Controversy Surrounding The Existence of A "sleeper Effect"
One of the more challenging aspects that the sleeper effect posed to some researchers in early studies was the sheer difficulty in obtaining the effect (e.g. Capon & Hulbert, 1973; Gillig & Greenwald, 1974).
After attempting to replicate the effect and failing, some researchers went as far as suggesting that it might be better to accept the null hypothesis and conclude that the sleeper effect does not exist (Gillig & Greenwald, 1974).
However, Cook and his associates (Cook, Gruder, Hennigan, & Flay, 1979) responded by suggesting that previous studies failed to obtain the sleeper effect because the requirements for a strong test were not met. Specifically, they argued that the sleeper effect will occur only if:
- (a) the message is persuasive;
- (b) the discounting cue has a strong enough impact to suppress initial attitude change;
- (c) enough time has passed between immediate and delayed post-tests; and
- (d) the message itself still has an impact on attitudes during the delayed post-test.
Experimental studies conducted did, in fact, provide support for the sleeper effect occurring under such theoretically relevant conditions (Gruder, Cook, Hennigan, Flay, Alessis, & Halamaj, 1978). Furthermore, the sleeper effect did not occur when any of the four requirements were not met.
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