Attitude Change and Persuasion Flashcards
What is cognitive consistency theories?
The seeking to have coherent self, attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, values and behaviours. Attitude changes to be consistent with each other and the behaviour
What occurs when there is inconsistency among the self, attitudes e.g.?
There is an aversive state that arouses a desire to reduce the aversion
Who looked at cognitive dissonance?
Festinger, 1957
What is cognitive dissonance?
Conflict between related attitudes, cognitions, actions can lead to dissonance
What has cognitive dissonance theory been applied to?
People’s feelings of regret and changes of attitudes after making a decision, why we seek social support for our beliefs, attitude change to rationalise hypocritical behaviour, attitude change in a situation when someone has said something contrary to beliefs
How can tension be alleviated from cognitive dissonance?
By changing one of our existing cognitions or adding an extra one to “explain” this discrepancy
What are the possible resolutions from cognitive dissonance?
Changing the behaviour, change one or more cognitions or adding new cognitions
How can dissonance be initiated?
Forced compliance, decision-making, effort justification, free choice
What is forced compliance?
Inconsistency due a person being persuaded in a way that is inconsistent with an attitude
What can forced compliance induce?
A counter-attitudinal way
Who looked at forced compliance?
Festinger and Carlsmith
What did Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) find with forced compliance?
Boring task for 1 hour, persuade another person that the task was interesting. Paided with $1 or $20 for doing so
Who looked at decision making?
Brehm
What did Brehm (1958) do with decision making?
Rating desirability of 8 household products, product as a reward
What occurs when there is a choice between two highly desirable products?
High dissonance
What occurs when there is a choice between one highly desirable and one less desirable item?
Low dissonance
What was the control for Brehm (1956)?
A highly desirable product but no product
What was the findings from Brehm (1956)
Change in evaluation of products in high dissonance condition
What is effort justification?
Inconsistency when a person makes an effort for the achievement of a modest goal
What is the effort justification process?
Act is voluntary–> much effort expended–> goal first rated as negative–> cognitive dissonance–> goal then rated as positive
Who looked at effort justification?
Aronson and Mills, 1959
What were the findings from Aronson and Mills, 1957?
With female participants, when explicit descriptions (the severe condition) of sex were given they found the discussion more interesting compared to mild descriptions and the control
What is the selective exposure hypothesis?
When possible they will avoid exposure to information that might arouse dissonance
What is the alternative views to cognitive dissonance?
Self-perception and latitude of rejection and latitude of acceptance
What occurs at the latitude of acceptance?
Self perception
What occurs at the latitude of rejection?
Cognitive dissonance
What is compliance?
A superficial public change in behaviour and expressed attitudes in response to a request by another individual
What are the tactics for enhancing compliance?
Ingratiation and multiple requests
What is ingratiation?
Attempting to influence others by first agreeung with them and getting them to like oyou
What is Jones and Pittman’s 5 strategies and emotions?
Intimidating, exemplification, supplication, self-promotion and ingratiation
What is exemplification?
Eliciting guilt so others regard you as morally respectable
What is supplication?
Eliciting pity
What is self promotion?
Eliciting respect
What are the 3 techniques of compliance?
Foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face and low-ball
What is the reciprocity principle?
If we do other people favours they will be obliged to reciprocate due to guilt
What is the foot-in-the-door technique?
People are more likely to accept a large request after a small request (Freedman & Fraser, 1966)
Who looked at when the foot-in-the-door technique won’t work?
Foss & Dempsey, 1979
When will the foot-in-the-door technique not work?
If the first request is too small or the second request is too large
What is the door-in-the-face technique?
A large request is asked first and then rejected, the person is likely to agree to a smaller request which was the asker’s desire in the first place
What is the low ball tactic?
Once people are committed to an action they are more likely to accept a slight increase in the cost of the action
What are the 4 steps in persuasion process?
Attention, comprehension, acceptance and retention
What is the Yale Attitude Change approach?
Attitude chance is influenced by 3 factors
What are the 3 factors from the yale attitude change?
Source (Who), message (What), audience (to whom)
What processes occurs from the message, source and audience?
Attention, comprehension and acceptance
What is the outcome from the process of the Yale approach?
Opinion change, perception chance, affect change, action change
Give examples of the source that can affect attitude change
Expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness
What characteristics of the audience will effect attitude change?
Self-esteem, individual differences, age, third person effect, disconfirmation bias
What is disconfirmation bias?
Tendency to notice and refute weak arguments that contradict prior belief
What is the third person effect?
People thinking they are less likely to persuasion
How does self-esteem effect attitude change?
When people have low self esteem they are less attentive and more anxious when processing a message when they have self-esteem they are more self-assured
How does age affect attitude change?
There is a high susceptibility during early adulthood (openness to new information) and later life but lower in middle adulthood (core attitudes are set)
How do individual differences effect attitude change?
Need for cognition and a need for closure
What are examples of the message of the communication?
One sided vs two sided and facts vs feelings
How will one sided vs two sided messages affect persuasion?
Effectiveness depends on the audience such as intelligence
How does facts vs feelings effect the messages?
Depends on the type of attitude held such as affect or cognition
How does repetition effect the message of the communication?
Repeated exposure increases familiarity
Who found the inverted U curve hypothesis for fear?
Janis, 1967
Who found the protection motivation theory for fear?
Rogers, 1975
What does the protection motivation theory say?
There is threat appraisal (e.g. severity) and a coping appraisal (e.g. response cost) which leads to protection motivation and a behaviour
What is the heuristic-systematic model?
When we attend to a message we use systematic processing or using heuristics
What is heuristics?
Mental shortcuts
What is systematic processing?
When people scan and consider available arguments
When do we switch from heuristics to systematic?
When people have a sufficiency threshold so heuristics will be used as long as they satisfy our need to be confident in the adopted attitude
What is the elaboration likelihood model?
A theory about the thinking processes that might occur when we attempt to change a person’s attitude
What is examples of elaboration?
Motivation (interest), ability (fatigue), opportunity (time)
What is the route when there is high elaboration?
Central
What is the route when there is low elaboration?
Peripheral
What is the information processing when there is a central route?
Careful
What is the information processing when there is a peripheral route?
Not careful
Is there attitude change when there is high elaboration?
It depends on the quality of the arguments
Is there attitude change when there is low elaboration?
Depends on the presence of persuasive cues
Who looked at action research?
Lewin, 1943
What is action research?
Attitude change is more effective if the active participator rather than a passive
What are the 3 reasons for resistance to persuasion?
Reactance, forewarning, inoculation
What is reactance?
People try to protect their freedom to act when they think their freedom isn’t there they will act to regain it
What is forewarning?
Prior knowledge to persuasive intent so there is time to rehearse counter arguments
What is inoculation?
A way of making people resistant to persuasion by providing a diluted counter-argument that they are build up an effective refutation to a stronger argument
What are the two defenses for inoculation?
Supportive and inoculation
What is supportive defences?
Attitude bolstering and additional argument for the original beliefs
