lecture 5 - personal persuasion Flashcards
personal persuasion
- What factors determine whether we’re likely to change attitudes (and sometimes behaviour)?
What general ‘systems’ guide when persuasive communication will be effective?
history of persuasion
- Persuasive Communication: “a message advocating a particular side of an issue”
- Yale Method: (Hovland & Weiss, 1951) conditions under which people are most likely to change attitudes in response to persuasive message
- Source of Communication: attractiveness, certainty, power of source
- Quality of Communication: quality and vividness of argument
- Target Audience: proattitudinal, counterattitudinal?
A popular analytic strategy (also, e.g., Lasswell, 1948).
yale method - persuasion as learning
exposure -
attention –
comprehension –
learning aka yielding —
retention
modern persuasion psychology challenges most of these as ‘necessary elements’
Personal Persuasion
Source Attractiveness
- Celebrities often advocate for products or causes – despite being irrelevant.
- ‘Halo effect’ (good traits cluster; Chaiken, 1980)
- Effective when recipients don’t pay much attention; more conditional when people are thinking (Kang & Herr, 2006).
Personal Persuasion
Source Certainty
- Certainty is the degree to which the source expresses confidence that they are right.
- Witness testimony expressed with maximum confidence has more impact on juries (Wells, Feguson and Lindsay, 1981), even though not actually more accurate (Kassin, 1985)
Financial advisers who express confidence in forecasts more effective in influencing clients (Price & Stone, 2004)
personal persuasion - source power
diagram in notes
French and ravens 1959 - sources of power
coercive - threat of force or discomfort to recipient
expert - knowledge, skills, talent
information (1965) - access to unique info
legitimate - might be called ‘power of legitimacy’ ie power of being broadly socially validated
referent - membership in valued/ relevant groups
reward - ability to give/ deny rewards
Personal Persuasion
Argument Vividness
- Vividness: colorful, interesting, memorable. Meta-analysis: this generally works on attitudes d = .31 and especially behaviour intentions d = .39 (Blonde and Girandola, 2016)
- Identifiable victim effect: people downplay statistics (Collins et all, 1988) especially for donation.
“The death of a single Russian soldier is a tragedy. The death of a million soldiers is a statistic.”
Personal Persuasion
Argument Quality
- Clear and logical, with clarity of consequences for desired actions (Chaiken & Eagly, 1976)
- What “counts” as high quality depends on audience. (Typical psych participants are uni students – what might that entail?)
- Appeal to core values/motivations (Cacioppo, Petty & Sider, 1982), usually including “pursuit of the truth.”
Addresses counter arguments (Cacioppo, Petty & Sidera, 1987).
Personal Persuasion
Systems
- When should one factor be emphasized over another?
- Some factors effective when we’re on ‘auto-pilot’ (System I), and others when we are alert and attentive (System II).
When are we more or less likely to “elaborate” or think deeply about a persuasive message?
Personal Persuasion
Central vs Peripheral
- Elaboration Likelihood Modal (ELM)
- Elaboration is the process of generating thoughts favoring or disfavoring a possible attitude position.
- Lower elaboration is essentially “system 1”
- Higher elaboration is essentially “system 2.”
- Both can produce persuasion, but shape the influence of other variables on persuasion.
Persuasion through high elaboration produces strong attitudes (Mackie, 1987, Petty & Brinol, 2012, Petty and Wegner, 1999) which better predict behaviour, last longer, resist later pushback…
what controls elaboration likelihood aka ‘generation of message-relevant thoughts’
ability to process.
temp. distraction
persistent. intelligence
motivation to process temp having personal responsibility persistent need for cognition
table in notes
Personal Persuasion
Consequences of Variable Thinking
- Cooper et al., 1996 – imagine you’re a jurors in case where toxic substance may have caused illness – complex scientific evidence
- Expert has 1) 45 journal articles + prestigious degree, or 2) a few, and obscure degree
- Evidence testimony was 1) easy to understand or 2) complex
- Easy to follow evidence = focus on arguments over credentials = central route (System II)
Complicated plus jargon = focus on credentials over argument = peripheral route (System I)
Personal Persuasion
Consequences of Variable Thinking
- When thinking levels increase, we expect argument quality should matter more.
- This is construed as evidence of elaboration.
- Practically, this is usually done through between-participants designs.
Thus, the relative persuasion difference of Strong > Weak message conditions reveals elaboration.
