Lecture 4 - Cognitive infleunce on behaviour

Question 1

What are the five cogntive models of attitude formation and change?

Answer 1

• The Yale Model
• McGuire’s information processing m=Model
• The Liklihood Elaboration Model
• The Hueristic Systematic Model
• The Meta-Cognitive Model

Question 2

What is the Yale Model?

Answer 2

Hovland et al., (1953)
* they looked into the type of factors that infleunce how a message recipient responds to information thats designed to guide or change their attitude.

Question 3

What is the Statement that captured teh presumptions of the Yale Model?

Answer 3

“Who says what to whom with what effect?”

Laswell (1948)

Question 4

Break down of the statement that explains what the Yale model was trying to achieve

Answer 4

1. Who = SOURCE - who is the source fo teh persuasive message
2. What = CONTENT - what is the content they ar trying to get across to you?
3. Whom = AUDIENCE - the recipient.

They looked at these types of factors in isolation to get a sense of some of the types of variables that influence attitude change.

Question 5

Theoretical assumptions of the Yale Model

Answer 5

1. Messages can change attitudes by presenting an incentive for attitude change
2. there is a three stage process to attitude change: Attend, Comprehend, Accept.
3. How do we move from comprehension to acceptance? - attitude change must be reinforcing

Question 6

Variables that influence attitude change: SOURCE

Answer 6

• attractiveness
• expertise
• status
• trustworthiness
• likeability

Question 7

What variables influence attitude change: CONTENT

Answer 7

• fear
• one sided argument Vs two sided arguemnet
• early or late arguments

Question 8

Janis et al., (1953) - CONTENT variable influencing attitude chnage

Answer 8

They assessed how different levels of fear within an appeal would elicit attitude change
* E.g. importance of brushing your teeth. Coming up with a low, medium or high fear message.*
They found that when they looked at fear as a way to change attitudes was a curvilinear relation. By this meaning that medium fear led to higher attitude change compared to low fear AND high fear

Question 9

What variables influence attitude change: AUDIENCE

Answer 9

• mood
• self-esteem
• intelligence
• pre-existing view

Question 10

Strengths of the Yale Model

Answer 10

• Initial empirical attempt to document the range of factors that can influence how attitudes are formed and changed
• Laid the foundation for further/future work
• Led to important “real world” changes in attitudes and behaviour– real world application

Question 11

Limitations of the Yale model

Answer 11

• Useful descriptive beginning, but what are the processes through which incentives elicit change or not?
  – WHAT is the process through that X influences Y? (Less concerned in HOW something occurs)

Interactions among source, message, and audience factors (e.g., expertise with personally relevant message)?

Question 12

McGuire’s Information processing paradigm

Answer 12

• He broke down further the stages of attitude change further
• Explained the likelihood of attitude change through probability

Question 13

What were the stages to attitude chnage in McGuires Information-Processing paradigm?

Answer 13

Presentation
Attention
Comprehension
Yeilding (changing the recipiets attitude)
Retention
Behaviour

Question 14

McGuires argument of probabalistic manner to attitude change

Answer 14

The liklihood of eliciting attitude and behaviour change is a function of the probability of passing through each of these stages.

e.g. the liklihood of an attitude change is 3/100 IF there was a 0.5 chance of a participant going through all of the individual stages.

Question 15

McGuires compensation principle

Answer 15

Opposing effects on reception and yeilding should produce curvilinear effects on persuasion

This is where one variable may have different effects on different stages during message processing. One probability may be high while the other is low. If these opposing effects occur, then the mathematics of McGuires model suggests that the variable should produce a curvilinear effect on persuasion (U or inverted U effect).

e.g. the example of self-esteem on the reception and yeilding processing stages

Question 16

Strengths and limitations to McGuires information processing paradigm

Answer 16

+
* offered a more detailed consideration of the stages

-
* We’ve got X that infleunces Y, but still dont know the process
* less about HOW the message acceptance would emerge

Led to subsequent work on cogntive responses - after you have presented persuasive information to a message recipient, what are the content of teh thoughts about the message?

Question 17

What are the similarities between the Dual Process models

Answer 17

Dual process models = ELM & HSM
* two “routes” to persuasion
* the route taken depends on different factors

Question 18

The Seven Postulates of the ELM (P1, P2 & P3)

Answer 18

1. people are motivated to hold correct attitudes
2. the amount and nature of issue-relevant elaboration can vary (from low to high)
3. Variables can affect attitudes by serving as arguments, simple cues, or factors that affect the nature and amount of elaboration
   * a variable can act in different ways (source expertise can act as a cue when elaboration is low OR source expertise can be scrutinised when elaboration is high)

Postulates 1 and 3 are the most important

Question 19

The Seven Postulates of the ELM (P4, P5, P6, & P7)

Answer 19

4. The motivation to process a message objectively elicits arguments scrutiny
5. The motivation and ability to process arguments causes increased use of arguments an lower use of cues
6. Biased processing leads to biased issue-relevant thoughts
7. Elaborte processing causes new, strong attitudes.

