Theories of Pursuasion Flashcards
What is the Hovland-Yale theory about?
The message, source and receiver.
What is the message?
A two-sided argument which should inspire someone to change. It needs emotional appeal and to be able to show there’s a way out.
What is the receiver?
The person receiving the message. They need to be intelligent to understand a two-sided argument is better than a one-sided argument, and have self-esteem. If self-esteem is low, they’re harder to motivate.
What is the source / messenger?
The person providing the information. They need to be credible, so ideally an expert, or have personal experience in the matter.
What is the strength of Hovland-Yale?
It was found that most successful stop-smoking adverts had emotional appeal and showed how there’s a way out.
What is a weakness of Hovland-Yale?
It’s said people with higher self-esteem are easier to motivate, but they could be lying about this.
What is Fear arousal?
The idea that fear creates anxiety, but also motivates change to avoid it (negative reinforcement).
How does Fear Arousal work?
High fear in an advert creates doubt on the message’s realism.
On the other hand, low fear in an advert causes zero effect. This means it needs a medium for Fear in order to stimulate change.
What is the strength of Fear Arousal?
Tetanus research found that adverts that were fearful caused vaccination rates to raise.
What is the weakness of Fear Arousal?
Some research finds that ALL fear creates change, which is inaccurate to the model.
What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
Elaboration makes smarter people more likely to change. It splits into two routes which focus on intelligence.
What are the two routes for the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
Central - About the CORE of the message, focusing on facts and statistics.
Peripheral - Focuses on the view of the message, such as colours, attractiveness and celebrity usage.
What is the strength of the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
It has practical applications, combining the two routes makes persuasion high. E.G. having a celebrity speak about the facts of the product.
What is the weakness of the Elaboration Likelihood Model?
No underlying psychological processes are identified in this model, so we cannot know why and where in the brain comes to this conclusion.