Expectancy Violation à More Elaboration
- Numerous ‘surprise’ factors increase elaboration (e.g., Petty et al., 2001).
- In many contexts, counter-attitudinal messages prompt elaboration.
- Usually, we understand our current worldviews (and attitudes) as “normal” and expected.
(So: their reinforcement does not prompt elaboration.)
Expectancy Violation à More Elaboration
- Petty and Baker (1994), Study 2
- Participants received messages about a university service program.
- They either received either expected (majority of people + proattitudinal (advocate for something already believe in - expected) ; minority of people + counterattitudinal) or surprising (opposite pairings) messages.
- Side note: why would these be expected and surprising?
Surprising combination messages were processed more than expected, as shown by relative performance of strong > weak arguments. - when minority of people in favour
persuasion videos
system 1 - posistive/humour
pro-attitudinal
reinforces what you already think
system 2 -
negative
counter-attitudinal
view more surprising and disturbing to people
Biases
Selective Attention
Selective Attention (Eagly & Chaiken, 1998), Hart et al., 2009, Sweeney and Gruber, 1984): “Actively attend to information that confirms attitudes and filter out information that defies them.” (System I)
Biases
Selective Attention
- (Kleinhesselink & Edwards, 1975) ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ pot legalization students listened to message that advocates legalization
- 7 strong and difficult to refute, e.g., “Less harmful than alcohol.”
- 7 silly and easy to refute, e.g., “Make rock musicians less paranoid.”
- Listened to on headphones with static buzz. Could fiddle with button to clear up the static for 5 seconds, revealing what they wanted to hear…
- Results:
- Pro-legalization “wanted” to hear the strong argument more. Anti-legalization wanted to hear weak arguments more.
Both wanted positions reinforced
- Pro-legalization “wanted” to hear the strong argument more. Anti-legalization wanted to hear weak arguments more.
Personal Persuasion
Selective Processing
- Selective Processing: we evaluate the soundness of arguments and credibility of sources in ways that support existing beliefs and values (Kahan, 2012). This additional scrutiny often increases thoughtful attention (system 2).
- Edwards and Smith (1996): more thoughtful arguments elicited by counter-attitudinal than pro-attitudinal messages (range of issues).
Ditto and Lopez (1992): more critical thinking caused by unwanted conclusions (if it seems like an unlikeable student is intelligent, double-check!)
graph in notes
Personal Persuasion
Cognition
Good/bad attributes of X —> attitude towards X
* We’ve been assuming so far that people basically rely on their thoughts – or at least heuristic ‘thoughts’ about the qualities of the things they evaluate.
* However, this is only one part of the puzzle…
* Some stimuli provoke intense emotional reactions: e.g., my own voice research involving an aquatic mammal devouring a human being alive. (Guyer et al., 2018).
(This seems to go beyond merely communicating attributes!)
personal persuasion - affect (emotions) - direct effects
affect (emotions) - direct effects
more favourable > unfavourable emotions towards x –> attitude towards x <—- good/bad attributes of x
- Both positive and negative emotions can weigh into attitude object – when we attribute those emotions to the object (Guyer et al., 2018)
Forgas, 2013: Affect as Information - ”How do I feel about it?” Emotions can directly bias the attitude we form.
Personal Persuasion
Affect (Emotions) – Effects on Processing
- Good mood = we are safe and can go with heuristics. No need for central processing. (Petty and Brinol, 2015).
- Hedonic contingency model: maintain mood by avoiding feel-bad messages (Wegener & Petty, 1994), often reducing processing.
- Bad mood = there may be threat and can’t rely on heuristics. Need for central processing.
Hedonic contingency model: approach all information (no good mood to ‘ruin’!).
Personal Persuasion
Affect (Emotions) – Fear-Based Messages
- Negative mood used to alter health attitudes and behavours – e.g., cigarette packs – but does it work?
- Fear alone seldom works (Aronson, 2008)
Extreme fear incites defensive reactions and denial of threat (Feinberg & Willer, 2011)
Personal Persuasion
Affect (Emotions) – Fear-Based Messages
- Moderate fear + clear that information in message will counter feared consequences à central processing (Emery et al., 2014; Petty, 1995; Rogers, 1983)
- Graphic film of cancer and/or pamphlet on quitting smoking (Leventhal, Watts & Pagano, 1967).
Smoking reduces most with film and pamphlet, pamphlet alone least effective.
