Lecture 3: Cognitive influences on attitudes

Question 1

How many cognitive models are there?

Answer 1

5 models:
1. The Yale Model – WW2
3. McGuire’s Information-Processing Paradigm
3. - Elaboration Likelihood Model - Petty & Cacioppo, 1986 (DUAL-PROCESS MODEL)
4. - Heuristic-Systematic Model - Chaiken et al., 1989 (DUAL-PROCESS MODEL)
5. Meta-Cognitive Model (Petty et al. 2007)

Question 2

What is the Yale model? (Hovland, 1953)

Answer 2

Effective approach to changing attitudes & behaviours in response to messages when communications are made to persuade individuals

“Who says what to whom with what effect?”
* Laswell (1948, p. 37)
- consider: WHO (influential variables), WHAT & WHOM (audience)

3 stage process:
Attention (recipient must attend to the information) > Comprehension (recipient must understand the message) > Acceptance (get people to accept it + change their view)

The basic model of this approach can be described as “who said what to whom”: the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience
According to this approach, many factors affect each component of a persuasive communication
The credibility and attractiveness of the communicator (source), the quality and sincerity of the message (nature of the communication), and the attention, intelligence and age of the audience (nature of the audience) can influence an audience’s attitude change

Question 3

Strengths of the Yale model

Answer 3

• Initial empirical attempt to document the range of factors that can influence how attitudes are formed and changed
• Laid the foundation for further/future work
• Led to important “real world” changes in attitudes and behaviour– real world application

Question 4

Limitations of the Yale model

Answer 4

• Useful descriptive beginning, but what are the processes through which incentives elicit change or not?

– WHAT is the process through that X influences Y? (Less concerned in HOW something occurs)

• Interactions among source, message, and audience factors (e.g., expertise with personally relevant message)?

Question 5

What is McGuire’s Information-Processing Paradigm?

Answer 5

Further broke down the Attend → Comprehend → Accept path (Yale model)

6 steps:
Presentation - presented to ppt
Attention- Ppt must attend to info
Comprehension- Must understand
Attitude change/Yielding - taking on/accepting info
Retention - Remember info
Behaviour - How does this change their attitudes

Reception-Yielding Model – new idea:
- Compensation Principle: Opposing effects on reception and yielding should produce curvilinear effects on persuasion.
- Curving linear effect – maximum likelihood of successfully navigating these stages = moderate level of Self esteem – somewhat likely to receive + yield the message content
- high Self Esteem = less likely to yield (take on/accept info)
What does curved linear mean?
- Curvilinear Relationship is a type of relationship between two variables where as one variable increases, so does the other variable, but only up to a certain point, after which, as one variable continues to increase, the other decreases.

Question 6

What are the processing stages in McGuire’s Information-Processing Paradigm?

Answer 6

Processing stages:
1. Presentation – information must be presented
2. Attention - information must be attended to
3. Comprehension – recipient must be amenable to the message in this persuasive appeal
4. Attitude change/Yielding
5. Attitude Retention – must be able to retain
6. Behaviour
For attitudes to elicit change in behaviour, must successfully navigate through all these steps ^

• Tried to quantify likelihood of achieving behaviour change as a function of extent to which these individual stages get navigated

Some variables of message recipient that might work in opposite ways in different stages

Question 7

Strengths of McGuire’s Information-Processing Paradigm

Answer 7

Offered a more detailed consideration of stages
Showed how individual differences affect attitude change

Question 8

Limitations of McGuire’s Information-Processing Paradigm

Answer 8

• paradigm said less about how message acceptance would emerge (the process)
• Subsequent work oncognitive responses – after presented persuasive information to message recipient it does not explain what the content of their thoughts about this persuasive message?

Question 9

What are the dual process models?: Similarities + differences

Answer 9

• Both models describe 2 “routes” to persuasion
• ELM + HSM

Share emphasis on: motivation is high when people receiving the message have goals that are relevant to the message or when they have personality that makes them enjoy effortful thinking – both HSM + ELM

differences - models differ in howthey describe the variables that influence attitudes when motivation + ability to process information are low
Motives for attitude: Being correct (ELM) vs. additional motives (HSM)

Question 10

What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model?

