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Persuasion and social influence (Aspects that influence persuasion (Source…
Persuasion and social influence
Persuasion
= process by which attitudes (general evaluations people have regarding people, places, objects and issues) are changed.
Can change
-
valence
– whether the attitude is positive or negative
-
extremity
– where the attitude falls within a given valence
-
strength
– whether the attitude is consequential or not
Attitudes are generally the
best predictors of behaviour
--> understanding how they are changed is critical to understand behaviour change
Persuasion processes can require:
extensive thoughtful consideration
of information relevant to the attitude object stronger, more consequential attitudes
little thought relevant
to the attitude object weaker attitudes
Situational and personal variables
determine whether more or less thoughtful processes occur
Resistance to persuasion:
Forewarning:
being informed ahead of time allows us to "steel our defences"
Reactance: feeling forced
Inoculation:
Building up resistance to unwanted persuasion by using weaker messages to "strengthen" your defense against future stronger messages
– Children are less able to be inoculated against persuasive messages from advertisers
Embodiment:
Lewinski et al. (2016)
people can resist persuasion by controlling their facial expression (e.g. refusing to smile) of emotion when exposed to an advertisement
Important to consider role of persuasion given the
prominent role of adverts
in society, aiming to increase consumption of goods
e.g. revenues forecasted to grow to
$536 billion
worldwide in 2015
people sometimes believe that brands provide them with dishonest or distorted messages in their advertisements and feel inclined to stand up to these practices --> seems a desire to control whether or not they are persuaded by media and advertising
People may know that marketers create ads designed to influence their behavior, but some persuasion tactics nevertheless pose a distinct challenge.
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986)
Central route:
relatively
slow, rule-based, operating on high-effort, systematic reasoning, requiring cognitive capacity, often conscious when operating
attending to and evaluating a given message
creates opinions that are resistant to change
-People rely on the message and their own reflections
-More cognitive effort makes more entrenched positions
e.g. jury members in a trial
Taken when:
high motivation:
the attitude object is personally relevant and the person is high in need for cognition (requires thinking)
high capacity:
there are few distractions and has the necessary knowledge
Requires
extensive thought
and elaboration on information relevant to the attitude object
Careful consideration and compared and integrated with existing memory
Determined by 1)
thoughts in line with the persuasion attempt
(attitude change in "right" direction) and 2)
thoughts against, when an individual counters with info from memory
-->
boomerang effect
(attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead)
Results in strong attitudes that persist over time, resist future persuasion attempts and predict behaviour
Peripheral route
:
relatively
fast, associative, based on simple heuristics, often automatic, requiring little cognitive capacity, often unconscious
attending to external cues
lack of ability or motivation
Creates weaker opinions
e.g. ads in a magazine
Taken when:
there's
low motivation
: the attitude object isn't relevant, or the person has low need for cognition (doesn't require thinking)
low ability to process
: there are outside distractors and a lack of necessary knowledge
Attitude change is influenced by elements that
don't require extensive thought processing
e.g. attractiveness cues, credibility cues, classical conditioning, mere exposure, heuristics such as more arguments are better.
Results in
relatively weak attitudes
, not based on extensive elaboration. Attitudes are not integrated into existing memories = less likely to persist over time (including resisting future persuasion attempts/predict behaviour)
Aspects that influence persuasion
Source:
(attractiveness, credibility, similarity between source and audience, likability):
simple cues that can affect attitudes when the motivation and ability to think are low include bodily movements such as head nodding
(Tom et al. 1991)
and arm flexion
(Cacioppo et al. 1993)
, source variables such as expertise
(Petty et al. 1981)
Petty & Brinol (2008)
- these variables serve in other roles when motivation and ability to think are high (i.e. central route) e.g. when motivated and able to think these variables can be processed as arguments and their evidence analysed = help or hinder persuasion
e.g. an attractive person (simple positive cue when ability to think is low) providing info on a beauty product might be persuasive because they provide visual evidence for its effectiveness, but if same source was spokesperson for a company not associated with improving looks, then when the ability to think is high, analysis would lead to rejection of attractiveness as a relevant consideration in persuasion
Sparks et al. (2013)
looked at the persuasive nature of online travel reviews: customer-generated information that included specific content was the most persuasive, followed by manager-generated content that was also specific in nature = the source is persuasive (i.e. associated with trustworthiness) but appears that the specific nature of the content was more important, because nonspecific content was never persuasive but different source was if info was specific.
