Persuasion in Attitude Flashcards
Hovland-Yale approach
3 factors that influenced persuasion
- The source - who is it?
- The message - the content?
- The audience - who is it directed at?
HY - the source
Experts appear to be more persuasive than non experts
Credibility status and attractiveness appear to play an important part in persuasion
Support for the source
INSKO found that students generally stated 8 hours sleep was essential. When exposed to experts/non experts they were most likely to be persuaded by the expert even when the opinion was drastically different to their own beliefs
The message
It appears more effective for a communicator to present a two sided balanced argument to try to persuade an undecided audience
Two sided arguments make people more resistant to later arguments that contradict the original message
- fear in the message
- repeated exposure
Support for the message
50% participants heard a message confirming their attitudes to tooth brushing
50% heard a two sided view of argument
- they then heard a message that attacked their beliefs
- the group who had previously received the 2 sided message were more resistant to the subsequent conflicting arguments
Audience factors
- low and high intelligence audiences may be less easily persuaded than those with moderate intelligence
- audiences with high involvement in a topic usually react differently to a persuasive message than those with low involvement
Support for audience factors
Maguire states that those with low levels are less likely to understand the message and those with high levels are more confident with their own opinions, will process the argument in depth and would reject simple one sided options
Problems with Hovland Yale
- doesn’t focus on why attitudes change only how
- which are the most impotent factors?
- self reports used mostly
- low mundane realism in most studies
Elaboration-Likelihood model
Central route - if the audience is likely to be persuaded by content of the message
Peripheral route - if the audience is more likely to focus on context of message
Central route (elaboration likelihood)
Audience is likely to pay attention to the strength of the argument when the message is personally important
Peripheral route (elaboration likelihood)
Fiske and Taylor noted that most individuals rely on simple decision making processes and so can be persuaded by contextual clues. Like a celebrity. Messages changed in this way are likely to be of less personal interest and so often temporary
Evidence of elaboration likelihood
Haugtvedt found that high need for cognition individuals assess product attributes in adverts than low need for cognition individuals
Strength of elaboration likelihood
Takes into account individual differences (the use of different processes and routes)
