Ch. 8 - Persuasion Flashcards
Message learning approach (3 elements)
Source, communication, and audience
Central route
people think deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its content/logic/arguments/related evidence and principles
Issue is personally relevant (high motivation)
consumer is knowledgeable in the domain (high ability)
Peripheral route
People attend to superficial cues related to a persuasive message such as its length/expertise/attractiveness of the source
Consumers rely on heuristics to guide their response
Issue is not personally relevant (low motivation)
consumer is distracted or fatigued, and the message is incomplete/hard to understand (low ability)
Source characteristics (3) Sleeper effect
Attractiveness: is particularly effective when targets attend more to peripheral cues, can also increase favorability of people’s thinking about the message (central route) –> contributes to halo effect
Credibility: for peripheral route it can sway opinions even more, and for central route it can be taken as a strong argument
Highly credible sources possess competence/expertise and trustworthiness
Liking principle
Certainty: increases persuasiveness and credibility
Sleeper effect: messages from unreliable sources exert little influence initially, but over time have the potential to shift people’s attitudes → this is because over time, people dissociate the source of the message from its content
Message characteristics (7)
Order effects: climax, anticlimax, or pyramid
Primacy vs recency
Using refutational argumencts
Message quality: high quality = when the message appeals to the core values of the audience, when they are straightforward/clear/logical, and when they articulate the desirable consequences of taking the actions suggested by the message
Vividness: more effective when information is colorful/interesting/memorable –> identifiable victim effect
Fear: can be effective, but also needs to be paired with clear, concrete information about how to address source of the fear
Culture specific messages
Audience characteristics (3)
Need for cognition: high need people are more persuaded by central route persuasion, low need people are more focused on peripheral cues
Mood: persuasive efforts tend to be more effective when mood of message matches mood of audience
Age: younger people are more easily persuaded
Metacognition
Self validation hypothesis
Thoughts/reflections about our thoughts
Feeling confident about our thoughts validates those thoughts, making it more likely that we’ll be swayed in their direction
We have greater confidence (and thus greater likelihood to be persuaded) when we perceive our thoughts to be easily brought to mind, accurate and clear
Agenda control
Naive realism
Efforts of the media to select certain events/topics to emphasize, thereby shaping which issues/events people think are important
People’s tendency to think that they see the world objectively
Hard sell ads
Try and persuade consumers using rational analysis
Soft sell ads
What they use to appeal to consumers
Style over substance
Rely on attractiveness, warmth, humour, sex, and needs
Resistance to persuasion (5)
Attentional biases, evaluative biases and framing of information
Public commitments and declarations of one’s attitude
Genetics and heritable attitudes
Repeated expression of attitudes
Knowledge about the topic
Attitude inoculation
Small attacks on people’s beliefs that engage their pre existing attitudes/prior commitments/background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a subsequent larger attack and thus resist persuasion
