Abstract
This study proposed an Arguments Agreement/Disagreement Model of a Counterpositional Situation (CSAAM) to clarify whether people would agree with the arguments of counterpositional communicators? The CSAAM argues that when people make agreement/disagreement judgments about a counterpositional communicator's arguments, the responses would be influenced through two routes simultaneously. The first route is a more conscious process. In this route, when the counterpositional communicator's arguments are propositional or strong, an agreement tendency would be elicited. On the contrary, a disagreement tendency would be elicited. The second route is a more automatic process. In this route, the counterpositional message could directly elicit disagreement tendency through emotional reactance. The CSAAM was tested by 3 experiments. Experiment 1 taking 48 high school students as subjects demonstrated that counterpositional message could elicit reactance and a disagreement tendency, and thus influenced agreement/disagreement responses on the communicator's photo. Experiment 2 taking 48 high school students as subjects further supported the influence of counterpositional message is a more automatic one by showing the understanding of counterposition per se could attenuate the influence from conscious processing. Experiment 3 taking 32 high school students as subjects showed argument position and quality could influence argument agreement/disagreement responses, and the influences would co-occur with the automatic influence of counterpositional message. In conclusion, the concepts of CSAAM were generally supported.