My research deals with issues in persuasion, human judgment in general, and social influence. In persuasion I studied a number of phenomena like motivational determinants of message elaboration, two-sided advertisements, and others. Most recently, I focussed my interests on a unimodel approach to persuasion that holds that other than prominent dual-process models persuasion might be better explained by a single, more general process of human judgment formation. As for human judgment in general, I'm also fascinated by the integrative power of the unimodel.

In social influence I developed the "mere consensus approach" to explain minority and majority influence. It is based on the idea that consensus is the only variable that necessarily varies with the status of an influence group as a minority or a majority. From this starting point variables are investigated that interacted with consensus and thus can explain a wide range of social influence phenomena.

Primary Interests:

Applied Social Psychology
Attitudes and Beliefs
Communication, Language
Judgment and Decision Making
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Applied Social Psychology
Attitudes and Beliefs
Communication, Language

Judgment and Decision Making
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Research Group or Laboratory:

Social Psychology Research Group
Interactive Map

Journal Articles:

Bohner, G., Frank, E., & Erb, H.-P. (1998). Heuristic processing of distinctiveness information in minority and majority influence. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 855-860.
Bohner, G., Rank, S. Reinhard, M-A., Einwiller, S., & Erb, H.-P. (1998). Motivational determinants of systematic processing: Expectancy moderates effects of desired confidence on processing effort. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28, 185-206.
Erb, H.-P. (1998). Sozialer Einfluss durch Konsens: Werbung mit Meinungsübereinstimmung. [Social influence through consensus: Advertising with shared attitudes]. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 29, 156-164.
Erb, H.-P., Bioy, A., & Hilton, D. J. (2002). Choice preferences without inferences: Subconscious priming of risk attitudes. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 251-262.
Erb, H.-P., Bohner, G., Rank, S., & Einwiller, S. (2002). Processing minority and majority communications: The role of conflict with prior attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1172-1182.
Erb, H.-P., Bohner, G., Schmälzle, K., & Rank, S. (1998). Beyond conflict and discrepancy: Cognitive bias in minority and majority influence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 620-633. ?
Erb, H.-P., Hilton, D. J., & Körner, H. (2001). Les attitudes des Allemands de l’est et de l’oust envers la reunification: Le role des facteurs emotionelle, utilitaires et socio- indentitaires [Attitudes toward re-unification in East and West Germans: The role of emotional, utilitarian, and social identification factors]. Bulletin de Psychologie, 54, 643-653.
Erb, H.-P., Kruglanski, A. W., Chun, W. Y., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., & Spiegel, S. (2003). Searching for commonalities in human judgment: The parametric unimodel and its dual mode alternatives. European Review of Social Psychology, 14, 1-47.
Erb, H.-P., Pierro, A., Mannetti, L., Spiegel, S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2007). Biassed processing of persuasive evidence: On the functional equivalence of cues and message arguments. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1057-1075.
Hilton, D. J., & Erb, H.-P. (1996). Mental models and causal explanation: Judgments of probable cause and explanatory relevance. Thinking and Reasoning, 2, 273-308.

Other Publications:

Erb, H.-P. & Bohner, G. (2007). Social influence and persuasion: Recent theoretical developments and integrative attempts. In K. Fiedler (Ed.) Social communication (pp. 191-221. New York: Psychology Press.
Erb, H.-P., & Bohner, G. (2001). Mere consensus effects in minority and majority influence. In: C. K. W. De Dreu & N. K. De Vries (Eds.). Group consensus and minority influence (pp. 40-59). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hilton, D. J., Erb, H.-P., McDermott, M., & Molian, D. J. (1996). Social representations of history and attitudes to European unification in Britain, France and Germany. In: G. Breakwell & E. Lyons (Eds.). Changing European identities: Social psychological analyses of social change (pp. 275-295). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Kruglanski, A. W., Erb, H.-P., Spiegel, S., & Pierro, A.(2002). The parametric unimodel of human judgment: A fanfare to the common thinker. In: L. G. Aspinwall & U. M. Staudinger (Eds.). A psychology of human strengths: Perspectives on an emerging field (pp. 197-210). Washington, DC: APA.

Hans-Peter Erb
Social Psychology
Helmut-Schmidt-University
Holstenhofweg 85
D-22043 Hamburg
Germany

Phone: 0049 40 6541 2310