Question 20

Elaboration

Answer 20

= liklihood of deeply processing information

Question 21

Best way to describe the ELM

Answer 21

The flow chart

We, as a message recipient, are presented with persusaive communication.

We can process the information down two routes:
1.Are we motivated to process that
- IF NO - the topic has no personal relevance to me. (E.g. oral comprehensive exams happening in 10 yrs)
- Is there a peripheral cue that’s present (e.g. good mood vs bad mood/expert source/attractive source).
- IF YES - The availability of cues should lead to attitude change BUT it is going to be short lived/temporary.
- IF NO - there is no peripheral cue that present, nothings going to happen

2.Are we motivated to process that
- IF YES - The topic is personally relevant to me. (E.g. oral comprehensive exams this year)
- are we able to process the information?
- IF NO - IF there is a peripheral cue present, then we will base our attitude on that
- IF YES - (we are motivated and able) we think about the information carefully. Does it contain strong arguments that we think is persuasive? This then leads to a central positive attitude change.

Question 22

Evidence providing support for the ELM model - DESIGN only

Petty et al., (1981)

Answer 22

• American students came into the lab and were presented with infromation explaining why the university should move to oral comprehensive exams.
• 2x2x2 design:
  1. Personal relevance - Low vs High
  - oral comprehensive exams would occur in 10 years (low)
  - oral comprehensive exams would occur now (high)
  2. Source expertise - low vs high
  - The source comes from high school class (low)
  - The source comes from Carnergie Commision (high)
  3. Message strength - strong vs weak
  - These exams help grades (strong)
  - these exams avoid irritating graduate students (weak)

Question 23

Basic predicitions from the ELM for Petty et al., (1981) results

Answer 23

If its going to impact me, if I am highly motivated to learn more about this topic, what should infleunce my alternate view?
- I am going to scrutinize the argument carefully and depend less upon the cues. Thus, my attitude should be determined by the strengths of the message read rather than the source.

If its not going to impact me, then I am less motivated to learn more about this topic, what should infleunce my alternate view?
- I am not going to scrutinize the argument carefully and depend more on the cues. Thus, my attitude should be determined by the peripheral cues (source expertise).

Question 24

Petty et al., (1981) findings

Answer 24

Low personal relevance = the source is having an effect.
- People are more +ve with expert sources when its something that doesn’t influence them.
- Source is having an effect only under low personal relevance. The effect of argument strength is significantly less under low involvement

High personal relevance = Message strenth is having an effect.
- strong arguments lead to +ve attitudes, weak arguments lead to -ve attitudes.
- Source has no effect.
- So, under high involvement it’s the quality of the arguments that is important.

This is great evidence that supports what the ELM is all about. If we care about something, we scrutinise the arguments, if we don’t care about something we use cues.

Question 25

Evidence supporting the ELM model: DESIGN only

Priester & Petty (2003)

Answer 25

They had an advertisement for roller blades with either:
- strong or weak arguments
- from a trustworthy source (N Kerrigan) or an untrustworthy source (T Harding)

Question 26

Priester & Petty (2003): RESULTS only

Answer 26

Saw a main effect of argument strength - manipulation check

Saw an interaction:
- the argument quality effect was more substantial when looking at the untrustworthy source (Harding) - correlation of .60
- compared to the trustworthy source (Kerrigan) -correlation of .25
So, when people read the untrustworthy source, they were motivated to pay attention to the argument quality. They were motivated to think about the message, paying more attention to the message

When it was the trustworthy source, they were less motivated to think about the message. Argumnet quality effect is muted.

They also found that after people were presented with the advertisement randomly assigned to read, they were asked to write down their thoughts in response to what you’ve read
○ If people pay attention to the message and read it carefully, those thoughts should be more predicitive of their attitude.

This is what they found.

Question 27

Limitations to the ELM

Answer 27

• What makes a message strong?
• Do we only seek “correct” attitudes?

Question 28

The Hueristic Systematic Model (Chaiken et al., 1989)

Answer 28

HSM is more broad about the motives people have when they are presented with attitude relevant information:
- it might be the case that people are motivated to hold the correct attitude
- but maybe there are circumstances where people hold attitudes that respect their values which may not be correct (desired attitudes)
- Also, people may hold an attitude that helps their social image

LINKS TO ATITUDE FUNCTIONS!!

