Forewarning

What it is

The common expectation is that a warning protects. Tell people a salesperson is about to ask for something and they will brace, and the ask will land less well. The saying is that to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

An earlier paper under the same label is Jonathan Freedman and David Sears's 1965 "Warning, distraction, and resistance to influence". Wendy Wood and Jeffrey Quinn tested the expectation in 2003 with two research syntheses in Psychological Bulletin. Their conclusion was that warnings in general appeared to threaten people's attitudes or their self-images, and that what a warning did depended on which of the two it threatened.

Where the topic was involving and concerned immediate outcomes, or where the appeal was actually delivered, recipients focused on the threat to their attitudes. They responded defensively, bolstering their own views and resisting the appeal. Where the topic was less involving, the warning did the opposite. People agreed before any appeal arrived. The authors presumed this was because the warning alerted them to the self-image threat of being gullible, and agreeing in advance reduced that threat.

Forewarning therefore sits between two ideas that are usually kept apart. It resembles reactance when the topic matters, and it resembles a bid not to be seen as easily led when the topic does not.

In effect

In research: two syntheses of warning experiments

Wood and Quinn's meta-analyses pooled experiments on advance warnings of influence appeals. The pattern they report is conditional, not a main effect: resistance where the topic was involving and concerned immediate outcomes or the appeal was delivered, and agreement in advance where the topic was less involving. This page reads the work through its published abstract, so effect sizes are not given.

In everyday life: an illustration

This one is constructed, not reported. A colleague tells you she is going to ask for your support for a charity run. On a cause you care about, the warning gives you time to rehearse reasons to decline. On a cause you have no view about, the warning may make agreeing in advance feel like the easier way to avoid looking stingy or easily pushed. Neither is a finding. Both follow the two pathways the authors describe.

In commerce: labels on sponsored content

A disclosure label on sponsored content is a standing warning that an appeal is coming. A 2020 meta-analysis of 61 papers by Martin Eisend and colleagues, covered in the vault's article on product placement, found that sponsorship disclosures raised recognition and resistance and lowered brand attitudes. What the labels do to readers is taken up in Native Advertising and the Inversion and When Product Placement Actually Works.

What it does not say

The research does not say that warnings are useless, and it does not say they are protective. It says the result depends on the topic and the moment. It was built on experiments with influence appeals in general, not on sales pitches in particular, so the move from there to a kitchenware party is an inference.

It also does not equate a bare warning with training. Sagarin and colleagues' 2002 studies tested a resistance treatment that established the persuader's manipulative intent and the person's own vulnerability, which went further than telling people an appeal was coming. See The Illusion of Invulnerability.

Why a warning might not protect

The folk expectation is that telling someone a pitch is coming gives them a head start. If a warning simply handed over persuasion knowledge, it would. Wood and Quinn's 2003 meta-analyses found that it does not do one thing.

What the two bodies of experiment found

Wood and a co-author pooled experiments on warnings of an influence appeal. In general, warnings appeared to threaten people's attitudes or their self-images, and what a warning did depended on which was threatened. When the topic was involving and concerned immediate outcomes, or when the appeal was actually delivered, recipients bolstered their own views and resisted. Warnings of appeals on less involving topics did the opposite: people agreed before the appeal arrived. The authors presumed that the warning reminded them of the self-image threat of being gullible, and agreeing in advance reduced it.

What this means for a seller and a buyer

For the person warned, the lesson is that a warning is not the same as defence. A forewarning of a sales pitch can harden a person, or it can send them towards agreement, depending on how much the topic matters to them. For a seller, a warning can backfire on an involving purchase and can raise agreement on a trivial one. Labels on sponsored articles are a warning of this kind, and what they do to readers is a separate body of work.

Relation to resistance training

Sagarin and colleagues (2002) found a different route to resistance. Their treatment produced the most resistance when it dispelled the belief that deception works only on other people. A warning on its own does not do that, which fits the finding that warnings cut both ways. See The Illusion of Invulnerability and Persuasion Knowledge.

How the evidence was read

Wood and Quinn (2003) was read at the level of its abstract, so no sample sizes or effect sizes are stated. The earliest use of the idea is credited to Freedman and Sears (1965) with medium confidence, and that work was not read for this page.

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