Past research on the outcomes of stealing thunder, or revealing incriminating information about oneself as part of a persuasive message, commonly resulted in inconsistent findings. This study attempts to reconcile some of the inconsistencies by varying stealing thunder messages in a crossed refutation, awareness, and communication context 2 (refutation) x 2 (aware) x 3 (context) mixed design with two offset controls (no information control and thunder control), with context being the repeated measure. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. They read three vignettes describing a persuasive situation where the agent employs stealing thunder, after which they responded to measures of perceived persuasiveness, information valence, and perceived source credibility. Findings were not consistent with the proposed hypotheses. The findings do, however, suggest some insight into the cognitive processes that may be taking place in the target of a stealing thunder message.
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