Cognitive Influences

Question 1

What are the 5 models of attitude formation and attitude change?

Answer 1

The Yale Model
McGuire’s Information Processing Paradigm
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Heuristic-Systematic Model
Meta-Cognitive Model

Question 2

What quote is associated with The Yale Model

Answer 2

WHO (communicator) says WHAT (the message) to WHOM (recipient)

Question 3

What are the 3 steps in The Yale Model

Answer 3

Attention, Comprehension (understand) , Acceptance (believe it/change)

Question 4

What are the assumptions in The Yale Model

Answer 4

Messages can change attitudes by presenting an incentive for attitude change
Attitude change must be reinforcing

Question 5

What 5 things come under WHO in the The Yale Model

Answer 5

Attractiveness, Expertise, Trustworthiness, Status and Likeability

Question 6

What 3 things come under WHAT in The Yale Model

Answer 6

Fear, one or two-sided arguments, Early or late arguments

Question 7

What level of fear is the most effective in changing attitudes? Why not high?

Answer 7

Moderate
High would cause people to not want to attend to the message

Question 8

What was found in Hovland and Weiss’ study on the effect of ‘who’ under The Yale Model?

Answer 8

Articles that were deemed trustworthy (reputable journal) were more favourable that a low-credibility article (politically biased columnist)

Question 9

What 4 things come under WHOM in The Yale Model

Answer 9

Self-esteem, Mood, Intelligence, Pre-existing view

Question 10

What are the strengths of The Yale Model

Answer 10

laid down the ground work for the factors that influence attitude change
Led to important ‘real world’ changes

Question 11

What are the limitations of The Yale Model?

Answer 11

What are the processes through which incentives elicit attitude change?
Interactions amongst source, message and audience factors

Question 12

What did the McGuire Information-Processing Model add to The Yale Model?

Answer 12

Further broke down the Attend, Comprehend, Accept stages

Question 13

What are the processing stages for McGuire’s Info-Processing Model?

Answer 13

Presentation -> Attention -> Comprehension -> Yielding (change att) -> Retention (remember later) -> Behaviour (Influences behaviour)

Question 14

How is the probability of changing attitude elicited in McGuire’s Information-Processing Model?

Answer 14

From the probability of going through each stage. Variables can effect different stages
e.g High self esteem = highly ATTEND and COMPREHEND but not likely to YIELD (agree)

Question 15

What is the comprehension principle

Answer 15

Opposing effects on reception and yielding should produce curvilinear effects

Question 16

What is the limitation of McGuire’s Information Processing Model? How can we resolve this?

Answer 16

It added more on why we change our attitude but less on how - focus on cognitive responses

Question 17

What does the Cognition-in-Persuasion Model suggest about attitude change?

Answer 17

Interpretation of message cues recall of prior relevant knowledge and we use this prior knowledge to base our final attitude and subsequent behaviour on
Suggests earlier stages can be bypassed

Question 18

How can cognitive responses be recorded?

Answer 18

Get people to list thoughts and feelings after hearing/reading a persuasive message and if listing more favourable responses = more agreement with message

Question 19

What is the Acceptance-Yielding-Impact Model

Answer 19

Emphasises cognitive responses
Based on the assumption that beliefs are important bases for attitudes - attitude change can only occur if it changes beliefs underlying the attitude

Question 20

How can belief change take place according to the Acceptance-Yielding-Impact model? What is the issue with this?

Answer 20

Altering either the expectancies or values associated with the belief.
It is hard to do - studies find little effect (e.g hard to change people’s mind about the expensiveness of an object)

Question 21

What are the two routes in the Elaboration Likelihood Model?

Answer 21

Central = Requires full attention on the message
Peripheral = Requires less attention/thought

Question 22

What are the seven postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model?

Answer 22

1) Motivated to hold CORRECT views
2) How likely we will deeply process (elaborate) the message varies
3) Variables such as arguments, simple cues (e.g source), or factors that the nature/amount of elaboration can affect attitude change
4) Motivation of objectively process elicits scrutiny
5) Motivation and ability = increase use of arguments and decrease simple cues
6) Biased processing (pre-existing views) leads to biased issue-relevant thoughts (cog responses)
7) Elaborate processing leads to new strong attitudes

Question 23

How did Petty et al use the Elaboration Likelihood Model to elicit attitude change?

Answer 23

Ptps presented arguments to get oral comp exams
Variables: motivation (affect them or a later year group), message strength & source
If motivation high strength of message should be more important than source and this was the case
High motivation + strong = positive att
High motivation + weak = negative att

Question 24

What the Priester and Petty theorise about trustworthiness of the source and scrutiny

Answer 24

Under low elaboration, more likely to scrutinize from an untrustworthy source & argument quality should have greater effect with untrustworthy source

Question 25

How did Preister and Petty investigate the relationship with the trustworthiness of the source and scrutiny of the message?