Answer 10

Petty & Cacioppo, 1986: Theory of persuasion that proposes that people can be persuaded in one of two ways

High Elaboration: Weigh up information carefully before making your decision
Low Elaboration: Don’t put much thought in
3 Factors that determine if your elaboration is high: Motivation, opportunity, ability

ELM – 1) central route (requires individual to pay close attention to content) + 2) peripheral route (requires less thought)

Question 11

What are the 7 postulates/core aspects of the ELM?

Answer 11

1. People are motivated to hold correct attitudes.
2. The amount and nature of issue-relevantelaborationcan vary (motivation vary from low to high)
3. Variables can affect attitudes by serving as arguments, simple cues, or factors that affect the nature and amount of elaboration – variables can act in different ways (can depend on salience)
4. The motivation to process a message objectively elicitsargument scrutiny
5. The motivation and ability to process arguments leads to an increased reliance on content of the argument + less on the cues.
6. Biased processing leads to biased issue-relevant thoughts.
7. Elaborate processing causes new, strong attitudes

Question 12

Petty et al. (1981) study: variables + procedure – one of the 1st demonstrations testing aspects of the ELM

Answer 12

• USA Uni students presented with information talking about why the Uni should move to oral comprehensive exams
• manipulated 3 IV’s: personal relevance (occur this year/in 10 yrs), source expertise (expert/non-expert) + message strength/quality of arguments (strong/weak)

Question 13

Petty et al. (1981) RESULTS (ELM)

Answer 13

Support for the ELM - attitude should be influenced by the strength of the message when the issue is personally relevant BUT attitude influenced by source expertise when the issue is irrelevant

• Under high relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the quality of the argument message (more thoughtful evaluation)
  
  • changes induced by central route - enduring + predictive of subsequent behaviour
• Under low relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the expertise of the source
  
  • changes induced by peripheral route - more ephemeral (short lasting) + less predictive of behaviour

Question 14

What did Priester & Petty (2003) do? Procedure

Answer 14

2 figure skaters
1 of them – Nancy Kerrigan - got hit on the knee with a pole 3 weeks before championships which determined who went to Olympics – found out that there was involvement from the other skater, Harding

Experiment – advertisement for roller blades
either strong OR weak arguments about whether to buy the roller blades

Advert endorsed by trustworthy source (Kerrigan) OR untrustworthy source (Harding)

Question 15

Priester & Petty (2003) RESULTS

Answer 15

FOUND: interaction – argument quality effect larger when Harding (untrustworthy) was the source than if Kerrigan (trustworthy)

UNTRUSTWORTHY - LOOKED AT ARGUMENT QUALITY
- When source trustworthiness was low, recipients engaged in greater product elaboration than when source trustworthiness was high

• attitudes tended to be influenced by how trustworthy recipients perceived the source

-Although under low elaboration you don’t normally scrutinize but b/c the source was untrustworthy ppts did

Question 16

Limitations of ELM

Answer 16

• What makes messages strong? – this is under considered
• Do we only seek “correct” attitudes? – does not consider other elements
  -Doesn’t tell you when to use a particular route of persuasion
• Doesn’t explain how to persuade a person with low elaboration

Question 17

What is the Heuristic-Systematic Model?

Answer 17

Chaiken et al., 1989
HSM – 1) systematic processing (carefully scrutinise content - more effort) + 2) heuristic processing (less effort)

• people may desire either: 1) a correct attitude, 2) an attitude that expresses their values OR 3) attitude that helps their social image.
• Least effort & sufficiency principles: people use as much cognitive effort as is necessary to reach their desired attitudinal goal depending on confidence that desired goal has been achieved while processing information
• If personal relevance (motivation) is high, the systematic mode will be used.
• If personal relevance is low, the heuristic mode will be used.

