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Persuasion and attitude change (Y1) - Coggle Diagram
Persuasion and attitude change (Y1)
Persuasion factors
Persuasive communication -
Persuasion - a process by which attitudes / behaviours are changed
-> Expose people to persuasive arguments that will make them reconsider their attitudes and change their minds
-> When are people more likely to yield to persuasion or react against it?
-> Third person effect - assume other people are more likely to be influenced than we are
-> What makes an argument persuasive?
Communication - advocating a particular side of an issue
What makes an argument persuasive?
Yale attitude change approach (Hovland et al, 1953) - who said what to whom?
-> Early research on the question of what makes an argument persuasive focused on the role of three factors - who (communicator, source) says what (communication, message) to whom (audience)
4 steps in persuasive process -
Attention
Comprehension
Acceptance
Retention
Message, source and audience -> attention, comprehension and acceptance -> opinion change, perception change, affect change and action change
Communicator - credibility, competence or expertise, trustworthiness - fast talkers (Miller et al, 1976) and powerful speakers (Newcomb and Arnkoff, 1979)
Similarity between the source and the audience (Macke et al, 1990) and the physical attractiveness of the source (Chaiken et al, 1979, Reinhard et al, 2006)
More attractive people get lower bail set, more easily influence others and earn more money
Expertise, trustworthiness, likeability, status and race
Similarity - like people who are similar to us, and so we are persuaded more by them
However, if the persuasion is a matter of taste or judgement, similar sources are accepted more readily than dissimilar ones
When it is fact, dissimilar sources actually do better
Credibility - moderate discrepancy and difference between source and audience is most effective - if the difference is too great they will resist, but if it is too small it is not credible (especially if audience are not experts - how do they trust someone with same knowledge)
Expertise is most persuasive when some discrepancy was also marked
Interaction effects - when messages are complex, they require more elaboration to cause more thought processing (systematic, not heuristic)
When identity of the source precedes the message, thinking is more favourable - when identity follows the source, confidence in thinking increases
For example, announcing a similar political ideology before a message makes it more convincing
Abstract messaging is also more likely to have impact in this case, as concrete statements invite close scrutiny
Message - issue relevance / importance - how much an individual cares - order of arguments, one or two sided arguments, type of appeal, explicit v implicit conclusion
Repetition of the issue (true / false) -
Familiarity / likeability
Repetition with variety to avoid wear out of message (Pratkanis and Aronson, 1992)
Aim is to have maximum impact of a message with minimum exposure
Simple repetition gives a ring of truth to a statement, repeated exposure increases familiarity and repetition of a name makes it seem famous
However, entirely new brands and products are not helped by repetition - brand familiarity big part of this effect (Campbell and Keller, 2003)
Vividness can bolster and undermine
Mood and specific emotions can be influential
Fear arousal -
Fear-arousing communication is a type of message that attempts to change people's attitudes by arousing their fears - public service ads
Do they work - when a moderate amount of fear is aroused people believe they will be reassured by the content of the message (Petty, 1995)
Sometimes fear is so strong that the message threatens people and they are unable to think rationally and so become defensive (Liberman and Chaiken, 1992)
Inverted U theory of amount of fear and amount of attitude change
Positive mood - a positive emotional state is cognitively distracting, impairing ability to think critically - people more easily persuaded
When in a good mood, we assume all is well and become lazy processors of information
When happy, we become motivated not to spoil the mood by thinking critically about new information (group settings?)
