orientation film.
The same four articles were attributed to high or low credibility sources (for example Oppenheimer or Pravda on atomic submarines), questionnaires were given five days before, immediately after and four weeks after reading, and only 61 of 223 students were present on all three occasions.
Hovland, Janis and Kelley's Communication and Persuasion is cited with a 1953 date as an early learning-approach account of persuasion, and Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield's Army film studies are cited with a 1949 date.
Net opinion change toward the communicator's position was 23.0 per cent for high-credibility sources and 6.6 per cent for low-credibility sources immediately after reading.
From immediately after reading to four weeks later, net change fell by 10.7 points for high-credibility sources and rose by 7.4 points for low-credibility sources, while retention of factual information did not differ by source.
Hovland and Weiss said the generality of their results was limited to a captive-audience situation with college students, some sources were fictitious but plausible, and students were told the first questionnaire was a national opinion survey and the session a guest lecture on newspaper and magazine reading.
Kumkale and Albarracin's meta-analysis found recipients of discounting cues were more persuaded over time when the message arguments and the cue had a strong initial impact, calls the sleeper effect an important testing ground for the mechanisms of attitude change, and cites a 1973 review that judged the effect too unreliable to pursue.
People involved
- Carl Hovland. Yale psychologist, project author and co-author of Communication and Persuasion
- Walter Weiss. Co-author of the 1951-52 source credibility experiment
- Irving Janis. Co-author of Communication and Persuasion
- Harold Kelley. Co-author of Communication and Persuasion
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 12.3: Attitudes and PersuasionChapter 12, Social Psychology. Concept. The section discusses this topic.Opened the page: it covers the Yale attitude change approach and Hovland's model of how source, message and audience affect persuasion.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
2 of 2 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication EffectivenessHovland, C. I.; Weiss, W.. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(4), 635-650 (Winter 1951-1952), 1951. Journal article. Primary source.Relevant text checkedReviewer read all 16 pages of the JSTOR-derived PDF as page images, including the procedure, Figure 1, Tables 1 to 7 and the discussion. It is a copy hosted on a university teaching site.
- [2]The Sleeper Effect in Persuasion: A Meta-Analytic ReviewKumkale, G. T.; Albarracin, D.. Psychological Bulletin, 130(1), 143-172, 2004. Journal article. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedReviewer read the first three pages as page images (abstract, introduction, definition of the sleeper effect and Figure 1). The moderator analyses in the body were not read.
Access note: The 1953 book was not opened. Statements about it rest on a citation in the Kumkale and Albarracin paper.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.