Question 18

Limitations of HSM

Answer 18

• Are the 3 attitudinal motives only the motives that play a role? E.g., Correctness, Social Status, Values)
  -inability to define the specific motivations of persuasion,
• Does the model’s increased complexity increase its predictive power over the ELM? less parsimonious than ELM

Question 19

What is the Meta-Cognitive Model (Petty et al. 2007)?

Answer 19

-A model postulating that people associate an attitude object not only with positive and negative evaluations but also with true or false assessments known as validity tags
- “Thoughts about thoughts”: confidence + validity
- Self-validation hypothesis → post-message beliefs are more likely to impact attitudes when they are held with greater confidence
(confidence in one’s thoughts can increase or decrease persuasion depending on the nature of the thoughts people generate)

An attitude can be described as univalent (either positive or negative associations exist), explicitly ambivalent (both positive and negative associations exist & are endorsed), or implicitly ambivalent (conflicting positive and negative associations of an attitude object)

Question 20

What is explicit-implicit attitudinal ambivalence? (Meta-Cognitive Model)

Answer 20

• Objects can be linked in memory with positive and negative evaluations
• Explicit (direct) method – need to think about what their attitude is when reporting it + might not be the case with implicit method
  -Sometimes people can be ambivalent without recognizing it explicitly

The greater the amount of E-I ambivalence/dissonance, the deeper ppts. should process relevant information to help reduce ambivalence

Question 21

Windsor-Shellard & Haddock (2014) study (Meta-Cognitive Model)

Answer 21

Measured attitudes on sexual orientation (SO)

Q’s:
- Does greater E-I SO ambivalence impact processing of relevant information?
- Does greater E-I ambivalence elicit greater deliberation about one’s own sexuality?

Self-reported heterosexual Ps
1) Asked to respond to direct questions related to sexual orientation/preference: EXPLICIT MEASURE OF SO
2) Personalised IAT on sexual orientation: IMPLICIT MEASURE OF SO

2 blocks:
1) Straight or me/gay or not me = congruent blocks
2) Gay or me/straight or not me = incongruent blocks

Question 22

Windsor-Shellard & Haddock (2014) RESULTS

Answer 22

Ps with greater E-I ambivalence (relative ambivalence) took longer to deliberate about direct questions about their sexuality

Question 23

Application of Windsor-Shellard & Haddock (2014) study

Answer 23

Application: people might have these slightly differential favourable attitudes about same topic as a function of whether they are measured implicitly or explicitly – influence how deeply they process relevant information

Question 24

What is implicit ambivalence?

Answer 24

This means sometimes people can be ambivalent without recognizing it explicitly
Implicit ambivalence involves holding strong positive and negative implicit evaluations toward the same

Question 25

Haddock et al. (2017) study (Meta-Cognitive Model)

Answer 25

• Does E-I ambivalence always lead to negative - Does being mindful buffer the effects of ambivalence on negative affect?

Ppts.:
- Self-reported gay or lesbian Ps
- Completed explicit & implicit measures of SO
- Measure of general affect (PANAS)
- Measure of trait mindfulness (MAAS) (could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until sometime later)

Question 26

Haddock et al. (2017) FINDINGS

Answer 26

• Mindful individuals - greater comfort holding ambivalent views and reported feeling ambivalent less often & responded more positively to feelings of uncertainty (greater comfort).
• Mindful individuals had lower objective + subjective ambivalence across a range of attitude objects but did not differ in attitude valence, extremity, positivity/negativity, strength, or the need to evaluate.
• Link between greater ambivalence and negative affect was buffered by mindfulness -highly mindful individuals showed equally positive levels of affect independent of their amount of ambivalence, BUT less mindful individuals reported more negative affect under conditions of high (vs. low) ambivalence

Question 27

Critical Eval of Meta Cognitive Model (Petty et al., 2006)

Answer 27

May not be valid in real life
Explicit measures may elicit bias
How can we know if their attitude valence has actually changed