Discussion
Monique7795
LECTURENOTES6F16.docxLECTURE NOTES 6
Fall 2016
Attitudes and Persuasion
Attitudes are primarily evaluative. They represent a means of evaluating a person, object, event or idea. Your mind weights both positive and negative information in its analysis; however, research indicates negative information makes more impact on your attitudes.
Attitudes provide us with a framework with which to organize our world. We tend to seek out and notice information that is consistent with the attitudes or beliefs we hold (confirmation bias). Attitudes also impact our concept of self. Attitudes that are important to us help make up our self-concept. Expression of these attitudes is a form of expression of our identify that could impact our self-esteem (Duff, 2012, p.103).
Many times our attitudes are automatically formed and activated without our even being aware of them, these are called implicit attitudes. Such attitudes are outside of our conscious control. For example, some fears are related to implicit attitudes. Such as when you have a fear of an animal, even when you have never had a negative experience with that type of animal. As you age and are able to override your fears by rational thinking you may develop a more explicit attitude toward the animal. Explicit attitudes are attitudes that one recognizes and can control. Both implicit and explicit attitudes include three separate components: affect, behavior and cognition. The affect response is based on your emotions, while behavior is some action you take as a result of your attitude. Finally your thoughts regarding the attitude and it’s subject involve cognition. Many social psychologists argue that implicit attitudes stem from early, even forgotten affective experiences while explicit attitudes are formed in cognitive reaction to more recent experiences( Duff, 2012, p. 96.
Factors to consider when evaluating attitudes and their impact on behaviors include strength of the attitude, specificity and accessibility. If you have a particularly strong attitude about something, you are more likely to act on that attitude. In addition the extent to which the attitude is formed based on direct experience will influence the likelihood you act on the attitude or not. If an attitude is specific to you and tailored to your situation, you are more likely to act upon it. Asking particulars about an attitude is a better indicator of the attitude- behavior link. In a question to college students they were asked “How do you feel about using condoms?. Overwhelmingly the students had a positive attitude toward condom use despite their actual behavior. But when asked: “ How do you feel about using condoms every time you have sex in the next month when you are with a new partner?”, responses were much more comparable to actual behavior. Another factor that influences the tendency of our attitudes to impact our behavior is accessibility. This concept applies to the degree with which a concept is active in our consciousness. Accessibility of an attitude can directly impact its strength. Attitudes that are frequently accessed or to which we have recently been exposed tend to be more accessible.
Being aware of one’s own behavior will often cause a person to modify his or her attitudes to demonstrate more permissible behaviors. Impression Management theory states that people either consciously or unconsciously attempt to monitor how they appear to others by regulating the information conveyed about themselves in social interactions. This impression management may cause an individual to dress, act and speak in ways that are not consistent with their beliefs or attitudes. For example, when you go for a job interview, you dress, act and speak in ways to impress the interviewer.
Persuasion:
The study of persuasion is the study of the way people communicate in order to influence other people’s attitudes and behaviors. Early research suggested that a message will be accepted based on three factors: the communicator of the message, the content of the message and the audience receiving the message.
Certain cognitive factors either enable or disable persuasion. The Dual Process Model addresses these factors as the central route and the peripheral route. The central route is when an individual has the ability and motivation to thoroughly listen and evaluate a persuasive message. Attitudes that develop as a result of the central route are thought to be more persistent over time, have more impact on cognition and behavior and are more resistant to persuasion. The peripheral route is the type of processing that occurs when an individual lacks the ability and motivation to thoroughly listen to and evaluate a persuasive message and is therefore only influenced by an external cue. Subsequently, people react to a persuasive communication by reflecting on different aspects of a persuasive message as a function of their involvement in the message content and their ability to process the message.
Several factors influence whether we process information via the central or peripheral route.