Presentation order of message - primacy effect v recency effect - Miller and Campbell (1959)
The missing link of time - read summary of claimants case then defendant's and then make a decision
Group 1 - message 1, then 2, then week break (primary effect)
Group 2 - message 1, week break, then message 2 (recency effect)
Therefore, depending on what is presented when impacts the message that has the most impact
Sleeper effect - over time people separate the message from the messenfer
Sleeper effect is quite reliable (Pratikanis et al, 1988)
Facts v feelings - distinction between factual and evaluative advertising - former is objective and is a fact, whereas the latter is subjective and involves opinion
In factual advertising, it is important for the general conclusion to still be interpreted (Albion and Faris, 1979)
In evaluative advertising - triggers emotional rather than cognitive persuasion - capitalise the transfer of affect, which itself is based on learning by association e.g. humour creates a positive affect towards a brand
However, the use of both in interaction is most effective, by driving consumers beliefs and feelings in a positive impression
The appeal and underlying attitude have to match however (Edwards, 1990)
Medium - Chaiken and Eagly (1983) - comparison of messages presented in a video, audio and written forms - for simple messages, video is most impactful
Moderating variable on how easy the message is to understand and comprehend
-> For considerable processing, written might be best to allow for regression in the text and to easily reread information
-> Easy to comprehend messages change the most opinions through video, and difficult ones change the most via written mediums
Framing of the message - this can impact meaning and its acceptance - when affirmative action is presented as equal opportunity rather than reverse discrimination, people view it more favourably (Bosveld, Koomen and Vogelaar, 1997)
Negative outcomes should be framed in terms of preventing something, and positive outcomes should be framed in terms of gain
Audience - moderate self-esteem more easily persuaded than high or low (McGuire, 1968)
-> Baumeister and Covington (1985) - high self esteem are easily persuaded, but they just do not admit it - when people succumb to persuasion, they fail to recall their original position
Moderately intelligent are easiest to persuade (Rhodes and Wood, 1992)
High in public self-consciousness are more persuaded by brands and styles (Synder and DeBono, 1985)
Life stage hypothesis - young adults / children and elderly are easily persuaded, middle aged people more resistant (frontal cortex development / critical thinking skills)
Messages consistent with beliefs, cultural values are more persuasive
Persuasibility, initial position, intelligence, self-esteem and personality
Persuasion process - series of steps in which the audience has to pay attention to the communicator's message, understand the content and think about what has been said (Eagly and Chaiken, 1984)
-> Audience thoughts are critical - ultimately messages will be accepted if it arouses favourable thoughts, but rejected if the recipients argue strongly against it in their minds
Third person effect - assumption others are more easily persuaded than we are
Interaction of source / communicator, message and audience interacting effectively
Men and women - women more easily persuaded than men (Crutchfield, 1955) as they are socialised to be cooperative and non-assertive and therefore less resistant then men to attempts to influence them
Sistrunk and McDavid (1971) - favoured the explanation that women are more easily influenced than men but only on masculine topics, opposite effects for when it is feminine
Gender relared persuasiveness is a complex interaction of who is speaking, listening and whether the message is delivered in a sex-stereotyped way - male - female speaker who is tentative is more persuasive to men
Gender differences in attitude change mirror gender differences in social influence in small groups (Carli, 1990)
Individual differences in need for cognition, need for closure, need to evaluate and attitude importance
Scoring highly on these means you are less likely to be persuaded
Social context acts as a moderator variable between personality and persuadability
Age - 5 hypotheses -
Increasing persistence - suspectibility to attitude change is high early in adulthood but decreases across the lifespan - attitudes reflect accumulation of experience (negative linear line)
Impressionable years - core attitudes, values and beliefs are crystallised during plasticity in early adulthood (S curve)
Life stages - high susceptibility during early adulthood and later life, lower in middle adulthood (U curve)
Lifelong openness - individuals are to some extent susceptible to attitude change throughout their lives
Persistence - most of an individual's fundamental orientations are established firmly during pre-adult socialisation's, with susceptibility to attitude change thereafter being low
Other variables -
Prior beliefs - evidence for dis confirmation bias in argument evaluation - incompatible ones scrutinised for longer, and if there is an emotional conviction to the prior belief it is also harder to persuade, even if the arguments are factual the prior beliefs affects whether beliefs are even considered
