Persuasion

Question 1

What are the Two basic routes of persuasion?

Answer 1

Central
Peripheral

Question 2

Why are people resistent to persuasion?

Answer 2

People would have to break old habits and give up strong preferences and a lot of people are not willing to do that.

Question 3

What is the elaboration likelihood model?

Answer 3

A model of persuasion that maintains there are two routes to persuasion – the central and peripheral route

Question 4

What is a core idea?

Answer 4

people sometimes process persuasive messages rather mindlessly and rather effortlessly and on other occasions deeply and attentively.

Question 5

What is the central route of persuasion?

Answer 5

Issue is personally relevant
Person in knowledgeable in the domain
Quality of argument

Question 6

What is the peripheral route of persuasion?

Answer 6

Issue is not personally relevant
Person is distracted or fatigued
Message is incomplete or hard to comprehend
Source attractiveness, fame, expertise
Number and length of arguments
Consensus
pictures, long or short message - how does it look

Question 7

Is one of those routes better than the other?

Answer 7

Long lasting attitude change, persuasion through the central route involving cinematic elaboration of the persuasive arguments is preferable. Through this route people attend to a message carefully and elaborate on it more deeply, increasing the chance that they will integrate this argument into their beliefs

audience that is not very motivated or attentive the peripheral route

Question 8

What are good Source characteristics?

Answer 8

Attractiveness (rich/famous helps promote through peripheral route)
Credibility (more central route)
Certainty (Sources who expressed their views with certainty and confidence tend to be more persuasive)

Question 9

What is the sleeper effect?

Answer 9

An effect that occurs when a persuasive message from an unreliable source initially exerts little influence but later causes attitudes to shift

Question 10

What are the Message characteristics that we look for?

Answer 10

Message quality
Vividness
Fear
Culture

Question 11

What is the Identifiable victim effect?

Answer 11

The tendency to be more moved by the vivid plight of a single individual than the struggles of a more abstract number of people

Question 12

What are examples of Audience characteristics?

Answer 12

Need for cognition
Mood
Age
Knowing your audience helps you use techniques to target the specific groups

Question 13

What is agenda control?

Answer 13

Efforts by the media to emphasize certain events and topics, thereby shaping which issues and events people think are important.

The world depicted on TV shows scarcely resembles social reality.

Question 14

What is the Perception of bias in the media?

Answer 14

Conservatives see a constant liberal bias in the media and liberals complain that Fox News is bias across the board in its political coverage.

We all tend to believe that the media is biased against our preferred causes, a tendency referred to as the hostile media phenomenon

Question 15

What is the hostile media phenomenon?

Answer 15

The tendency for people to see media coverage as biased against their own side and in favor of their opponents’ side

Question 16

What is naïve realism?

Answer 16

Most people believe that they see the world reasonably and in an objective fashion

Question 17

What is selective evaluation?

Answer 17

People who are personally motivated will be more skeptical of information that challenges cherished beliefs.

Question 18

What is selective framing?

Answer 18

People not only selectively evaluate evidence that supports or contradicts their beliefs, but opposing sides can also frame the same issue in a selective manner.

Ex. People in favor of gun control frame guns as the main reason for gun-related deaths and people opposed to gun controls frame the problem in terms of those who shoot the guns.

Question 19

What is the thought polarization hypothesis?

Answer 19

Hypothesis with more extended thoughts about a particular issue tends to produce more extreme entrenched attitudes.

People with more knowledge are more likely to be resistant of persuasion

Question 20

What is attitude inoculation?

Answer 20

Small attacks on people’s beliefs that engage their preexisting attitudes, prior commitments, and background knowledge, enabling them to counteract a subsequent larger attack and resist persuasion.