The Source: Who the message comes from can be as important as what is said. The attractiveness of the source can enhance the power of a persuasive message. In addition, the credibility of a source is an important variable in persuasion. In addition, sources that are similar to the recipient are more persuasive than those that are different. Having a similar background, values, association and appearance can impact the messenger’s persuasive skills. Finally, another factor that influences source effectiveness is the likeability of the source. Note that those who are more attractive are often more liked. It is important to recognize that most of these factors are heuristics; shortcuts that are used to form opinions. They involve use of the peripheral route to persuasion, functioning as external cues that influence evaluation of the message ( Duff, 2012, p 103).
The Message: The message has two main characteristics; message content and message construction. Message content refers to the actual words or images used in the message. Message construction refers to how the message is put together including what information is to be included, how long the message should be and how often the message should be repeated.
When developing the message content the source must consider the valence of the message. Valence refers to the degree of attraction or aversion that a person feels toward a specific object, event or idea. Therefore a source must determine if it wants its message to be positive or negative-does it want to attract or repel the audience? For example: fear based appeals attempt to provoke fear in the audience. Fear based appeals are often used to guide audiences away from behaviors that pose health risks. Individual variables, such as individual vulnerability to the risk, influence the effectiveness of fear based appeals. Cultural variables are also at play in valence of the message. Studies have shown that while Americans are more likely to respond well to positive information, Japanese individuals are more likely to focus on the negative (Duff, 2012, p. 119).
Length of message can be important in effectiveness. From a peripheral route a longer message sometimes presents as a cue that the message has more support for its position. If one processes information via the central route, the length of the message does not matter only the strength of the argument is important. Those who provide compelling arguments and refute opposing opinions are more effective at persuasion. However, for persons not involved in or concerned with an issue, characteristics of the source will dominate persuasive influence. In this case, the person will use the peripheral route. Only issues about which we care deeply are those whose messages we process centrally and systematically. The central route is more time consuming and difficult, so the less motivated a person the more likely they are to engage in peripheral route processing. The degree to which the economic or social outcome promoted in the message is important to the receiver will influence how information is processed. When outcome relevance is high, people are more likely to engage in central route processing. When outcome relevance is low, people are likely to engage in peripheral route processing (Duff, 2012, p. 118).
The Audience: Audiences are often identified by demographic factors such as age, gender and education. There is not formula for persuading any one demographic. However, research suggests that college students (aged 18-22) have a stronger tendency to submit to authority and are therefore more easily influenced by persuasive messages. Older adults (55-85) are more likely to be persuaded by emotionally meaningful messages such as those related to love and caring than are younger adults. Men and women react to persuasive messages differently, the types of persuasive strategy used on each gender is therefore different. Women are more influenced by face-to-face personal persuasion while men often have the same reaction to both personal and impersonal messages such as direct mailings or email advertising (Duff, 2012, p. 121).
Personality may play a role in being more easily persuaded. Need for cognition (tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity), self-monitoring (focusing on situational or internal cues), ability to focus, and mood can all influence susceptibility to persuasion ( Duff, 2012, p. 124).
Individualism and collectivism of a culture are important here. When delivering persuasive messages to certain cultures, sources such as advertisers tend to promote the concepts that represent cultural values. In collective cultures persuasion can be difficult since the source must aim to change the attitude of the entire group, not just an individual (Duff, 2012, p. 124).
RESISTENCE:
Our ability to resist persuasion is influenced by 3 things: forewarning, reactance and inoculation.
Forewarning: When people are given forewarning (“heads up”) about an attempt to change an attitude, they are more able to resist the message. The time between the forewarning and the actual message gives the individual an opportunity to generate arguments against the message.
Reactance: When individuals feel that their freedom is threatened, they instinctively want to restore their freedom by acting in opposition to the freedom threatening source. Reactance is the “boomerang” effect of a message that results in the opposite effect expected by the source for the message. For example: If your parents objected to the friends you were hanging out with so you ignore the parental message and hang out with your friends even more often.
Inoculation: Inoculation occurs when an individual is exposed to weak attacks on their attitudes and opinions which produce a defense of their position. Later when a stronger attack occurs, the person has already developed defenses against such an attack (Duff, 2012, 127-128).
Duff, K. (2012) Think, Social Psychology. Boston, MA.: Allyn and Bacon.
