Persuasion and attitude change
An attitude is a ‘posture or position’. It incorporates the following aspects:
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Generally or entirely learned
Relatively permanent
Concerned with affect (feeling)
Governed by consistency
Determines behaviour
Attitudes are generally held to have 3 components:
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Affective: An affective aspect of liking/disliking, based on
Cognitive: Beliefs (cognitions) about the object, which
Behavioural: Leads to a readiness to behave in a certain way
Hovland-Yale Model
The Yale persuasion model suggests the degree of attitude change produced
by persuasive communication depends upon many important variables,
including source factors relating to the communicator of the information,
message factors relating to the content and style of the communication itself,
audience factors relating to the recipient of the message and the situational
factors relating to the context the communication occurs in.
Context
More informal environments seem to induce more attitude change than formal
contexts.
Communicator
Source factors of communicators:
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Credibility, (expertise, knowledge)
Trustworthiness (motives, beliefs)
Likeability (attractiveness, charm, status and race)
Evaluation
Studies show equal learning from high and low credibility sources, but more
acceptance of information from high credibility sources (although this effect
was relatively short-lasting).
Attractive, charming, high-status, and same-sex sources increase persuasion.
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Communication
Message factors of presentation.
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Spelling out conclusions
One or two-sided arguments
Order of presentation
Use of emotion
Evaluation
Studies fine one-sided arguments spelling out conclusions more effective with
complex messages and low education audiences, but better-educated ones
are more influenced if left to draw their own conclusions.
Information presented first (primacy effect) and avoiding extreme use of
emotion appeal is more effective.
Audience
Recipient factors include:
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Level of education/intelligence/knowledge
Resistance to persuasion/strength of initial attitudes
Level of audience participation
Evaluation
Studies show greater attitude change with higher audience participation, but
weaker initial attitudes/resistance. Educational level interacts with source and
message factors.
Elaboration-likelihood model (ELM)
Petty and Cacioppo’s (1981, 1986) ELM suggests the degree of persuasion
and attitude change depends upon the probability (likelihood) that people will
devote mental effort to (elaborate upon) the information they receive about an
issue or product.
Motivation/ability to elaborate
People’s elaboration increases when:
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The issue/product is highly important or relevant to them.
They are solely responsible or accountable for decisions
They are ambivalent or uncertain
They have greater intelligence, time and freedom from distraction
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Persuading/advertising technique
When elaboration-likelihood is high, persuasion depends on high-quality
arguments, attitudes are changed by issue/product information
When elaboration-likelihood is low, less effortful tactics not directly concerned
with the product itself are effective in changing attitudes.
High motivation/
ability to elaborate
= greater scrutiny of
issue/product
information
Low motivation/
ability to elaborate
= less scrutiny of
issue/product
information
Elaboration-likelihood continuum
Peripheral route to persuasion
Central route to persuasion
Low mental effort or indirect
persuasion straties, e.g. simple
slogans about the issue/product
or repeated (classical
conditioning) association with
pleasant stimuli.
Reasoned arguments and detailed
information about issues/products
are provided to a motiavated
listener who is able to consciously
consider the advantages and
disadvantages
Evaluation
The peripheral route techniques often produce weaker attitude change, poorly
thought-out decisions (e.g. basd on superficial characteristics or the number
rather than quality of arguments) and other negative effects (e.g. reinforcing
stereotypes).
The ELM has been supported by attitude change studies that vary the quality
of arguments and exposure time to messages.
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The influence of attitudes on decision making
An individual’s positive or negative attitudes (or more specifically, the
cognitive and affective components of attitudes) are thought to play an
important role in that person’s decision making and eventual behaviour.
Those who wish to affect decision making and behaviour (e.g. advertisers or
governments) have therefore tried to use persuasion techniques to change
attitudes and have found it useful to take into account the roles of cognitive
consistency/dissonance and self-perception.
The role of cognitive consistency/dissonance
What are cognitive consistency/dissonance?
You're walking down a busy street deep in your own private thoughts. All of a
sudden a smiling woman jumps out of somewhere, stands in front of you, and
puts a flower in your hand. "Hello dear... isn't it a wonderful day today? I want
you to have this flower!" she says.
