Peter Wright

Who they are

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

His affiliation and wider career were not checked for this page, and nothing is stated about them here. What the record supports is his authorship of the 1994 paper, which carries his name as second author.

Key papers

Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). 'The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts.' Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1-31. doi:10.1086/209380.

The abstract was read through a bibliographic record. His other papers were not surveyed.

Key ideas

The paper he co-wrote argues that persuasion research had overlooked people's own knowledge of persuaders' goals and methods, and of how to handle them. It presents a model of how people develop and use that knowledge when someone tries to persuade them.

Later studies cited on this site build on it. Campbell and Kirmani's 2000 study asked when consumers use persuasion knowledge on a salesperson, and Chan and Sengupta's 2010 work asked what is left of a flatterer's effect once the motive has been seen. The model leaves open what recognition does to the person who has it, and these studies, with Cialdini's home-party accounts, are where the question is pursued. See Persuasion Knowledge.

What the model contains

The 1994 paper he co-wrote with Marian Friestad treats a person's knowledge of persuasion as knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is built up over years of meeting advertisers and salespeople, and it is drawn on when a new attempt arrives. In the terms this site uses, it covers three kinds of belief: beliefs about the persuader's tactics, beliefs about how effective and how appropriate those tactics are, and beliefs about the person's own goals in coping with the attempt.

The paper's contribution, as its abstract describes it, was to put the target of persuasion into the account. Earlier work had overlooked what people already know about persuaders' aims and methods and about how to handle them.

A worked example

The Tupperware customer in Cialdini's Influence said she hated being invited to the parties, had all the containers she needed, felt she had to go when a friend called, and felt she had to buy something once there. Cialdini comments that such customers “appear to be fully aware of the liking and friendship pressures.” She has a working account of how a host's friendship is used, and she can state it. The model describes what she holds. It does not say when the knowledge is called up, or what calling it up buys, and the paper leaves both questions open.

How later work picks the model up

Campbell and Kirmani (2000) asked when consumers use persuasion knowledge on a salesperson, and found that it depends on whether an ulterior motive is inferred, which in turn depends on how accessible the motive is and how much attention the person has to spare. Chan and Sengupta (2010) asked what remains of a flatterer's effect once the motive has been seen, and found that a favourable implicit attitude persisted after the stated one fell. Research on disclosure labels, including a 2020 meta-analysis of 61 papers, uses the model to explain why labelling content as sponsored raises recognition of advertising. Each of these tests one part of what the 1994 paper proposed.

What this page leaves out

Only the abstract of the 1994 paper was read, through a bibliographic record. The paper is a conceptual model and not a single experiment, so there are no sample sizes or effect sizes to report. His affiliation and wider career were not checked, and nothing is said about them here.

---