Question 29

Processing modes of the HSM

Answer 29

When motivation and ability to process a message is low, people will utilize cues or heuristics. This type of processing is labelled as the HUERISTIC
- people employ simple decision rules or heuristics to form their opinion

When people are motivated and able, people expend more effort to assess quality of message arguments. This type of processing is labelled as SYSTEMATIC.
- people scrutinize the persuasive arguments and consdier other information they might possess
- systematic processing requires more effort and ability than hueristic processing

Question 30

Determinants of processing mode in the HSM

Answer 30

You need to distingusih between cognitive and motivational determinants:

Cognitive
* ability
* availability/accessibility of heuristics

Motivational
* least effort principle
* sufficency principle
- both these principles indiciate that we use the easiest way possible to achieve sufficent confidence that we have reached the desired attitude

If personal relevance is high - systematic mode
if personal relevance is low - hueristic mode

Question 31

Supporting evidence for the HSM

Answer 31

X

Question 32

Limitations of the HSM

Answer 32

• they talk about three types of motives for attidude change. Maybe there are other needs/motivations behind an individual forming a particular attitude.
• There is more complexity to the model. It has been argued that there is a potential middle path of some systematic and some hueristic modes.

Question 33

Similarities in the ELM and HSM

Answer 33

• Dual routes
• Role of motivation and ability in depth pf processing
• Different variables can influence motivation and ability (personal relevance, individual differences, time)

Question 34

Differences between the ELM and HSM

Answer 34

1. Motives for attitudes
   * ELM - being correct
   * HSM - a correct attitude, an attitude that expresses values, social functions
2. ELM places more focus on strength of attitude after message processing
3. Precise mechanisms of processing when motivation and ability are low

Question 35

What is the Meta-cognitive model

Answer 35

This model has derived from the ELM
* considers “thoughts about thoughts”
* objects can be linked in memory with positive and negative evaluations

Question 36

The role of thought confidence determining attitude change in the MCM

Answer 36

The Self-validation hypothesis (Petty, 2002)
* Post message beliefs are more likely to impact attitudes when they are held with greater confidence
* confidence in which one holds about a belief impacts our attitudes

In experiments, as thought confidence increases, the valence of beliefs are more likely to predict attitudes

Question 37

Objects can be linked in memory with positive and negative evaluations (MCM) - What does this allow us to look into?

Answer 37

AMBIVALENCE

• We can have different associations (positive or negative) held at different levels of confidence
• This MCM highlights the potential of an explicit/implicit ambivalence. This means we have ambivalence of evaluations of the same attitude object. Where at an explicit level, someone may be more +ve, but at an implicit level, someone may be more -ve.

Question 38

Explicit and Implicit ambivalence (MCM)

Answer 38

If we have a difference in these evaluations when measured at different levels, this creates a state of tension/discomfort that we are motivated to reduce (DISSONANCE)

Question 39

Brinol et al., (2006) proposal about explicit/implicit ambivalence (MCM)

Answer 39

The greater the amount of explicit/implicit ambivalence, the deeper Ps should process relevant information in an effort to reduce the ambivalence

Question 40

Windsor-Shellard & Haddock (2014) explixit/implicit ambivalence (MCM)

Answer 40

They were interested in looking at potential differences when implicitly or explicitly measuring peoples sexual orientation

They also focused on deliberation: does greater E-I ambivaence about ones sexual orientation elicit greater deliberation about ones sexuality

• Explixit measure: Ps completed a sexual orientation SR measure. All Ps described themselves as heterosexual (requirement).
• Implicit measure: Sexual orientation IAT (Gay vs Straight/ Me vs Not me).

They used scores from both measures to derive an index of E-I ambivalence

Results
* those with greater relevant ambivalence took longer to answer the questions about their sexuality

Question 41

Haddock et al., (2017) explixit/implicit ambivalence study (MCM) - DESIGN only

Answer 41

They assessed whether E-I ambivalence always leads to negative affect. They proposed that being mindful moderates this effect (reducing negative feelings of dissonance)

• Ps were self reported homosexuals. they completed implicit and explicit measures of sexual orientation
• They then completed a measure of trait mindfulness (MASS)
• mindfulness is linked to greater thought acceptance, they assumed that mindful people would be more comfortable with ambivalence.

Question 42

Haddock et al., (2017) explixit/implicit ambivalence study - RESULTS only

Answer 42

• among low mindful people, there was a link between ambivalence and -ve affect. The more ambivalence, the mroe negative affect there is. Thus, more dissonance they feel and more negative affect
• among high mindful people, you do not see the typical link between ambivalence and negative affect. Consistent with the idea that being mindful allows people to be accepting of their thoughts and dont mind being ambivalent. Being ambivalent or not when high in mindfullness does not infleunce general affect