Now you have a beautiful flower in your hand. It's a nice gift and she seems
friendly. She begins to walk with you, telling you that you have nice, kind
eyes. She says she noticed right away that you were special and so wanted to
meet you. You forget your previous thoughts about work, bills or your own life.
Suddenly you feel good... appreciated... uplifted.
Then, in the same friendly voice and bright smile, she says, "I know you are a
good person and you can help me by giving me a something for the beautiful
flower -- right?"
What happens inside your head at that moment is cognitive dissonance.
Festinger (1957) suggested that cognitive dissonance is a feeling of
unpleasant arousal experienced when an individual simultaneously holds two
cognitions or attitudes that conflict (are inconsistent) with each other. The
arousal acts like a drive state to motivate attempts to restore cognitive
consistency and reduce dissonance.
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
Participants were involved in a very boring task (turning pegs in a board).
They were then asked to tell another participant who was waiting to do the
task tat the task was very interesting. Some participants were paid $20
dollars others $1. When they were asked to rate the task the more highly paid
participants rated the task as boring whereas the low paid said it was
enjoyable. The high paid have a reason for lying so they experience no
dissonance, whereas the low paid have to overcome their dissonance by
adjusting their assessment of the task.
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Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by:
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Changing attitudes or behaviour to eliminate the inconsistenc (the
desired goal of persuaders).
Dealing with the dissonance in another way e.g. attributing it to external
influences (Festinger and Carlsmith 1959), minimising its importance or
distracting oneself with unrelated behaviour such as drinking alcohol
(Steele et al 1981)
How can dissonance affect attitudes?
Persuaders who wish to change attitudes and so decision making should thus
aim to introduce or increase dissonance with an effort to control non-attitude
change solutions.
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For example, anti-smoking campaigns have used images of the
blackened lungs of dead people to increase the dissonance between th
inconsistent (n non-suicidal smoers) cognitions ‘I smoke’ and ‘smoking
kills’.
Additional statements such as ‘onlyy you are responsible for your own
health’ or ‘you can quit’ and presenting figures on the number of
smoking-related deaths may help prevent individuals dealing with the
dissonance by blaming other people and addiction or minimising it
(although smokers outside pubs may still go back inside and try to
drink the dissonance away!)
Evaluation
A number of studies have shown that more positive attitudes (towards initially
counter-attitudinal issues or subjects) can be induced by introducing
dissonance, for example by:
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Having people eat grasshoppers after a request from a dislikeable
person (Zimbardo et al 1963) caused more positive ratings of the
experience (‘Why would I have done that unless it was not too bad’).
Petty et al (2003) point out that, although studies have measured the
physiological arousal from dissonance (e.g. Losch and Cacioppo 1990) and
supported its subjective unpleasantness (Elliot and Devine 1994) dissonance:
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May not always be due to pure cognitive inconsistency – even proattitudinal behaviour can cause dissonance if it has unintended
negative consequences (cooper and Fazio 1984)
Is strongly affected by an individual’s self-perception and dissonance)
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The role of self-perception
Petty et al (2003) review a variety of theories on the role of self-perception in
dissonance and attitude change, but conclude the evidence for each is mixed
and they are so flexible that they are better at explaining than predicting
research result.
Self-inconsistency theory
Aronson (1969) argued dissonance stems from inconsistency between one’s
self-view and one’s actions,
e.g. ‘I am a vegetarian, but I am eating a hamburger.
Self-inconsistency theory predicts people should prefer self-consistent
feedback even if it is negative.
Self-affirmation theory
Steele (1988) suggests dissonance results from any threat to viewing oneself
as morally adequate,
e.g. I am a good person but I am doing something bad.
Self-affirmation theory predicts people prefer positive feedback even if it is
inconsistent with their self-view.
Self-standards theory
Stone and Cooper (2001) suggest dissonance results from behaviour that
breaks the normative social values or idiographic personal values that are
relevant to each individual.
Self standards theory predicts less dissonance on issues irrelevant to the
person, but more on issues applying to all in society.
Evaluation
Other self-theories have been proposed that do not require dissonance effects
to account for attitude change, e.g.:
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Self-perception theory (Bem 1965) suggests people infer their attitudes
from their behaviour so no dissonance occurs.
Impression management theory (Tedeschi et al 1971) argues that
attitude change results from the desire to appear consistent.
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