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Attitudes and Attitude Change - Coggle Diagram

- - - - People infer their attitudes from their behavior only under certain conditions:
        
        Their initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous.
        
        There are no other plausible explanations available for their behaviour.
- - - - One important determinant of accessibility is the degree of experience people have behaving with the attitude object, especially direct experience
  - - - Intention is determined by three things:
        
        Attitude toward the specific behavior
        
        Subjective norms
        
        Perceived behavioural control
- - - - However, difficult to carry out
        dissonance techniques on a mass scale
    - - Yale Attitude Change Approach
        
        Who: The source of the communication
        
        Credible speakers; attractive speakers;
        people sometimes remember a message longer than they do information about the message source, so information from a low-credibility source can become more persuasive (sleeper effect)
        
        What: The nature of the communication
        
        People are more persuaded by messages that do not seem to be designed to influence them; better to present two-sided communication rather than one-sided, especially when you refute arguments on the other side of the issue; if speeches are given back to back and there will be a delay before people make up their minds, it is better to go before the person arguing for the other side (primacy effect). However, if people make up their minds immediately after the second one, better to go second (recency effect)
        
        To whom: The nature of the audience
        
        An audience is distracted will often be persuaded more; people low in intelligence more influenceable than people how in intelligence and people with moderate self-esteem more influenceable than people with low or high self-esteem; people are particularly susceptible to attitude change during the ages of 18-25
      - The Elaboration Likelihood Model
        
        The Central Route of Persuasion: when people have both the ability and the motivation to elaborate on a persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments presented
        
        The Peripheral Route of Persuasion: when people do not elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by more superficial cues
        
        The motivation to pay attention to the arguments
        
        Personal relevance
        
        The ability to pay attention to the arguments
        
        tired, time of day, whether you understand jargon that is being used (vs arguments that are relatively simple and easy to understand), etc.
        
        People who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments will be more likely to maintain this attitude over time, more likely to behave consistently with this attitude, and more resistant to counterpersuasion than people who base their attitudes on peripheral cues
      - Emotion and attitude change
        
        Fear-arousing communications
        
        If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them how to reduce the fear, they are more likely to be motivated to analyze the message carefully and their attitudes via the central route
        
        Doesn't work if information on how to reduce the fear isn't provided
        
        Also fails if the fear-arousing appeal is so strong that it overwhelms people -- causes them to be defensive, deny the importance of the threat, and be unable to think rationally about the issue (interferes with their ability to pay attention to and process the arguments in a message)
        
        Heuristic-Systematic Model of Persuasion
        
        When people take the peripheral route, they often use heuristics; emotions can also be a heuristic (the "How do I feel about it?" heuristic. The problem is that it is sometimes difficult to tell where our feelings come from.
      - Attitude change and the body
        
        Smile/frown, nodding/shaking head
      - Advertising
        
        Most people think it works on everyone but themselves
        
        If advertisers are trying to change an affectively-based attitude, it is best to fight emotions with emotions; if they are trying to change a cognitively-based attitude, need to ask the question of how personally relevant the issue is. If personally relevant, use logical, fact-based arguments; if not, the trick is to make the product personally relevant
        
        Subliminal advertising
        
        There is no evidence that the types of subliminal messages encountered in everyday life have any influence on people's behavior despite people thinking they do
        
        There is evidence, however, that people can be influenced by subliminal messages under carefully controlled laboratory conditions
        
        Ads are most powerful when people consciously perceive them
        
        Advertising, stereotypes, and culture
        
        Ads influence more than just our consumer attitudes -- they transmit cultural stereotypes, subtly connecting products with desired images, feelings and desires. They can also reflect, reinforce, and perpetuate stereotypical ways of thinking about others.
        
        Gender stereotypes and expectations; gender roles
        (men are doers and women are observers)
        
        Western cultures tend to stress independence and individualism, whereas many Asian cultures stress interdependence and collectivism. These differences may influence the kind of attitudes people have and hence how advertisements affect those attitudes.
        
        A study found that Americans were persuaded most by ads stressing independence, and Koreans were persuaded by ads stressing interdependence. In addition, American ads tended to emphasize individuality, self-improvement, and benefits of the product for the individual consumer, while Korean ads tended to emphasize the family, concerns about others, and benefits for one's social group.
      - Resisting persuasive messages
        
        Attitude inoculation
        
        Having thought about the counterarguments beforehand, people are relatively immune to the effects of the later persuasive communication
        
        Being alert to product placement
        
        When people are forewarned, they analyze what they see and hear more carefully and as a result are likely to avoid attitude change
        
        Resisting peer pressure
        
        Peer pressure is linked more to people's values and emotions, playing on their fear of rejection and their desire for freedom and autonomy
        
        Extending the logic of inoculation approach, can inoculate people with samples of the kinds of emotional appeals they might encounter and showing them ways to combat these pressures
      - When persuasion attempts backfire: Reactance theory
        
        When people feel that their freedom is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, and people can reduce this reactance by performing the threatened behavior