Audience:
individual's
investment
- issues care deeply about are resistant to persuasion
temporal and physical proximity
- greater proximity increases central route processing
Demographics, good mood, individual differences in need for cognition (high=central route), self-monitoring (high=more vulnerable to attitude shifts), distractibility (use peripheral route processing- more open to persuasion)
recipient variables
such as induced emotional states (Petty et al. 1993)
-positive consequences seem more likely when people are in a happy state rather than a sad one
(DeSteno et al. 2000)
Message content:
(the concept, how its put together, length and strength)
Variables most likely to bias thoughts when people are already interested in thinking (central route) and the message is somewhat ambiguous —> as shown by Asch expts.
mere number
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1984)
or length
(Wood et al. 1985)
of arguments included in a message
People are more favourable to a message
(Wells & Petty, 1980)
or a consumer product
(Tom et al., 1991)
when asked to nod rather than shake their heads to it.
BUT-
Brinol and Petty (2003)
found that if a message presented weak arguments on an important topic, those nodding their heads reported more confidence in their negative thoughts and thus were less favourable toward it than were those who were shaking their heads
= importance is quality of message arguments
at least
40% of advertisements use positive emotions
(i.e., happiness) to persuade people to like the ad, brand, and product
(Lewinski et al. 2016)
amusing advertisements
-->
Eisend (2009)
concluded in his meta-analysis of that the use of humor, in general, enhances attitudes toward the ad, positive affect, attention, cognitive positive responses, and recognition.
In low elaboration: variables act as cue
In high elaboration: variable acts as argument, affects valence of thoughts, and affects confidence in thoughts
The same variable that is analysed as a cue when thinking is low can serve in other roles (as an argument) when thinking is high
when variables increase the amount of thinking, attitudes tend to polarize towards the dominant thought to a message and the opposite happens when variables decrease thinking
=when the dominant thoughts to a message are favourable, increasing thinking enhances persuasion, but when the dominant thoughts are unfavourable, increasing thinking reduces persuasion
Self-validation hypothesis (Petty et al. 2002)
: generating thoughts is not sufficient for them to have an impact on judgments—one must also have
confidence in them
= not only can variables affect the number and valence of thoughts, they can also affect thought confidence
confidence in the accuracy of one’s intergroup beliefs over time is a positively related function of the perceived level of consensus
(Stangor et al. 2001)
Petty et al. (2002)
found that attitude–thought correlations increased as measured thought confidence increased. P’s asked to think about situations in which they experienced confidence/doubt right after they generated +ve/-ve thoughts towards a persuasive message - when +ve thoughts towards message, experiencing confidnece following thought generation led to more persuasion but when unfavorable thoughts had been generated toward the message, experiencing confidence led to less persuasion.
Role of news:
Feldman (2011)
suggests that attitude change follows the direction of news opinion, with little variation attributed to partisanship (without particular cause)
Much of the work on offline social network heterogeneity suggests that persuasion occurs through exposure to discussion disa- greement. A large, diverse network of social connections should naturally lead to a higher volume of competing or conflicting views, and ultimately more ambivalent attitudes
(Keele and Wolak, 2008)
.
Diehl et al. (2015)
Found that social media for certain apolitical purposes directly lead to reconsidering or changing political views on social media. Though most people do not maintain social networks online for political reasons, seems to be stimulating persuasion through normative discussion attributes: network heterogeneity and political discussion diversity. Dependent in large on whether someone chooses to keep up to date with news through social media
-news use on social media was positively related to respondents reporting that they include people of varying social status and political identity in their friend lists. This general social diversity leads to exposure to conversation with people who hold political opinions that conflict with their own. These conversations, in turn, are positively associated with changing political attitudes or opinions on social media.
