Discussion 4

Critically think about attitudes and persuasion in Social Psychology. Familiarize yourself with Module 4's objectives, introduction, video, and articles. Use the articles in Module 4 as your primary references, then use the St Leo Online Library for peer review sources and to find relevance to this week's topic.

1. From the module readings, explain one intrinsic and one extrinsic (personal and social) reason that people are persuaded to change their attitude about something. Which reason do you most often find yourself being persuaded by and why?

2. This is the second time we've come across Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) experiment. Explain how this experiment links cognitive dissonance and attitude.

Please use the references below.

Attitudes and Persuasion

Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-205.

Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-210.

Fazio, R. H., & Olson, M. A. (2003). Implicit measures in social cognition: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297-327.

Newby-Clark, I. R., McGregor, I., & Zanna, M. P. (2002). Thinking and caring about cognitive inconsistency: When and for whom does attitudinal ambivalence feel uncomfortable? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 157-166.

Tormala, Z. L., & Petty, R. E. (2002). What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger: The effects of resisting persuasion on attitude certainty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1298-1313.

Wood, W. (2000). Attitude change: Persuasion and social influence. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 539-570.