Lecture 6: Principles of attitude change

Question 1

What are the Basic principles in how attitudes are shaped?

Answer 1

= Broad themes that cut across CAB components and attitude shaping

These principles are not laws of attitude change and formation, nor are they completely correct or valid under all circumstances BUT can be considered useful guidelines that can help us understand basic processes in attitude change

x4 principles

Question 2

What is Principle 1 + brief summary?

Answer 2

PRINCIPLE 1: Attitudes can be influenced by information that has weak relevance to the attitude object

attitudes are often influenced by variables that we would regard as being irrational e.g, Humour, source expertise

continuum - from high to low relevance

Our attitudes might make us incorrect as an indirect way of promoting our social relationships with others

ID + cultural differences in what we believe to be relevant information

Question 3

Do we devote more attention to appeals where characteristics are more similar to ourselves or more different and WHY?

Answer 3

In general, people have a positive view of themselves + tend to have positive feelings about anything that is loosely associated with themselves – e.g., name letters + birthday number – devote more attention to appeals where the objects name has similarities to their own – a form of implicit egotism or unconscious self enhancement – Pelham et al. (2002)

Question 4

What did Howard & Kerin (2011) show? PRINCIPLE 1

Answer 4

Given role of scrutinising job applications
FOUND: Ps spent more time reading (= devote more attention to) (and recalled more information from) a person’s CV when the target (candidate) shared same first letter in first and last name as ppts . notion of MATCHING

SELF MONITORING

Question 5

What did Howard & Kerin (2011) study on labels on drinks show? PRINCIPLE 1

Answer 5

• Presented ppts. with a cranberry juice – label was ‘V Zack family’
• Ps had more favourable attitudes toward (and consumed more of) a beverage with enhanced name similarity on label
• Tried more of the beverage if name was similar - behaviour measure
• Devote more attention in also have downstream type of effect

Question 6

Howard & Kerin (2011) study - self-monitoring effect? PRINCIPLE 1

Answer 6

• Is the name-similarity effect stronger among individuals high in self-monitoring?
• High SMs → adapt at changing their behaviour across situations
• Low SMs → present themselves in the same way across situations
• high SM driven more by egocentric concerns, should give greater weight to name-based brand
• Larger effect among high SMs – showed this effect of feeling positively about a brand that shared a similar name

Question 7

what did Bang et al. (2019) show? PRINCIPLE 1

Answer 7

Individuals higher in narcissism ….
* paid greater attention to personalized ads (name similarity) and
* expressed more favourable attitudes toward the relevant product
….. compared to individuals lower in narcissism

Question 8

What is principle 2 + brief summary?

Answer 8

PRINCIPLE 2: The impact of weak information can be reduced by the motivation and ability to possess a correct attitude

• relative impact of weak information can be reduced when people possess high motivation + ability to form a correct attitude, except when the relevant information Is difficult to identify

Motivation and ability make us more likely to focus on content of appeal/persuasive information presented, rather than cues that are less relevance

Question 9

ELM/HSM: PRINCIPLE 2

Answer 9

ELM - people who are motivated and able can attempt to correct for the potential impact of extraneous information on their attitudes + beliefs

HSM - predicts that people use less relevant persuasive information when they are highly motivated to form a correct attitude and all of the available related information is ambiguous or contradictory (less relevant information becomes more relevant in presence of contradictory information - effect focused on a source characteristic that has relevance e.g, credibility)

Question 10

MODE model: PRINCIPLE 2

Answer 10

Unimodal model also highlights importance of motivation + ability - suggest that deeper consideration of information may cause relevant information to override the impact of irrelevant information particularly when irrelevant information is difficult to process

Question 11

What did Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981) show?: PRINCIPLE 2

Answer 11

Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman (1981)
* Manipulate participant involvement, source expertise, and argument strength
* Oral comprehensive exams
- Whether oral comprehensive exams might come to your university next year vs. 10 years from now – influence you or not
- Read strong or weak arguments allegedly written by expert source or non-expert source
- Impact of attitudes as function of being involved

• Low involvement - impact in 10 years – source played larger role
• Higher involvement – people scrutinise information more carefully strength of argument has larger impact

SOURCE MATTERS WITH LOW INVOLVEMENT
ARGUMENT STRENGTH MATTERS WITH HIGH INVOLVEMENT

Question 12

What is principle 3 + brief summary?

