Persuasion
You are feeling very sleeepy…
Bumper Stickers - “I’ll give up my gun when
they pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
Billboards - “Get U.S. out of the U.N.”
Magazine Ads - “Think different”
Television Ads - “Where’s the beef?”
Radio Ads - “This program is brought to you
by Exxon, working for a better environment”
T- shirts - “No Nukes”
Lawn Placards - “Vote for Rosenberg”
Mailings, etc.
300 to 400 appeals/day from marketers alone
Outline
• Attitudes
– Theories of Attitude Change
– Factors affecting attitude change
• Persuasion
– Dual-Process Model
– Factors influencing persuasion
Martin Luther King, Jr.
National Rifle Association
What are attitudes?
• ABCs of attitudes
– Affective: evaluations are based on
positive and negative emotions
associated with a target
– Behavioral: a behavioral tendency to act
in a certain manner towards the attitude
object
– Cognitive: evaluations based on beliefs
& facts
"Mmmmm... Gummi Beer."
Homer
Simpson’s
Attitudes
Toward Beer
Affective
Evaluation
Beer
Homer’s
Attitude
Toward Beer
Behavior
Regarding
Beer
Cognitions
Regarding
Beer
"Oh Lisa, you and your
stories: 'Bart is a vampire',
'Beer kills brain cells'. Now
let's go back to that
building... thingy... where
our beds and TV... is."
"The other day, I was so
desperate for a beer, I
snuck into the football
stadium and ate the dirt
under the bleachers."
Consistency in persuasion
1. Balance theory (Heider, 1946, 1958)
- we are motivated to have harmony in
our views and behaviors
- we want to agree with people we like a
disagree with those we don’t
Think of someone you respect / like. What if
they expressed an opinion you opposed?
1. Could change your feelings for the person
2. Could change your opinion on the issue
If you like Tiger, shouldn’t you like the car?
Balance Theory
Balanced Situations
+
Michelle
Teacher
+
-
Michelle
+
Teacher
-
Legalized
abortion
+
Legalized
abortion
+
-
Michelle
Teacher
Michelle
Teacher
-
-
+
-
Legalized
abortion
Legalized
abortion
Balance Theory
Imbalanced Situations
-
Michelle
Teacher
+
+
Michelle
+
Teacher
-
Legalized
abortion
+
Legalized
abortion
+
-
Michelle
Teacher
Michelle
Teacher
+
-
-
-
Legalized
abortion
Legalized
abortion
Consistency in persuasion
2. Cognitive dissonance theory
- we will work to resolve inconsistencies
in our beliefs and actions when they
matter to us
- changing a behavior can change an
attitude (and vice versa)
Changes in attitudes occur primarily when
we perceive justification – e.g., free will
in determining our (inconsistent) actions
Ready to turn some pegs??
• Students spent hour
turning pegs in holes
(really boring)
• Paid either $1 or $20
• Who enjoyed the task
more (when asked later)?
• Why $1 people  $20
was justification enough,
$1 wasn’t – I must have
really liked turning pegs!
(Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
Ratings of task enjoyment
25
20
15
10
5
0
No lie
$20 lie
$1 lie
Insufficient justification
Attitude change happens when one freely performs an attitude-discrepant
act for an inadequate reward.
Initiation
Dissonance
begins with:
Amplification
More dissonance
arises when the
action or decision:
Motivation
Reduction
Dissonance is
Dissonance is
experienced as: reduced through:
is seen as freely
chosen.
action
or
decision
that
conflicts
w/ impt.
aspect of
self.
Can’t be justified
as due to strong
reward or threat
produces negative
consequences that
were foreseeable
cannot be
withdrawn
unpleasant
arousal.
change
designed to
remove the
unpleasant
arousal.
What affects how consistent we are?
• Arousal
– Tranquilizers cause people to not change their
opinions
• Preference for consistency
• Consequences
– More impact of your behavior = more likely
you will be to change your attitudes
• Salience of inconsistency
Consistent with what?
Individualist 
“me” focused
Collectivist 
group focused
Persuasion  change in private attitude or
belief as a result of receiving a message
Dual Process Model
- takes into account two ways attitude
change takes place
- e.g., central vs. peripheral processing,
systematic vs. heuristic processing, etc.
Certain information is processed more
deeply than other info
Persuasion
Attempt
Audience
Factors
Processing
Approach
Persuasion
Outcome
High
motivation
and ability to
think about
the message
Deep processing,
focused on the quality
of the message
arguments.
