Lecture 6 Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is the first principle?
- Attitudes can be influenced by information that has weak relevance to attitude object
- Unimportant evidence affects our opinions e.g humour, perceived expertise and attractiveness of persuader
- Even perceiving someone is an expert can have an affect
What can Name similarity affect and what is a study relating to it?
- Can affect how people think about and respond to perceived messages
- Howard and Kerin (2011): Do people devote more attention and time to an advertisement that links and has a connection with them?
- Participants went through CV’s to see who gets interviewed for a role
- At least one CV name had the same or similar initials to a participant
- Measured how long people spent reading each application and how much they can recall information from them, specifically the ones from the matching initials and if there is extra attention.
How did they follow this up?
- They followed this up with presenting participants with an advertisement for a specific beverage with a manipulated name that matches initials with the participant.
- When participants reported attitude about the beverage they were more positive with the name similarity and when they consumed the beverage.
What is a difference variable that can moderate the name similarity affect?
Self-monitoring is the idea that people differ to the extent that they change their behaviour or persona as a function of a situation they find themselves in.
How would someone with high SM adapt compared to low SM?
- High SM: Adept at changing their behaviour across situations
- Low SM: Present themselves in the same way across situations
What did Howard and Kerin predict and find for high SM?
That high SM are more likely to be driven by ego-centric concerns, therefore putting a greater concern and emphasis onto information that has a personal link to themselves such as a brand with their name.
What did Bang et al assess and present to participants?
- Participant narcissism
- Present people with ads that were either personalised or not
- Higher narc = pay more attention to personalised ads & express more favourable attitudes to similarity based produce compared to lower narcs
What is the second principle?
- Impact of weak information can be reduced by motivation and ability to possess a correct attitude
- Motivation and ability make us more likely to focus on content of appeal = when they process more deeply
What was a study looking at the second principle?
- Manipulate ppt involvement, source expertise and argument strength with oral comprehensive exams
- Source matters with low involvement, argument strength matters with high involvement
What was the third principle?
- Attitude change is partially dependent on how the content of a persuasive message matches aspects of the recipient or their attitude
- Based on function - fulfilling needs and content - being based on cognition/affect (tailoring a message enhances an attitude)
What was an experiment looking at principle 3? (function)
- Self-monitoring and attitude functions
- High self-monitoring = adept at changing their behaviour across situations
- Low self-monitoring = present themselves in the same way across situations
- High SM = social adjustive attitudes, more persuaded by product image compared to quality (e.g how good shampoo makes hair look)
- Low SM = value-expressive attitudes, more persuaded by product quality (how clean shampoo gets your hair)
Info that matches individual creates a bigger appeal
What was a study looking at matching items to personalities?
- Matching in context of big 5 measures of personality
- People presented with mock appeals of a phone e.g one version showing a message of extraversion, and another one with neuroticism
- Big 5 predicted effectiveness of each message = linked with individual differences in motivation
What is the study of attitude content (principle 3)
- Ppts given info about fictious animal: info is either highly affective or cognitive in tone
- THEN given negative affective or cognitive information about the animal
- Attitude was then measured
- When appeal was affective = greater attitude change when original info was affective also, same effect with cognition but not as large an attitude change
What is the need for affect?
- Individual differences in motivation to approach/avoid situations to induce emotions
What is the need for cognition?
Individual differences in the general tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity
What was a study looking at affective/cognition appeal on NFA individuals?
- Presenting either an affective or cognitive appeal
- Ppts were asked to indicate what they thought about it
- If they had low Need for Affect (NFA), affective appeal changed attitude less, but high NFA had high attitude change
- If they had low Need for Cognition, had lower attitude change of the cognitive appeal and vice versa for high NFC
Do individual differences in NFA and NFC lead people to pay more attention to affective and cognitive information?
- Ppts presented with affective/cognitive passage about fake animals
- Gave ppts a test on the content, and ppts completed the NA/NC scales
- High NFA provided more correct responses when presented with affect-based appeal
- High NFC had more correct responses when it was a cognition based appeal
- Enhanced recognition of info that is consistent with individual differences
What was a study looking at scrutinising messages?
- Matching makes people more likely to scrutinise message content BUT this depends on argument quality
- Pts would receive info that mis/matched the function of their attitude but arguments were either strong or weak
- When content of appeal was matched to individual = paid more attention = when it was a strong message = more favourable but when it was weak message = less favourable
What is a study looking at the biology for it?
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex more strongly activated when persuasive content matched the ppts individual orientation
What was a study looking at NFA/C affects evaluations of other people?
- Using warmth and competence = warmth matches with affect, and competence matches with cognition
- Ppts learn about 4 targets: warm, cold, competent and incompetent and asked how much they like the target
- NFA and warm target had a strong positive correlation & NFC and competent target
What are the studies of persuasion profiling?
1) Volunteers gave info about their susceptibility to diff types of influence
- Ppts were sent diff texts reminders to reduce snacking = matched/mis their perceptions of influence
- Matched messages impacted in more changed behaviour than mismatched
2) Using peoples digital footprints to make inferences about traits e.g extraversion
- 50% more likely to purchase the advertised product online when message matched ppts putative level of extraversion
3) Using large language models to assess peoples preferences for ads
- At T1: ppts complete big 5, T2: ppt receive ad about a trip to rome either generic or created by chatgpt to focus on one of the big 5
- Personalised ads were rated as more effective and ppts were willing to spend more money
- Other types of matching need to be considered such as source-recipient
What is the fourth principle?
- Attitude change can occur without conscious awareness
- Occurs when there is a relevant goal people are motivated to pursue
What are studies looking at the fourth principle?
1) Subliminal priming and persuasion: use prime to activate goal BUT if ppt is motivated to pursue goal
- All ppts avoid food/drink for 3h before experiment, then had to taste diff cookies
- Some ppts given water, others not = creates group of people who are thirsty and not
- Subliminal exposure of thirst-related words or neutral words
- DV = how much water do they drink
- When thirsty ppts interacted with thirst prime = large consumption of water
2) Priming brand names
- Manipulate thirst, subliminal exposure of Lipton Ice or neutral word
- DV = choose between Lipton Ice or Spa Road, intentions to drink Lipton Ice
- When lipton was primed, more % choosing Lipton, and more intention to buy it WHEN THIRSTY
How to reduce these subliminal effects?
- When people have a habitual brand preference
- Forewarning eliminates the effects too
