Week 4 Review- Attitudes/Persuasion Flashcards
How do Attitudes form?
Inherited?
twin studies: twins raised apart have as similar attitudes as those raised together..
Formed?
Newcomb’s (1943) college study of female students whereby attitudes became less conservative over time in a more liberal environment
How are Attitudes measured directly?
Open-ended (conversation analysis?) and closed questions (e.g., Thurstone, Likert, Guttman, semantic differential).
How are attitudes measured indirectly?
Participants may be unaware of measured attitude (e.g., lost-letter technique), non-verbal/physiological measures (e.g., pupil dilation), duping the participant (e.g. bogus lie detector), cognitive research methods (measuring associations between pairs of concepts; IAT), and through overt behaviour (presuming attitude based on actions).
Relations between attitude and behaviour
Early evidence not strong
What is the Theory of Reasoned Action? (TRA)
An intention to engage in a certain behavior is considered the best predictor of whether or not a person actually engages in that behavior.
Intentions, in turn, are predicted by attitudes and subjective norms. That is, the more positively a person regards a certain behavior or action and the more they perceive the behavior as being important to their friends, family, or society, the more likely they are to form intentions to engage in the behavior.
What is the Theory of Planned Behaviour? (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991)
A sucessor to TRA, The theory of TPB maintains that three core components, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individual’s behavioral intentions.
In turn, a tenet of TPB is that behavioral intention is the most proximal determinant of human social behavior.
What are the two routes to persusaion? (Elaboration Likelihood Model) (Petty & Cacioppo)
central (paying close attention) vs. peripheral (superficial notice)
central route influenced by quality of the arguments
peripheral route influenced by persuasion cues (heuristics)
What is the sleeper effect?
The delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a non-credible source.
What are some Message characteristics that effect persuasion?
Length: longer more persuasive if arguments perceived as valid (peripheral processing), longer less persuasive if arguments perceived as weak/redundant (central processing)
Order: primacy (remembering first presented) and recency (remembering last presented) effects
role of emotion: negative (e.g., fear) vs. positive (e.g., humour, pride)
Protection Motivation Theory
What is Protection Motivation Theory? (Rogers, 1983)
motivation to protect oneself from threat influenced by
- severity of event
- probability of event
- response efficacy
- self-efficacy beliefs
What are some communicator characteristics that affect persuasion?
Credibility: the more credible the source (e.g., experts and those we trust), the more persuasive the message.
Attractiveness / Likeability: greater likeability (e.g. celebrities), the more persuasive the message.
What are some Audience characteristics that affect persuasion?
intelligence/need for cognition: people vary on how much they want to engage in effortful cognitive activities
self-esteem: (curvilinear -> low = hostile; high = confident; medium = most persuaded)
self-monitoring: high self-monitors, out of concern for public self-presentation, are more responsive to measures promoting desirable social images.
What is cognitive dissonance theory? (Festinger, 1957)
that an underlying psychological tension is created when an individual’s behavior is inconsistent with his or her thoughts and beliefs.
This underlying tension then motivates an individual to make an attitude change that would produce consistency between thoughts and behaviors.
How can people remove dissonance?
By changing their attitude OR change behaviour OR justify dissonance
How can people resist persuasion?
reactance = people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves
forewarning = awareness allows time to prepare
inoculation = exposure to weak versions of an argument increases later resistance to the argument