Answer 12

PRINCIPLE 3: Attitude change is partially dependent upon how the content of a persuasive message MATCHES aspects of the recipient and/or the recipient’s attitude

Question 13

What did Snyder & DeBono (1985) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Snyder - Shampoo

Answer 13

• High SMs → more likely to hold social adjustive attitudes, more persuaded by product image in advertising
  (social adjustive attitudes: Hold attitude because people who are important to us hold a particular attitude for ease/value persons opinion (regard them highly))
• Low SMs → more likely to hold value-expressive attitudes, more persuaded by appeals that focus on product quality (e.g., how clean shampoo gets your hair)
• matched appeals most persuasive – leading to more positive attitudes

See interaction – impact of appeal was dependent on whether someone was high or low on SM
More persuaded/positive when received the advertisement focussed on image than quality for high SM + opposite for those low in SM

Question 14

What did Hirsh et al. (2012) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 14

Matched the content of 5 big personality traits e.g, this phone is super exciting (Extraversion)
Big 5 (ENACO) predicted effectiveness of each message frame
Big 5 linked with individual differences in motivation (which impact attitude functions)

Question 15

What did Fabrigar & Petty (1999) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 15

looked at context of attitude content
* 1st phase – create an attitude in you either based on affect OR cognition: Ps presented with positive affective OR cognitive information about a fictitious animal: the “lemphur”
– Measure attitude

• 2nd phase: whether an appeal that matches an appeal leads to more attitude change than mismatched information: Subsequently, they were given additional negative affective OR cognitive information about the animal
  – Some people have a match + some people have a mismatch
  – Measure attitude

FOUND: Attitudes based on affect seem to be more receptive to an appeal that is based on affect compared to appeal based on cognition – MATCHING EFFECT (BUT not sig. for cognition based appeal)

Question 16

Underlying individual difference measures?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 16

• Need for Affect (NFA) = ID in the motivation to approach/avoid situations that induce emotion
• Need for Cognition (NFC) = ID in the general tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity – how much people like thinking

Question 17

What does Haddock, Maio, et al. (2008) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 17

Ppts. given either:
1. Affective appeal - Another individual’s positive encounter with a lemphur
2. Cognitive appeal - Encyclopedia style excerpt with positive factual information

• sig. difference in favourability dependent on those high or low need for affect
• those high in NFA had positive attitude when reading affect compared to those low in NFS
• match = more positive
• need for cognition predicted cog. appeal, not affect appeal

Question 18

Why does this matching effect occur? NFC + NFA (Haddock et al., 2006)

Answer 18

• Ps presented with affective or cognitive passage about the lemphur – randomly assigned to positive cog. OR positive affective information
  Test phase – MCQs based on information contained in the appeal
• Tested on the content of the passage
• If reading more carefully, should perform better on recall test
• showed people devoted more attention to information that spoke to their language
• those who read affect-based appeal, higher NFA = more questions answered correctly – sig. pos. correlation between where scored for NFA + how much info they recalled from content of that message
• cog. appeal condition = no relationship between NFA + …
• supportive of MATCHING PERSPECTIVE

NFA and NFC associated with recognition of affective and cognitive information

Question 19

What did Petty and Wegener (1998) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 19

• People presented persuasive appeal – some ppts. that matched function of attitude + others were given mismatched information – IV 1
• Whether people received strong arguments about topic OR weak – IV 2
• Effect of strength of message was stronger when was this match compared to when there was not
• Implies a matched message does not always elicit more positive attitudes IF message is weak - can backfire if this is the case
  o Weak arguments are going to have negative detrimental effect

Question 20

What did Aquino et al. (2020) show about brain regions?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 20

• Ventromedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and cerebellum are more strongly activated when persuasive content matched the recipient’s individual affective or cognitive orientation.

