Cognitive Influences Flashcards
What are the 5 models of attitude formation and attitude change?
The Yale Model
McGuire’s Information Processing Paradigm
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Heuristic-Systematic Model
Meta-Cognitive Model
What quote is associated with The Yale Model
WHO (communicator) says WHAT (the message) to WHOM (recipient)
What are the 3 steps in The Yale Model
Attention, Comprehension (understand) , Acceptance (believe it/change)
What are the assumptions in The Yale Model
Messages can change attitudes by presenting an incentive for attitude change
Attitude change must be reinforcing
What 5 things come under WHO in the The Yale Model
Attractiveness, Expertise, Trustworthiness, Status and Likeability
What 3 things come under WHAT in The Yale Model
Fear, one or two-sided arguments, Early or late arguments
What level of fear is the most effective in changing attitudes? Why not high?
Moderate
High would cause people to not want to attend to the message
What was found in Hovland and Weiss’ study on the effect of ‘who’ under The Yale Model?
Articles that were deemed trustworthy (reputable journal) were more favourable that a low-credibility article (politically biased columnist)
What 4 things come under WHOM in The Yale Model
Self-esteem, Mood, Intelligence, Pre-existing view
What are the strengths of The Yale Model
laid down the ground work for the factors that influence attitude change
Led to important ‘real world’ changes
What are the limitations of The Yale Model?
What are the processes through which incentives elicit attitude change?
Interactions amongst source, message and audience factors
What did the McGuire Information-Processing Model add to The Yale Model?
Further broke down the Attend, Comprehend, Accept stages
What are the processing stages for McGuire’s Info-Processing Model?
Presentation -> Attention -> Comprehension -> Yielding (change att) -> Retention (remember later) -> Behaviour (Influences behaviour)
How is the probability of changing attitude elicited in McGuire’s Information-Processing Model?
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)
What is the comprehension principle
Opposing effects on reception and yielding should produce curvilinear effects
What is the limitation of McGuire’s Information Processing Model? How can we resolve this?
It added more on why we change our attitude but less on how - focus on cognitive responses
What does the Cognition-in-Persuasion Model suggest about attitude change?
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
How can cognitive responses be recorded?
Get people to list thoughts and feelings after hearing/reading a persuasive message and if listing more favourable responses = more agreement with message
What is the Acceptance-Yielding-Impact Model
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
How can belief change take place according to the Acceptance-Yielding-Impact model? What is the issue with this?
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)
What are the two routes in the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
Central = Requires full attention on the message
Peripheral = Requires less attention/thought
What are the seven postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
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
How did Petty et al use the Elaboration Likelihood Model to elicit attitude change?
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
What the Priester and Petty theorise about trustworthiness of the source and scrutiny
Under low elaboration, more likely to scrutinize from an untrustworthy source & argument quality should have greater effect with untrustworthy source