Cognitive bias - third person effect
Persuasion models
Influential models - how and when often answered by these variables, but why do people respond to persuasive messages
Single process models e.g. Kruglanski and Thompson (1999)
Dual process modes - elaboration likelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo (1986) - central v peripheral route
Dual process - heuristic v systematic model (Chaiken et al, 1989)
-> Have to make message important for central routes and make people pay attention to avoid heuristic processing
Persuasion - Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman (1981) investigated how persuaded students were by arguments to make changes on an examination policy - argument strength, expertise and personal impact
Students presented with arguments that were weak or strong (facts and statistics v opinions)
Argument delivered by an expert or non-expert (prof of higher education v high school students)
Students led to believe changes would affect them personally or not (policy change now v 10 years)
Found that experts with high involvement giving opinions made students less favourable than when they were low involvement
-> Non-expert condition and low involvement meant more unfavourable views than high involvement condition
-> Involvement therefore has an impact on the degree of favourability, and the expert made it an unfavourable or favourable decision
-> Strong arguments and low involvement made favourable persuasion compared to high involvement
-> Weak arguments of low involvement made policy less unfavourable than high involvements of weak arguments
Dual process theory - Elaboration likelihood model -
Message ->
Message is important, processing capacity is high -> central route of careful processing of information -> attitude change depends on the strength of an argument
Message is unimportant, processing capacity is low -> peripheral route of heuristic processing -> attitude change depends on presence of cues triggering heuristic processing due to group identity
Have to access both pathways to be effective - system 1 would be characteristics of the persuasion, system 2 is the message itself
Dual process theories - Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken) -
When people attend to a message carefully, they use systematic processing; otherwise, they process information using heuristics (mental shortcuts)
Who we listen to - who, what and to whom interact
-> For persuasion to be successful, you have to know your audience
-> The audience also has to be willing to listen to you
-> Who we listen to - Mackie, Worth and Asuncion (1990) presented students with arguments for standardised testing
--> 2 (strength of argument:: half weak v half strong) x 2(arguments attributed to student from own university v rival university)
--> Listened more to strong arguments from their own university than weak arguments from rival, strong from rival and weak from own - both factors important
Factors of persuasion -
communicator (who) - expert, attractive / popular, ingroup member, powerful language
Message (what) - not deliberately for persuasion, arousing fear, strong arguments, positivity, sleeper effect and primacy v recency
Audience (to whom) - ingroup members, self esteem and intelligence
Attitude-behaviour gap
Why are social psychologists interested in attitudes?
People like to evaluate things, and attitudes are an important aspect of psychology
People's evaluation of the social world are linked with actions towards others
Guide decisions thus have important implications for the self
Attitudes and behaviour - because attitudes predict behaviour, they are considered the crown jewel of social psychology (Crano and Prislin, 2006)
Central questions for researchers - do attitudes really predict behaviour, and so how can we impact behaviour
LaPierre - roadtrip with a young Chinese couple, only 1 refused service - after the trip, asked establishments about their attitude toward serving Chinese visitors, and 92% said they would not serve them - attitudes and behaviour are different
This is the attitude behaviour gap
Later empirical research confirmed this gap - Wicker (1969) - small positive correlation between attitudes and behaviour
Two reactions - attitudes are not real and attitudes are related to behaviour, but the relationship is more complex
The full story
Not all attitudes are related to behaviour- specific attitudes should predict behaviour better than general attitudes, and strong / accessible attitudes should predict behaviour better than weak attitudes e.g. members of the Chinese race v this couple, what is ready in the mind
Other variables are involved in the attitude behaviour relationship - theories of reasoned action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1989)
Theory of reasoned action - attitude (behaviour they feel specifically about, predicting how they will perform) + subjective norms -> intention -> behaviour
Planned behaviour - same process, but there is also an element of perceived behavioural control behind the intention
Theory of reasoned action - Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) - relationship between attitudes and behaviour where a specific attitude has normative support which predicts an intention to act and then predicts behaviour