Question 21

What did Aquino, Haddock et al. (2016) show?: PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 21

• Looked at NFA, NFC - looked at information that we think is most relevant when evaluating other people
• Person perception assessment uses: WARMTH – is a target potentially harmful vs helpful? (FRIENDLY?) → map this to AFFECT
• or uses COMPETENCE – does the target have the capability to carry out intentions? (ABILITY?) → COGNITION
• ID in NFA: Are high NFAs more influenced by WARM attributes?
• ID in NFC: Are high NFCs more influenced by COMPETENCE attributes?

Study procedure:
1. 2 people presented to ppts: described in different ways via warmth + competence:
2. Then asked how much they think they would like this person…

FOUND positive correlation between NFA + liked warm target
o NFC showed no correlation with evaluations with target described solely with warmth dimension
FOUND Opposite effect for component target + NFC

Question 22

What does matching OUTSIDE the lab look like - Kaptein et al. (2012): PRINCIPLE 3

Answer 22

• Volunteers provided information about their susceptibility to different types of social influence – freely told researchers
• Ps were then sent different types of text message reminders about reducing their snacking behavior → matched OR mismatched to Ps’ perceptions of their susceptibility to different types of influence
• matched text messages were successful in reducing snacking behavior compared to mismatched
• notion that trailering online messaging and information they were more likely to change behaviour consistent with the content of information

Question 23

What does matching OUTSIDE the lab look like - Matz et al. (2017): PRINCIPLE 3

Matz - Matched

Answer 23

• used Facebook likes to infer users’ extraversion…
• ads were then placed on Facebook page that matched or mismatched their status on this personality attribute
• would an appeal that matched a person’s introversion or extraversion as deemed through this exercise, lead to more persuasion?
• FOUND: 50% more likely to purchase the advertised product online when message matched Ps’ putative level of extraversion.

Question 24

What is principle 4 + brief summary?

Answer 24

PRINCIPLE 4: Attitude change can occur without conscious awareness of the information provided - influenced by the unknown

Attitudes may be produced by implicit or expect processing

Question 25

What did Strahan et al. (2002) show?: PRINCIPLE 4

Answer 25

Subliminal cues may affect attitudes + behaviour when people are experiencing a need that is relevant to the cue/relevant goal we’re motivated to persue

Using a subliminal activator of attitude functions-Strahan et al (2002): after having avoided food and drink for 3 hours before an experiment, all participants completed a taste test on 2 types of cookies. Some were offered water + others were not. Then shown a quick subminimal flashes of either thirst-related or neutral words.
◦	Thirsty participants who had also been primed with thirst-related words drank significantly more than all other participants
◦	Support for function-matching principle 4, but using a subminimal activator for attitude function

Question 26

What did Karremans et al. (2006) show?: PRINCIPLE 4

Answer 26

Used computer to flash the phrase ‘Lipton ice’ for 23 milliseconds. Before and after flash, a string of Xs were shown. Participants were asked to indicate whether they would choose Lipton ice or Spa Rood if the were offered the drinks.
* Experiment 1: thirsty participants were more likely to choose Lipton ice is this beverage had be subliminally primed before the choice than if a control work had been used as the prime
* Non-thirsty participants did not show this effect
* Experiment 2: participants who has previously been given a salty snack (to induce thirst) were more likely to show the effects than participants who had not
◦ Both suggest that subliminal cues can affect attitudes and behaviour when people are experiencing a need that is relevant to the cue

Question 27

What did Vermigweren et al., (2011) show?: PRINCIPLE 4 - how to reduce these effects?

Answer 27

HABITUAL BRAND PREFERENCE: people who had no strong habit or preference for a particular beverage, priming a particular brand had a significant effect on subsequent preferences only when people were thirsty.
When participants had a strong habit or preference for a particular beverage, priming them with their preferred brand led them to select that brand regardless of if they were thirsty or not

Question 28

What did Vermigweren et al., (2013) show?: PRINCIPLE 4 - how to reduce these effects?

Answer 28

FOREWARNING: about the presence of subliminal ads would minimise the effects on attitudes and behaviour
* Warned half participants that they would be receiving a subliminal ads and did not warn the rest. Participants were primed and asked to choose between the primed bran and another brand.
▪ Non-warned participants- subliminal primes influenced participants attitudes
▪ Forewarning participants- eliminated the effect