The development of the social
scientific study of persuasion
Hovland and the Yale School
Administrative research
• Lazarsfeld distinguished between critical and
administrative research by noting that
administrative research:
• Is carried out in the interest of powerful
organizations or government
• Takes the existing media system for granted
• Aims to adjust the behavior of the audience to
the interests of the study
Persuasion
• Persuasion studies are really propaganda
research that tends to take an effects
approach
– Persuasion really could be considered propaganda
– Varies from single exposure individual effects
studies to time-based campaign studies of
population change
The paradigm according to Lasswell:
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Who?
Says What?
To Whom?
In Which Channel?
With What Effect?
Development of persuasion studies
• Classic work of Hovland
Experiments on Mass Communication (1949)
Communication and Persuasion (1953)
Yale School of communication research
“Search for the magic keys”
WWII American Soldier studies
• Part of a large-scale social science investigation of
American soldiers recruited or drafted for service in
WWII
• This part especially interested in the effects of films
developed to prepare soldiers for military duty
– Why We Fight
• Directed by Frank Capra
– Documentary explanation of the buildup to, and early
years of the war
Goals of Why We Fight
• Series: Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike,
Divide and Conquer, The Battle of Britain
Films were intended to foster:
• A firm belief in the right of the cause for which we fight
• A realization that we are up against a tough job
• A determined confidence in our own ability and the abilities
of our comrades and leaders to do the job that must be done
• A feeling of confidence, insofar as possible under the
circumstance, in the integrity and fighting ability of our Allies
• A resentment, based on knowledge of the facts, against our
enemies who have made it necessary to fight
• A belief that through military victory, the political
achievement of a better world order is possible
Battle of Britain
• Men in two camps--some exposed to film,
some not
– 2100 in one camp (before/after control group)
– 900 in another camp (before/after control group)
– 1200 (after-only control group)
– Sampling by company units
• Units matched on several demographic variables
Battle of Britain
• Before and after questionnaires slightly
different
– Tried to distract men from wondering why
answering twice by writing “revised” on
questionnaire
• One week between exposure and after
measure
• Anonymity assured
Results
• Significant impact on factual knowledge
• Ex. Why weren’t the Germans “successful at
bombing British planes on the ground”?
• Ans. “because the British kept their planes
scattered at the edge of the field”
• Experimental group: 78% correct
• Control group: 21% correct
Results
• Opinions and interpretations
– Effects not as great
– “the heavy bombing attacks on Britain were an
attempt by the Nazis to . . .”
– Answer: “invade and conquer England”
• Experimental group: 58%
• Control group: 43%
Results
• Effect on general attitudes was slight
• “Do you feel that the British are doing all they
can to help win the war?”
– Experimental group 7% greater than control
– In many such cases, 2-3% positive difference was
found
• Not much evidence of positive effect
Results
• Strengthening the overall morale and
motivation of viewers
• Ineffective
– Question concerning whether trainees would
prefer military duty in the U.S. or overseas
– Experimental 41%
– Control 38%
Results
• Unconditional surrender by Nazis is important
war aim
– Experimental group 62%
– Control group 60%
Results
• 9 weeks after exposure
– Factual material forgotten
• Retained only about 50% of factual items that 1-week groups
remembered
– On 1/3 of opinion issues, long-term group showed less
change
– However, on more than half of the fifteen issues under
study, the long term group showed greater change than
the short-term group
• “Sleeper effect”
One-sided v. two-sided argument
• Radio presentation saying war would be
lengthy
• Presented either as one-sided argument or
with additional 4 minutes discussing view that
it would be short
• Before/after with control group
Results
• One-sided argument more effective with soldiers
who:
– Initially supportive of the idea that it would be a lengthy
war
– Had not completed high school
• Two-sided arguments more effective with those who
initially felt the war would be short and/or had a high
school degree or greater education
Results: Learning from films
60
50
40
30
Test Score
20
10
0
Grade School
High School
College
Hovland and the Yale School
• Set up Yale school research on persuasion
• Study the effect of:
– Source characteristics
– Message characteristics
– Order of presentation
– Psychological characteristics of audience
Source characteristics
• Credibility
– Topic: Atomic submarines
• Sources: J. Robert Oppenheimer/Pravda
– Topic: Future of Movie Theaters
• Sources: Fortune magazine/A woman movie gossip
columnist
– Greater persuasion with more credible source
• However, after 4 weeks difference had disappeared
• Source: the most famous studies of source
effects on attitude change concerned the
variable of credibility (Hovland and Weiss).
