Attitudes & Persuasion Flashcards
What is a belief/opinion?
- Cold or hot process?
- Can they be changed easily?
A cognition - Thought about something that you believe to be true
Cold
Can be changed w/ good evidence to the contrary
What is an attitude?
Opinion/belief that includes an emotional and evaluative component
- Harder to change than opinion
What is persuasion?
Elaboration likelihood model
- Central route
- Peripheral route
When communication from one person changes the opinion, attitudes, or behaviours of another person
More consideration of content and logic of message (Cold processing)
- Leads to longer-lasting attitude change
Less judicious consideration of message, simple messages (Hot processing)
- Focuses more on attractiveness of source and flashy details
What are the three elements of persuasion?
Why us it better to have mixed messages with central and peripheral cues?
Source (person)
Message (info)
Audience (ppl info is relayed to)
We aren’t solely in one route
What are the three major source factors?
Authority
Credibility
Social attractiveness
We believe those we consider to be both…?
Experts and trustworthy
What is the knowledge bias?
How do you counter this to raise credibility?
Presumption that a communicator has a biased view of an issue
Taking the opposite stance
- Defying expectation raises credibility
What is unintentional persuasion?
- Walster & Festinger study; Overhearing discussion between graduate students
More persuasive when you think they’re not trying to persuade you
Participants who overheard were more influenced if they believed the graduate students were unaware of their ability to hear the convo
Why is it that when people are confident, their credibility increases?
Is it correlated to accuracy?
Confidence shows that they truly believe in their opinion
Only a little
- When we make decisions about things regardless of the evidence, our confidence in our answer increases
What kind of arguments should you make when you’re in the:
- Central route
- Peripheral route (Precautions about fear messages?)
High quality and quantity arguments that are hard to refute (w/ some emotional appeals still bcuz attitudes are emotional/evaluative)
Have emotional impact but avoid overwhelming the audience
- Overwhelming (no way to resolve fearful situation) causes no attitude/behav change
- But fear based messages w/ specific guidelines leads to attitude changes
How does self-identity impact a message?
Why is powerless speech worse than powerful speech?
Persuader can get us to do things if those things resonate w/ our self-identity
Powerless speech makes you seem less credible and more unsure
When should you use one-sided and two-sided arguments?
One sided:
- If audience is favourable or not informed about other side
Two sided:
- If audience is informed in both sides
- Explaining why other side is wrong strengthens your points
Why does adding the appearance of a reason for your request (e.g. “because”) increase conformity?
- Ellen Langer photocopy experiment
- “Excuse me. I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?”
- “because I’m in a rush.”
- “because I have to make some copies.”
We often respond mindlessly so the cue word “because” makes us think there’s a good reason
60% said yes
94%
93%
- Last one isn’t a justifiable reason but many still said yes
What important things should be considered about the audience when persuading them? (4)
Their level of attention
How well informed/smart they are
Their self-esteem
- High: More resistant to changing initial opinion
- Low: Don’t have confidence in own opinions; more open to change
Their mood
- Happy: Disrupt processing of message content and makes them more receptive (more peripheral)
- Negative: Suggests something is wrong and that action is necessary (more conceptual)
How do you grab attention and control the narrative in:
- The central route
- The peripheral route
Tell them how important the info is
Use something flashy
Explain the motivations to look good:
- Norm of reciprocity
- Pro-social issues
- Self-presentation
- Need for consistency
More likely to agree to something when we’re compelled to repay a debt (guilt)
More compelled to agree to something that makes us look good in society
Fear they’ll look bad for turning down the initial request, so they agree to the second
Agree to one thing, but it would look inconsistent to not agree to the next
What is:
- anchoring?
- foot in the door?
- door in the face?
- that’s-not-all technique?
Initial request anchors a large request as normal, the second request is easy to fulfill (like a contrast effect)
Start w/ small request, move toward second larger request (what you really want)
- Ppl agree for need of consistency
Start w/ huge request, ask for something more reasonable after they refuse
- Ppl agree because of anchoring, self-presentation, reciprocal concessions (guilt)
Make initial request but before person can respond, increase attractiveness of request (offer additional benefit) or decrease cost of request
- Ppl agree for norm of reciprocity, self-presentation, anchoring
What is the form of sequential request strategies?
- Sequential
- Influence proceeds in stages (some tension increases influence)
- Each stage establishes foundation for next stage
Explain these attention techniques:
- Pique
- Disrupt-then-reframe
Target us more likely to comply if mindless refusal is disrupted by an unusual request (that grabs attention)
- Switches it to mindless agreement
Disrupts mindless refusal, grabs attention
- In the time where you have mindless attention, you tell them it’s a good deal
When someone is trying to convince you of an argument, what 4 tips should you keep in mind?
- Keep in mind all the tricks
- Keep yourself in the central route
- Do research (and avoid confirmation bias)
- Make your decision later