Three processes of beliefs, intentions and actions-
-> Subjective norm - a product of what the person thinks others believe
Attitude towards the behaviour
Behavioural intention
Behaviour
If social norm and attitude are favourable, behaviour will be carried out
If you know specific behavioural intentions, you are effective in predicting behaviour
Planned behaviour - perceived behavioural control is a person's belief, based on their own past experience and present obstacles, that it is easy or difficult to perform a behaviour
Suggests the predicting a behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if people believe they have control over their behaviour
Applications to predicting anti-nuclear attitudes and driver behaviour
Ignores the role of values in determining action, and habit is also ignored
Promoting healthy behaviour - both theories have contributed towards this - control of own lifestyle and also having a more specific understanding
Protection motivation theory - adopting a healthy behaviour requires cognitive balancing between perceived threats of illness and one's capacity to cope with the health regimen
Healthy attitudes and behaviour are also impacted by social connectedness ad shared social identity in preventing the development and alleviation of clinical depression
Research using more complete models have provided a better account of the attitude behaviour relationship (39% variance in intentions and 27% variance in behaviour - Armitage and Connor, 2001
Attitudes are related to behaviour, but not directly
Specific attitudes work in combination with norms, control beliefs and intentions
Also, anticipated affect and moral norms (Rivis, Sheeran and Armitage, 2009) - morals more likely to close gap between attitude and behaviour; they do not relate but it is informed by beliefs and intentions
Cognitive dissonance
Festinger, 1957 - when people become aware of inconsistent behaviour between how they think and act, they experience dissonance
The experience of dissonance is aversive - people are motivated to reduce dissonance by bringing their thoughts, feelings and behaviours back into line
Alignment can be achieved in two ways -
Change behaviour so it is consistent with beliefs
Change beliefs so that they fit behaviour
Three research paradigms
Effort justification - dissonance is experienced when great effort is made for a modest goal - Cooper and Axsom (1982) - weight loss study
high effort meant more weight loss
Induced compliance - dissonance experienced when persuaded to behave in opposition to an attitude
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) - 1 or $20 reward - would get paid to do dull tasks, and were then asked to tell other participants if it was interesting -
-> participants paid $1 rated it more interesting; could not explain behaviour through monetary reward, and so they had to change their attitude, which was not the case in the $20 group
Zimbardo, Weisenberg, Firestone and Lev (1965) - grasshopper study in which percentage of people who increased their liking to a food were asked by a negative officer was higher than the positive officer (disagreed with their attitude)
Post-decisional conflict - dissonance associated with behaving in a counter-attitudinal way, reduced by bringing attitude and behaviour in line
Free choice - pre-decision uncertainty and dissonance gives way to post decision confidence - Younger, Walker and Arrowood (1977) - placing bets
Those who had placed their bets were more confident - feel better after a decision has been made
People try to reduce inconsistency between elements by finding evidence for one element and derogating the source of the other cognitions
The greater the dissonance, the stronger the attempt to reduce it
Selective exposure hypothesis - people tend to avoid potentially dissonant inormaton
-> Exceptions are made if the attitude is very strong and they integrate or argue against contrary information, or very weak, where behavioural changes occur
-> Believing your attitude is irreversible leads to selection of more consonant than dissonant information
Been used to understand attitude change in a range of situations -
Feeling regretful after reaching a decision
Searching for new information
Seeking social support for their beliefs
Lacking support from fellow ingroup members
Have said or done something contrary to their customary beliefs or practice
Rationalise hypocritical behaviour
The role of the self -
Self-consistency - self affirmation theory - if you make positive statements about yourself in another domain, you can rectify negative feelings about yourself in another
People with low self esteem are less able to self affirm = experience dissonance
Contradictions involving self-esteem can be accounted for by recasting the explanation in terms of self standards - we evaluate our actions to judge if they are good or sensible rather than bad or foolish using personal (individualised) standards or normative (group or cultural) standards
Vicarious dissonance - when in group scenario, if two people share a strong bond - dissonance experienced by one person is felt by the other
Alternative views to dissonance -