The components of credibility that were
emphasized are Expertise and
Trustworthiness.
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a. Should antihistamine drugs continue to be sold
without a prescription?
b. Can a practicable atomic-powered submarine be built
at the present time (1950)?
c. Is the steel industry to blame for the current
shortage of steel?
d. As a result of TV, will there be a decrease in the
number of movie theaters in operation by 1955?
Sources:
High Credibility
Low Credibility
a. New England Journal of A mass circulation
Biology and Medicine
monthly pictorial
magazine
b. Robert J. Oppenheimer
Pravda
c. Bulletin of National
A widely syndicated,
Resources Planning Board anti-labor, anti-New
Deal, "rightist"
newspaper columnist
d. ∆—Ô—Ú—Ù—ı—ӗ— magazine An extensively
syndicated, woman
movie-gossip columnist
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Results:
Net Change
(% of respondents moving in the direction of the communication minus
The % moving in opposite direction)
Trustworthy Sources
Untrustworthy Sources
a.
25.5
11.1
b.
36.0
0.6
c.
18.2
7.4
d.
12.9
17.2
• A communicator's trustworthiness (and
effectiveness) can be increased if he or she does
not seem to be trying to influence our opinion.
– When students thought graduate students were
unaware of their presence in an adjoining room, and
so would not try to influence them, the conversation
"overheard" caused them to change their opinions
more than if they thought the graduate students were
aware of them. (Walster and Festinger)
– Joe (“The Shoulder”) Napolitano
• (Aronson)
• At least where trivial opinions and behaviors
are concerned, if we like and can identify with
a person, his or her opinions and behaviors
will be more influential upon our own than
their content would ordinarily warrant.
• Zimbardo, Ebbesen and Maslach list the following
as variables affecting communicator credibility:
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Power
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Competence
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Trustworthiness
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Good will
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Idealism
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Similarity (with audience)
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Dynamism
Content
• Fear appeals
– Greater fear, greater effect on interest, tension
– Lesser fear, greater effect on intension to change
behavior
– Thought to invoke some sort of interference
• Drawing an explicit conclusion
– Significantly greater effect if communicator drew
an explicit conclusion
• On non-involving issues, with positively
perceived communicators, amount of opinion
change will increase with amount of change
advocated.
• On involving issues, where there is some
ambiguity on communicator credibility change
will be greatest for advocacy at moderate
distance from own position, and least for
same or very different positions.
• Aronson's points on message content are:
• 1. Some evidence favors appeals which are primarily
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emotional over primarily logical.
• 2. The more fear-arousing the appeal, the more effective it
is.
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a. The higher the self-esteem of the audience member,
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the more likely he is to be moved by high degrees
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of fear arousal. People with low opinions of
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themselves were the least likely to take immediate
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action, but after a delay, they behaved very much
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like the subjects with high self-esteem.
• Fear-arousing messages containing specific
instructions about how, when and where to
take action are much more effective than
recommendations that do not include such
instructions.
• Order of Presentation--Primacy effect is
greatest if very little time elapses between the
first and second arguments. The first
communication produces maximum
interference with the learning of the second.
• Recency effects will prevail when the audience
must make up its mind immediately after
hearing the second communication.
Message presentation
• One-sided and two-sided presentations that
USSR would not soon be able to develop a
nuclear bomb were equally effective
• However, when exposed to opposing view,
those that had earlier been presented with
two-sided version retained new opinion more
than one-sided audience
Audience factors
• Scouts who valued group membership highly
were least influenced by speaker who
criticized wood craft learning
• An excellent example of this is provided by
Kendall and Woolf's analysis of reactions to
anti-racist cartoons. The cartoons featured Mr
Biggott whose absurdly racist ideas were
intended to discredit bigotry. In fact 31% failed
to recognise that Mr Biggott was racially
prejudiced or that the cartoons were intended
to be anti-racist (Kendall & Wolff (1949) in
Curran (1990)).
• Another study referred to by Curran was conducted by
Hastorf and Cantril in 1954. Subjects were showed film of a
particularly dirty football match between Princeton and
Dartmouth and asked to log the number of infractions of the
rules by ether side. The Princeton students concluded that the
Dartmouth players committed over twice as many fouls as
their team. The Dartmouth students concluded that both
sides were about equally at fault. The authors concluded that
it is not accurate to say that different people have different
attitudes to the same thing, as in fact, 'the thing is not the
same for different people, whether the thing is a football
game, a presidential candidate, communism or spinach.' As
Curran suggests, it might be more accurate to say 'believing is
seeing' rather than 'seeing is believing'.