Answer 25

Presented an advert for rollerblades with either strong or weak arguments and half endorsed by either a trustworthy (Kerrigan) or untrustworthy (Harding) source
Gained cognitive responses to test if they paid attention to the advert

Question 26

What was the result of Preister and Petty’s study?

Answer 26

The argument quality effect was more prominent with Harding than Kerrigan
Paid more attention to Harding than Kerrigan as shown by high correlation b/ween att and cognitive response

Question 27

What’s the limitations of the Elaboration Likelihood model

Answer 27

What makes an argument strong?
Do we ONLY seek correct attitudes? Are there other motivations

Question 28

What are the two paths in the Heuristic-Systematic Model

Answer 28

Systematic - The individual carefully scrutinizes content of persuasive appeal
Heuristic - Employ simple decision rules or heuristics to form attitude

Question 29

What are the 5 hypotheses linked to the Heuristic-Systematic Model?

Answer 29

Bias hypothesis - Heuristic cues may influence attention, examination and interpretation of info
Ability hypothesis - Heuristic requires less cog effort
Additivity hypothesis - Heuristic and systematic can co-occur and give diff affects
Attenuation hypothesis - Syst processing will reduce the use of heuristic processing if conclusions from syst processing contradict those from heuristic processing
The enhancement hypothesis - People will use heuristic when they feel they can’t do syst processing but only when confidence in desired att goal remains high

Question 30

What are the three points of desired attitudes in the HSM

Answer 30

People may seek
1. A correct attitude
2. An attitude that expresses their values
3. An attitude that helps their social image

Question 31

What does systematic processing require more of than heuristic

Answer 31

Ability and effort

Question 32

When are people more likely to take the systematic route?

Answer 32

When they are motivated and able to obtain their desired attitude

Question 33

What are the cognitive determinants of Processing mode

Answer 33

Ability and availability/accessibility of heuristic

Question 34

What are the motivational determinants of processing mode?

Answer 34

Least effort and sufficiency - easiest way to obtain sufficient confidence that we reached desired attitude

Question 35

How does personal relevance relate of processing mode?

Answer 35

When high = Systematic mode
When low = Heuristic mode

Question 36

How did Chaiken and Maheswaran demonstrate the HSM?

Answer 36

Ptps told of new answering machine:
- Personal relevance: in their area or far region
- Source credibility: Consumer Report mag or store pamphlet
- Argument strength
Result:
Low relevance + high cred = +ve attitude and strength no impact
High relevance + Strong argument = +ve att and source cred no impact
High Relevance + mixed strength + high cred = +ve attitude
More positive thoughts when high cred and change in thoughts corr w/ change in att

Question 37

What are the similarities of the HSM and ELM?

Answer 37

• Dual process models
• Role of motivation and ability
• Diff variables can influence motivation and ability

Question 38

What are the differences between the HSM and ELM

Answer 38

Motives for attitudes; Being correct (ELM) vs or motives (HSM)
ELM focuses more on strength of attitude after processing
Differ in what influences persuasion when motivation and ability is low; psychological factors e.g mood (ELM) and ‘if-then’ rules (HSM)

Question 39

What are meta-cognitions?

Answer 39

‘Thoughts on Thoughts’ = what people think about their thoughts

Question 40

what question does the Meta-Cognitive Model help address?

Answer 40

When an attitude is change, does the old attitude disappear or are there still traces of it?

Question 41

What does the Meta-Cognitive Model propose about persuasive intervention?

Answer 41

It can;
- Introduce a new evaluative association with an attitude object
- try to reshape an old association

Question 42

What is the self-validation hypothesis accoring to Petty et al?

Answer 42

• Post-message beliefs are more likely to impact attitudes when we feel confident about them
• As this confidence increases, the valence of the belief is more likely to predict attitudes

Question 43

According to the Meta-Cognitive Model, what can happen with the associations to an attitude object?

Answer 43

They can be divergent and cause ambivalence in implicit/explicit testing

Question 44

What is the relationship between Implicit-Explicit ambivalence and processing info?

Answer 44

The greater the ambivalence, the more liekly they will deeply process info to reduce ambivalence

Question 45

How did Windsor-Shellard & Haddock demonstrate this I-E ambivalence?

Answer 45

Measured I-E ambivalence of sexual orientation
Explicit measure = direct questions and response time measured (longer time = more amb)
Implicit = IAT
Result = Ptps with greatest I-E ambivalence took longer to answer direct Qs

Question 46

What did Haddock et al want to test in regard to E-I ambivalence

Answer 46

Does E-I ambivalence always lead to negative affect (feeling)?
Can being mindful buffer negative affect?

Question 47

How did Haddock et al investigate E-I ambivalence and mindfulness?

Answer 47

Gay/Lesbian ptps completed exp and imp tests of sexual orientation
Did a measure of trait mindfulness and general affect
Greater mindfulness = greater acceptance of thoughts
Better general affect at high amb when high mindfulness