Self-perception theory - gain knowledge through self attributions, and when we are faced with something that contradicts the self attributions we experience dissonance
New look model - cognitive dissonance -
When we have counter-additional behaviour we try to figure out the consequences, and if they are negative we must check the action is voluntary
If so, we accept responsibility, experiences arousal from the dissonance that follows and bring the relevant attitude in line, thus getting rid of dissonance
Summary -
we need to look at the whole picture of what, who and to whom
We can be thoughtful v thoughtless (dual-process)
Behavioural change is possible, when the full link between attitudes and behaviour is considered
We do not like to be inconsistent
Compliance
Surface level behavioural responses to a request by another individual, whereas conformity refers to the influence of a group upon an individual that usually produces more enduring internal changes
Compliance-conformity links to behaviour attitude relationship
Tactics for improving compliance - 5 strategies -
Intimidation - attempt to elicit fear by getting others to think you are dangerous
Exemplification - attempt to elicit guilt
Supplication - attempt to elicit pity by getting others to believe you are helpless and needy
Self-promotion - attempt to elicit respect and confidence by persuading others you are competent
Ingratiation - trying to get others to like you in order to secure compliance with a subsequent request
Ingratiators dilemma - transparent ingratiation where the hidden agenda of the person is clear is less effective
Reciprocity principle - doing people a favour to have it returned
Guilt arousal
Multiple requests are also an effective tactic, where you ask for a small favour to get the big one
Foot in the door tactic - if someone agrees to a small request, it is more likely they will agree to a bigger one later
-> Saks (1978) - if used effectively, people can be induced to be donors
-> Freedman and Fraser (1966) - people contacted at home and asked a large request of allowing 6 people to inventory household items, which only 22% agreed too, but if previously contacted this increased to 53%
-> If link breaks down because the requests are not in proportion, this will not work
-> Refinement - using a series of graded requests instead
Door in the face - ask for a large favour someone refuses to then ask the small real favour they will agree to because it is less - effective only from same person
Low-ball - get person committed to a choice, then tell them it is not possible and ask for more
-> Change the rules halfway through - induce and then introduce other costs in a sunk cost fallacy situation (Fox and Hoffman, 2002) - already committed
Warmth and competence important for compliance - Fiske, 2002 - SCM
Self-consistency and self-perception - if we agree to help, we see ourselves as helpful and giving, and to remain consistent we keep saying yes
-> however, it is also suggested that the foot in the door tactic alters interpretations of the situation, which activates attitude enhancing compliance
Much compliance is mindlessness - agree without giving it thought
Action research - Lewin - people are more persuaded to change attitudes if they are actively engaged in the process - involvement in actual research process is action research
James and King (1954) - those who give speeches arguing against something they believed in experienced greater attitude change than when they listened passively to a speech arguing against their position
This tactic is used for public health attitude change
Resistance to persuasion -
Reactance (Brehm, 1966) - people are more easily persuaded if it is not obvious the message is intended in that way
-> Psychological reaction to being limited in person freedom, and so we engage in a counter-argument and attempt to undermine the source
-> Negative attitude change - going the opposite direction
Forewarning - prior knowledge of persuasion intent makes it easier to resist
Inoculation - making people resistant to persuasion by providing diluted counter argument and this allows them to build up effective refutations to a later, stronger argument
-> Supportive defence - based on attitude bolstering - resistance strengthened by providing additional arguments that back up original beliefs
-> Inoculation defence - this is the built around counter-arguments and may be more effective - person learns oppositions arguments are and then demolishes them
Attitudes and predicting behaviour - attitudes have an impact depending on:
How accessible the attitude is
Whether an attitude is expressed publicly, in a group, or privately in a questionnaire
How strongly someone identifies with a group for which the attitude is normative
Fishbein (1967, 1967 and 1971) - prediction depends better on the interaction between attitudes, beliefs and behavioural intentions and the connections of the with subsequent actions
The strength and value of someone's belief makes it a stronger predictor of attitude
Expectancy-value technique
Specific attitudes - Ajzen and Fishbein; the more specific the question, the more accurate the behaviour prediction
General attitudes - multiple-act criterion; general attitudes predict multiple behaviours much better than a specific singular behaviour as single behaviours are normally impacted by multiple factors