earticle

영어

Building on extant literature in crisis communication and rhetorical strategies for persuasion, the current study examined the efficacy of a refutation appealing to rationality in mitigating the negative effects from an activist’s accusation of which validity can be contentious. In a posttest-only control group design, participants in either of two experimental conditions or a control condition evaluated a government’s refutation message appealing to either logos or pathos or a “no comment” response respectively and indicated their attitude, perceived credibility and trust toward the organization. Results indicate that a refutation appealing to logos generated more positive evaluations than a refutation showing indignation in the message evaluations of transparency and reliability. In addition, a refutation appealing to logos generated more positive attitude, greater perceived credibility and trust toward the organization than a refutation appealing to pathos and a “no comment” response.