Can persuasion effectively impact our attitudes towards social behaviours?

Persuasion

Social Behaviours

Attitudes

Research Designs

Variables

Ethics

Independent:

  • the variable that is controlled/changed to affect the DV

Dependent:

  • the variable that is affected by the IV and measured for change

Controlled:

  • variables that are kept the same consistently, to allow for a fair and valid experiment that can be easily repeated

Extraneous:
variables that are uncontrollable

ABC Model: The ABC Model is used to describe the structure of attitudes and the components of a person's attitudes towards something.


  • Affective: refers to a person's feelings and emotions regarding an idea
  • Behavioural: refers to the actions a person takes based on their ideas and beliefs.
  • Cognitive: refers to a person's beliefs and personal opinions on an idea.

Debriefing/Deception: where researchers debrief participants at the end of an experiment, ESPECIALLY if deception is used at any point

Theories

Persuasion is defined as:

  • a type of social influence; changing a person's attitudes towards something through a form of communication with another party
  • is often seen in advertising, or used by politicians trying to gather votes

Strategies

Norm of Reciprocity:

  • based on the social norm where someone will feel obliged to return a favour when done one
  • someone does you a favour, and they ask a favour of you in return; you will be more likely to do what they ask of you than if they had just asked you straight off the bat

Door in the face:

  • where someone asks for a large, unreasonable request to begin with, before following up with something smaller and more reasonable (supposedly what they wanted to begin with)
  • this approach only works if the initial request is declined

Foot in the door:

  • where a small, reasonable request is asked for to begin with, and slowly builds up into a larger request
  • rather than asking for the larger request first, they ask for something smaller and slowly build up so the target will agree with the smaller request

Yale Communication Approach:

  • the source, the message and the audience
    • Source: more often trusted when the information comes from experts in the field
    • Message: aims to evoke a form of emotional response, which can be done through the use of music
    • Audience: people between the ages of 18-25 as well as people who are not as intelligent are more susceptible to attitude change via advertisements

Elaboration Likelihood Model:

  • Considers the variables for how a message can be delivered - central and peripheral routes
    • Ties in with the Yale Communication Approach
  • Central Route:
    • very direct and 'in your face' message
    • more effective for high-level thinkers and people who are not as easily convinced
    • driven by logic, and uses facts to convince their audience
    • often about more serious topics, and presented by professionals or experts in the field
  • Peripheral Route:
    • focuses on more peripheral cues rather than outrightly stating a message; relies on emotional association to positive characteristics and ideas
    • often not about serious issues, and more commonly used to advertise a product

Experience:

  • Direct:
    • attitudes that are formed through personal experience
    • these attitudes tend to be very strong and hard to change
  • Indirect:
    • attitudes that are formed through exposure to a person's personal experience with something
    • OR attitudes that are formed through exposure to a topic; via advertising, etc.

Data Types

Design Types

Attitudes are defined as:

  • the tendency to evaluate things in a certain way.
  • they can be positive, negative, neutral or ambivalent (meaning both positive and negative)
  • confounding variables, more specifically, are
    extraneous variables that could have an impact on results
  • participant variables are to do with unchangeable facts about the participant; eg. their gender/sex, age, height, etc.
  • situational variables have to do with the environment and surroundings that cannot be controlled by the experimenters; eg. weather outside, temperature, external noise and distractions, etc.
  • experimenter variables are to do with the experimenter/researcher and unintentional actions they do that may impact results
  • demand characteristic variables are to do with accidental cues that may lead a participant to answer or act in a certain way to conform to what they think is the expected outcome

Experimental:

  • where a variable is manipulated by researchers in order to measure for the change in the dependent variable

  • artificial environment


  • PROS:


    • can create a cause/effect relationship between IV and DV
    • artificial environment provides lots of control over usually uncontrollable extraneous variables
  • CONS:
    • artificial environment means that it may not be applicable to real world scenarios

Observational:

  • where researchers observe for variable change when exposing participants to different environments
  • researchers do not interact with participants at all
  • PROS:
    • no form of experimenter bias; lack of outsider influence could lead to more realistic results
    • more natural environment due to lack of too much control and artificiality
  • CONS:
    • difficult to control variables; experimenters have lower control in comparison to other design types
    • only surface level variables can be observed and information can only be assumed to be true

Qualitative:

  • where researchers collect non-numerical data via. questionnaires, surveys, participant self-reporting, etc.
  • PROS:
    • can get more specific and personal data
    • more flexible
  • CONS:
    • experimenter bias is common, especially due to leading questions
    • data can be hard to compile into graphs and tables of easily digestible info.
    • sample size might be too specific, small or targeted

Subjective:

  • data that differs from person to person; based on personal opinions and beliefs, rather than facts or objective information; eg. body image satisfaction, happiness, confidence levels, etc.

Objective:

  • data that is based on facts and non-opinion-based information; eg. participant's heartrate, height, weight, eye colour, etc.

Social behaviours are defined as:

  • the way individuals interact and influence each other
    • ties to social influence, which talks about speciific ways people can influene other's behaviours

Right to Withdrawal: where participants are provided the opportunity to withdraw from the expperiment at any point in time if they are uncomfortable

Informed Consent: where participants are aware of the purpose of the experiment they sign up for

Voluntary Participation: where participants are willingly participating, and are not dragged into experiment against their knowledge or will

Confidentiality: where the identities of the participants are kept anonymous, and personal information is kept confidential

Accurate Reporting: where results are accurately portrayed in published reports, with no change to any data for reasons such as fitting the expected result

Impact

Examples of negative social behaviours:

  • bullying and harrassment; verbal, physical
  • assault; physical, sexual
  • smoking, vaping
  • drink driving (or driving under the influence of any substances)
  • domestic abuse and violence
  • substance abuse
  • manipulation; gaslighting, guilt tripping, projecting, constantly pushing the blame, etc.

Sample vs. Population

  • Population: refers to the general, whole collection of the group being measured
  • Sample: specific group being researched on
    • depending on the specificity of the sample group, data can sometimes represent the entire population

Types of social influences:

  • Obedience
    • performing an action under the orders of an authority figure
  • Conformity
    • social pressure (from a group, clique or society in general) to act a certain way
  • Persuasion
    • changing a person's attitudes through communication with an external party

Impact is defined as:

  • having a strong effect on someone or
    something
  • synonymous to "influence" (see social
    behaviours branch)