Lasting
change that
resists fading
and
counterattack
Low
motivation
or ability to
think about
the message
Superficial
processing, focused
on surface features,
e.g.: communicator’s
attractiveness or
number of arguments
Temporary
change that
that is
susceptible to
fading and
counterattack
Message
“Retirement planning can
be a way to stay ahead of
the game.”
Cris Carter
Schwab Investor
Central or
Peripheral?
What affects level of processing?
• Personal relevance
• Need for cognition
• Ability
- amount of information, cognitive capacity,
format of message (medium, who it’s
given by, etc.)
Who
says...
What...
By what
means...
To whom?
Channel
Communicator
• spoken
• Credibility
• written
• expertise
• audio
• trustworthiness
•Video
• Attractiveness
Message content
Audience
• Reason vs. emotion
•Need for Cognition
• Discrepancy
• One vs. two-sided
Who says? --- The
communicator
Communicator
• Credibility
• expertise
•Credibility: believability
• e.g., Hovland & Weiss (1951)
• trustworthiness
• Attractiveness
• expertise: the amount of knowledge the source is assumed to have
• trustworthiness: the perceived intention of the communicator to deceive.
• e.g., Eagly and others (1978)
•Perceived expertise
• Begin by saying things the audience agrees with
• Be introduced as someone knowledgeable on the topic
• Speak confidently (no stuttering), and quickly
Class Demonstration
• Message on Phosphate containing
detergents
– Source
• Government Agency
• Soap Company
Who says? --- The
communicator
• Attractiveness: having qualities that appeal to an audience
• physical appeal
• likeability
• perceived similarity
• surface characteristics (Dembroski and others, 1978)
• attitudes & values
• Persuasive on matters of subjective preference (e.g.,
aspirin, soft drinks)
•Communicator characteristics less relevant when the subject
matter is important to participants
Petty and others (1981)
Agreement with the message
Strong argument
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
Low
Low personal
relevance
High
prestige of speaker
Weak argument
Low
High
High personal
relevance
The Sleeper Effect
(Hovland & Weiss, 1951)
% attitude change
25
20
Expert source
15
10
5
0
Nonexpert source
Immediate
Time interval
Four weeks
What is said?
Message content
• Reason vs. emotion
• Discrepancy
• One vs. two-sided
1. Is a carefully reasoned message more persuasive, or
one that arouses emotion?
2. Will you be more persuasive by advocating an extreme
point of view, or by advocating a moderate position?
3. Should your message be one-sided, or should it
acknowledge two points of view?
1. Is a carefully reasoned message more persuasive, or one that
arouses emotion?
Reading with no food
90
Eating while reading
75
60
45
30
15
0
Cancer
Cure
Armed
Forces
Moon Trip
3-D
Movies
(Dabbs & Janis, 1965)
2. Extreme or moderate point of view?
Discrepancy interacts with communicator credibility
Agnes Stearns
T.S. Eliot
5
4
Opinion change
3
2
1
0
Small
Medium
Large
Discrepancy
(Aronson et al., 1963)
3. One-sided or Two-sided? The interaction of initial
opinion with one- versus two-sidedness
Initially opposed
Opinion change
Initially agreed
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
One-sided
Two-sided
The message
(Hovland et al., 1949)
The Channel of Communication
Message difficulty & transmission type (Chaiken & Eagly, 1978)
Easy message
Opinion change
Difficult message
5
Channel
4
• spoken
• written
3
• audio
•Video
2
Written
Audio Tape
Video Tape
Channel type
(Chaiken & Eagly, 1978)
Audience Effects: Need for
Cognition Scale
1 = not at all like me
2 = somewhat unlike me
Audience
3 = uncertain
•Need for Cognition
4 = somewhat like me
5 = very much like me
1. I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems
2. Thinking is not my idea of fun
3. The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me
4. I like tasks that require little thought once I've learned them
5. I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they do not affect me
personally
6. It's enough for me that something gets the job done; I don't care how or why it
works
7. I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles that I must solve
8. I only think as hard as I have to.
Class Demonstration
• Compute need for cognition score
– Add up scores (reverse score 4 and 6)
• Compute scores for essay evaluations
– Add up scores
• On a piece of paper indicate:
– Need for cognition score:
– Essay A:
– Essay B:
Positivity of message evaluation
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Strong
arguments
Weak
arguments
Low NC
High NC
Need for cognition
(Cacioppo et al., 1973)