The persuasive impact of two communicators' characteristics—physical attractiveness and expertness—was examined on two subgroups of a sample of 192 college men and women who differed on a personality trait called “open processing.” This trait describes an individual's degree of openness to new information and his ability to process or handle inconsistent information about an object. As predicted, open (vs cautious) processors responded with greater variability when source attractiveness and expertness were varied. Attributes of the source made no significant difference in agreement among cautious subjects but produced a significant interaction on over-all attitude and a main effect for expertness on cognition among open subjects.
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