Lecture 3: Reading

Question 1

ELM: Petty et al. (1981) – see lecture cards

Answer 1

UNI STUDENTS: move onto oral comprehensive exams

FOUND - when a persuasive message concerned an issue of high personal relevance, the effectiveness of the appeal was more a function of the contents of the arguments presented in the message than of such peripheral cues as the expertise of the message source.

However, when the message concerned an issue of relatively low personal relevance, effectiveness was more a function of peripheral cues than of the arguments presented

Question 2

HSM: Chaiken & Maheswaran (1994) - cues in conditions of high personal relevance

Answer 2

• Participants given information about a new product (a telephone answering machine)
• 1) credibility of source
  + 2) relevance/importance of product was manipulated
• Participants read descriptions which supported the product strongly to weakly

Question 3

HSM: Chaiken & Maheswaran (1994) FINDINGS

Answer 3

• When topic was low personal relevance, ppts. attitude towards product were more positive following the highly credible source than the less credible source, while strength of the message had no impact
• The effect of source credibility in high personal relevance were different when the message was mixed
• High credible source leads to more positive attitudes than the low credible sources when the issue was personally relevant

when a persuasive communication was on a topic of high personal relevance, attitude change would be governed mostly by a thoughtful consideration of the issue-relevant arguments presented (central route)
On the other hand, when a message was on a topic of low personal relevance, peripheral features of persuasion situation more potent

HSM: Source credibility affected attitudes INDEPENDENTLY of the change in thought fitting HSM: people use heuristics under high relevance conditions, especially when deep thought cannot form a confident attitude
- heuristic processing can bias systematic processes web evidence is ambiguous

Question 4

Meta-Cognitive Model (Petty et al. 2007) assumptions - = constructivist perspective

Answer 4

MCM holds that attitude objects can be linked in memory to both positive and negative evaluations that can vary in the degree to which they are endorsed or not.

MCM holds that attitude objects can be linked in memory to global evaluative associations, and these associations can vary in strength

attitude objects can sometimes be linked in memory to evaluative associations of opposite valence
- the no. of prior positive and negative experiences, the recency of those experiences, and the context in which those experiences took place will matter.
- both positive + negative evaluations can stem from associative or from propositional processes

Paper use the terms deliberative and automatic attitudes and attitude measures rather than implicit/explicit attitudes/measures

Question 5

Meta-Cognitive Model (Petty et al. 2007) study FINDINGS

Answer 5

Explicit measures, (unlike implicit), reflect evaluative associations as modified by stored validity tags as well as other considerations that come to mind prior to responding.

Explicit attitude reports will be more durable, impactful, and correlated with automatic measures (i.e., high attitude strength), when the evaluative associations are highly accessible and held with high confidence.

Question 6

Attitude change: situations (Petty et al. 2006): Meta-cognitive model

Answer 6

MCM: in situations of changing attitudes from one valence to another, there is the potential for implicit ambivalence - when the validity tags are ignored, both positive and negative evaluations are associated with the attitude object
Were told that the target person was a candidate for a job at their university
To evaluate the candidate, they were provided with either a strong or
a weak résumé to examine

• Petty et al. (2006, Exp 2) - attitudes toward the target as a job candidate were more influenced by the quality of the candidate’s résumé in the condition where attitudes were changed than in conditions where attitudes were not changed - when attitudes were changed, people engaged in greater information processing as if they were attempting to resolve some ambivalence
• When explicit attitudes change from one valence to another, people do not report feeling more ambivalent BUT when explicit attitudes have changed in valence, people still act as if they are ambivalent by processing information on the issue to a greater extent than when attitudes are not changed.
• Petty et al. (2006, Exp 3) Consistent with the idea that an explicit change in attitudinal valence can produce implicit ambivalence (due to conflict between old rejected evaluations and newly accepted ones), ppts. whose attitudes were changed did not report any more explicit doubt about the target individual, BUT they did show more doubt on an IAT compared to when attitudes were not changed
• attitudes towards the target were more influenced by the quality of the resume in the condition where attitudes changed than when attitudes were not changed -when attitudes were changed, people engaged in greater info processing (attempting to resolve ambivalence).

Question 7

Petty et al 2006: E-I ambivalence

Answer 7

Experiment:
- Petty et al 2006 - students were given information about the personality traits possessed by 2 fictitious people: 1 described as pos. + 1 as neg.
- Some students were told something like “wait, your beliefs about these people are wrong” (pretending that the descriptions of each person were the wrong way round)

FINDINGS
This information should cause people to correct their judgements and consciously form positive attitudes towards the corrected person
- Found this when using explicit measures

Participants showed evidence of conflict at the nonconscious level as they will still remember the trait information about each person, even though that have attached a ‘tag’ to it.
- Found this when using implicit measures

Question 8

What are some differences between the HSM and the ELM?

Answer 8

ELM: Focuses on the motivation to attain correct attitudes
HSM: Predicts people can be motivated to attain a correct attitude, an attitude that is socially desirable, or an attitude that expresses personal identity and values.
* Reflect knowledge, social-adjustive, and value-expressive functions (chapter 2).

HSM: Motives to achieve a socially acceptable attitude elicit more biassed thinking about a message.
ELM: Greater attention to the strength of the attitudes Ps form after a persuasive message. Stronger attitudes should have a greater influence on judgments and behaviours. Attitude change in the more elaborate, central route occurs through its impact on cognitive responses.
Petty et al (1995): Bases of the post-message attitude in elaborative cognitive responses should make them stronger than if the attitudes are formed through the peripheral route.

Differ in how they describe variables that influence attitudes when motivation & ability are low.
ELM: Variety of psychological processes can influence persuasion in the low elaboration route.
* Emotion and behaviour.
HSM: Focus on heuristic “rules of thumb” - “if-then” rules and guides.

HSM: Suggests PR does not always lead to lower use of cues. Even a lot of processing will not always be enough to attain confidence that the desired attitude has been reached.

ELM: Driven by changes in thoughts about the message.

Question 9

What are the postulates or core principles of the HSM?

Answer 9

1. People may desire a correct attitude, an attitude that expresses their values, or an attitude that helps their social image
   
   2. Heuristic processing entails the retrieval & application of judgmental rules (e.g., experts can be trusted, consensus is correct), whereas systematic processing involves an analytic and thorough examination of attitude-relevant information.
   3. According to the least effort and sufficiency principles, people use as much cognitive effort as is necessary and possible to reach their desired attitudinal goal (i.e., an accurate attitude, a value-expressive attitude, or an image-maintaining attitude), depending on their actual confidence that the desired attitudinal goal has been achieved while processing the information (relative to their desired level of confidence).
   4. The Ability hypothesis predicts that heuristic processing requires less cognitive effort than systematic processing.
   5. The Additivity hypothesis predicts that heuristic & systematic processing can co-occur and exert independent effects
   6. The Bias hypothesis predicts that heuristic cues may influence attention, examination, and interpretation of information within systematic processing
   7. The Attenuation hypothesis predicts that systematic processing will reduce use of heuristic processing when the judgments derived from systematic processing contradict conclusions from heuristic processing.
   8. The Enhancement hypothesis predicts that people will use more heuristic processing when they feel unable to perform systematic processing, but the desired level of confidence in their attitudinal goal remains high.