Lecture 8 - Persuasion Flashcards
Describe persuasion.
Intentional effort to change other people’s attitudes in order to change their behaviour.
What is the elaboration likelihood model?
A model of persuasion maintaining that there are two different routes to persuasion — the central route and the peripheral route
What is the central route to persuasion?
It is followed when people think carefully and deliberately about the content of a persuasive message, attending to its logic and the strength of its arguments, as well as to related evidence
- Attitudes primarily influenced by strength of arguments
What is the peripheral route to persuasion?
It is followed when people primarily attend to peripheral cues — superficial, easy to process features that are tangential to the persuasive information itself
- Relies on rule-of-thumbs heuristics : trust the experts, long messages are credible, friends and experts can be trusted
What determines which would will be followed in response to a persuasive message?
- Motivation
- Ability
How does ability affect the ability to focus on persuasion arguments?
- Even if a person is motivated to think carefully about a message, they may be unable to do so because of distractions or demands on their attention. In that case, they will take the peripheral route to persuasion.
What do we need to go the central route in persuasion?
- Both the motivation and the ability to engage in more in-depth processing
By which route is long-lasting attitude change more likely to occur in regards to persuasion?
The central route
What are the three components of persuasive messages?
- Who —> the source of the message
- What —> the content of the message
- Whom —> the target of the message
What source characteristics influence the persuasive message ?
- Attractiveness —> More persuasive even for topics completely unrelated to attractiveness (can be peripheral cues
- Credibility —> perception that the communicator is both knowledgeable and trustworthy (appearance of credibility can influence through peripheral route
- Certainty —> Sources who express their views with certainty and confidence tend to be more persuasive
How to convert trustworthiness when trying to convince people through persuasion?
- One way is to “express an opinion” without making the audience aware that it is the target of a persuasion attempt
- Another way is to argue against one’s own self-interest
What is the sleeper effect?
Effect wherein people remember the message but forgot the source, thus the effect of credibility diminishes over time
What are the message characteristics and how do they influence persuasion?
- Message quality —> strong messages (comprehensible, straightforward, logical, appeal to core values. Have an explicit take away message) are more persuasive in general
- Message length —> if central route, can either decrease or increase persuasion (more supporting arguments vs adding weak arguments or repeating arguments) BUT if peripheral route, long messages tend to be more persuasive
- Vividness —> Information is colourful, interesting and memorable, it tends to be more effective
- Fear —> most effective when combined with instructions on how to avoid the negative outcomes
- culture —> Important to tailor a message to fit the norms, values and outlook of a particular group
What is the identifiable victim effect?
The tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of a single individual than by a more abstract number of people
What are the audience characteristics and how do they influence persuasion?
- Need for cognition —> drive to think deeply about judgments. More persuaded by central route messages than peripheral route messages
- self-monitoring —> tendency to monitor our behaviour to fit the current situation. Susceptible to messages conveying potent ion to project a desirable self-image
- Mood —> when audience is in a good mood, more easily persuaded
- Age —> younger people are more persuadable than older people. Children may be most vulnerable to persuasion attempts.
- Knowledge —> attitudes based on more knowledge are more resistant to change
