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