= indirect effects of news use in social media on political persuasion
Attitude strength
Strong attitudes remain stable over time
, resist future persuasion attempts, are predictive of behaviour and usually result from the
central route
Direct measure (reflect structural aspects): attitude accessibility
how readily the attitude comes to mind in the presence of the object measured by reaction times
quicker RT = more stable the attitude & more likely to predict future behaviour e.g. election and purchasing studies
Influenced by frequency, having direct behavioural experience
Metacognitive measure (reflect secondary thought): attitude certainty
Conviction with which the attitude is held, or an assessment of the correctness of the attitude, measured by self-report
Influenced by amount of thought: lot of thought = greater certainty, less thought = less certainty
Cognitive dissonance
= when one thought does not follow from or fit with the other
often arise when an individual thinks about a past behavior and realizes that it was inconsistent with an attitude that he/she holds
results in aversive state of arousal individuals are motivated to reduce
It is more difficult to change the behaviour than to change the attitude = change attitude to be in line with behaviour
Social norms
Guide human behaviour and vary group by group:
Cialdini et al. (1999)
found that when considering whether to comply with a request, p's were more likely in a collectivistic country (Poland) than in an individualistic country (the United States) to base their decisions on the actions of their peers.
Social norms have been found to influence a range of behaviors in a myriad of domains, including recycling
(Schultz 1999)
, littering
(Kallgren et al. 2000)
, and tax evasion
(Kahan 1997)
Cialdini et al. (1990)-
developed the
Focus theory of Normative Conduct-
norms are only likely to influence behaviour directly when they are focal in attention and thus salient in consciousness
2 types of norms, descriptive and injunctive
descriptive norms
("is") said to inform behaviour via example. Represents what is commonly done. Motivate by providing evidence of what is likely to be effective and adaptive action.
injunctive norms
("ought") are said to inform via informal sanctions. What is commonly approved or disapproved. Motivate by promising social rewards and punishments.
Distinction between norms supported:
activating one or the other of the 2 types of norms produces sig. different behavioural responses
Impact of norms determined by extent they are focal- not onlynot only for norms outside oneself but also for personal norms e.g.
Kallgren et al. (2000)
found that the strength of individuals’ personal norms against littering predicted littering behaviours only when these individuals focused attention on themselves rather than on external stimuli
Actions are relatively unaffected by normative information unless the information is highlighted prominently in consciousness.
Relevant norms must be salient in order to elicit the proper norm congruent behavior (salient following message of reception and in the future)
Quite a lot of research to suggest that, over various instances, negative stimuli have more impact than positive stimuli
(Baumeister et al. 2001)
- generally it is accorded greater attention, scrutiny and weight in consciousness
= reason to believe that negatively worded communications should be more compelling because they lead recipients to focus on the message content
Cialdini et al. (2006)
showed how social norms can over-rule moral judgments in guiding behaviour
2655 visitors to Petrified Forest National Park with 5 week period of observation
signs carrying negatively framed normative messages should have the greatest impact on theft - but this impact should serve to increase/decrease theft depending on the type of norm highlighted in the message
-for injunctive, should instruct visitors what they ought not to do = park visitors should be told not to remove petrified wood from the park
-for descriptive, should inform what others tend to do= message suggesting that many past visitors have damaged the environment by taking wood
Expectation:
-negatively worded appeals should lead to the least theft in the case of injunctive normative messages, but to the most theft in the case of descriptive normative messages
Found:
-theft highest when strong focus (i.e. negative) descriptive norm, as expected = least effective in deterring unwelcome behaviour
-lowest theft when injunctive norm with strong focus = most effective in deterring unwelcome behaviour
-no difference between weak focus (i.e. positive) descriptive norm and weak focus injunctive norm
Even though a negatively worded injunctive message produced the greatest success, negatively stated injunctions dont need to be any more offensive or threatening than positively stated ones --> just have to be negatively worded as recipient more likely to focus on message content
Applies to Elaboration Likelihood Model:
-procedures that stimulate fully considered processing of a message increase or decrease persuasion depending on the substance of the message
-if the message contains good arguments then they enhance desired change
if contain poor arguments, they delay desired change