Amna Kirmani

Who they are

This page records the public professional record only. Nothing adverse is recorded and no motive is attributed.

Her affiliation and wider career were not checked for this page, and nothing is stated about them here. What the record supports is her authorship of the 2000 paper, on which her name is second.

Key papers

Campbell, M. C., & Kirmani, A. (2000). 'Consumers' Use of Persuasion Knowledge: The Effects of Accessibility and Cognitive Capacity on Perceptions of an Influence Agent.' Journal of Consumer Research, 27(1), 69-83. doi:10.1086/314309.

Read through a bibliographic record and a summary of the abstract. Her other papers were not surveyed.

Key ideas

The paper asks when consumers turn their knowledge of persuasion on a salesperson. Its answer is that they do so when they infer an ulterior motive, and that two things govern the inference: how accessible the motive is, and how much cognitive capacity the person has to spare.

When the motive was highly accessible, people used persuasion knowledge whether or not they were mentally busy. When it was less accessible, busy people used it less and rated the salesperson as more sincere than people with attention to spare did.

For readers of this site the result matters because it separates two states that are easy to confuse: not noticing a pitch and noticing it but being moved anyway. See Persuasion Knowledge and Dual Attitudes.

What the 2000 study asked

Friestad and Wright's 1994 model said that people hold knowledge about persuaders, but left open when that knowledge gets used. Campbell and Kirmani took up that question. Their answer, in the reported experiments, was that people use persuasion knowledge on a salesperson when they infer an ulterior motive, and that the inference depends on two things: how accessible the motive is, and how much cognitive capacity the person has to spare.

The pattern in the results

When the motive was highly accessible, people used persuasion knowledge whether or not they were mentally busy. When it was less accessible, the two groups split. Busy people used the knowledge less, and rated the salesperson as more sincere than people with attention to spare did.

The reading that follows is that recognition has two inputs. Something has to point at the motive, and the listener has to have the attention to read it. A motive that stays hidden from a distracted listener produces no recognition, and nothing follows from it.

A worked example

At a home party the host's warmth and the pitch arrive together. A guest who is busy talking, serving or watching the children has less attention to spare, so a motive that is not obvious may pass unread. A guest with attention to spare, who is shown the point where the demonstration turns into a request, has a cue that points at the motive and the capacity to read it. The 2000 study did not test home parties. The example only illustrates the two inputs.

What the result does not say

A rating of sincerity is a stated judgement, the kind a person gives when asked. The study settles when a pitch is seen. It says little about what seeing does to the person afterwards, which is the question later work on dual attitudes took up.

What this page leaves out

The paper was read through a bibliographic record and a summary of its abstract, so no sample sizes or effect sizes are stated here. Her other papers were not surveyed and her affiliation was not checked. Nothing here claims that the finding holds beyond the experiments the summary describes.

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