Psychology in society lecture 2 Flashcards
Persuasion and marketing (41 cards)
What is persuasion?
- A change in attitude, beliefs or behaviour in response to direct messages.
- Requires internalisation
What are the 3 components of attitude?
Affect
Cognition
Behaviour
What are the two types of measurement in attitudes?
Indirect vs direct - is it obvious what is being measured?
What are the two levels of processing in attitudes?
Automatic vs deliberate
What are the two types of mental construct in attitudes?
Implicit vs explicit - does it require a distinct mental construct?
Why is it difficult to show the attitude to behaviour link in the laboratory? (3)
- there can be a gap between people’s attitudes and how they actually end up behaving so they don’t fully relate to each other
- it isn’t clear which component of the 3 component model is causing the behaviour in that situation
- it isn’t clear which attitude is driving the behaviour
Why might behaviour towards one object be controlled by the attitude toward another?
Situations are complex and involve many things that you have attitudes towards so you need to choose which attitude to act upon
What are the two types of processing in the dual process model of persuasion?
- Heuristic processing
- Systematic processing
What are the key components of heuristic processing? (3)
- Argument quality is not very important
- Less cognitively demanding
- Relies on simple rules
What are the key components of systematic processing? (3)
- Argument quality is important
- Involves effortful scrutiny of all relevant information
- More cognitively demanding
In what situations does systematic processing occur?
When:
- One has the motivation to be accurate, defend an attitude, or create a positive impression.
- One has the cognitive capacity for effortful processing.
- One tends, by personality, to need clear explanations.
How does motivation to be accurate influence the type of processing used for strong and weak arguments?
- Low motivation = heuristic processing - no difference in strong and weak arguments
- High motivation = systematic processing - so strong arguments change attitude more and weak arguments change less
How does level of distraction influence type of processing for strong and weak arguments?
- High distraction = heuristic processing - no difference in type of argument
- Low distraction = systematic processing - more convinced by strong than weak arguments
What 3 factors can affect persuasion?
- source
- message
- audience
How do source and audience interact?
- To do with power levels
- People prefer others of similar power levels
What did Dubois et al find when manipulating the power state of participants then either making them give a speech or listen to a speech - measuring their attitudes towards the speech topic and the speaker?
- A high power state audience were more persuaded by a high power communicator
- A low power state audience were more persuaded by a low power communicator
What are some characteristics of high power individuals? (3)
- less dependent on others
- more “agentic”
- focused on competence
What are some characteristics of low power individuals? (3)
- more dependent on others
-more “communal” - focused on warmth (affiliation)
What are some characteristics of high power communicators? (2)
- used more competence-related arguments
- competence-related arguments more persuasive among high-power audiences
What are some characteristics of low power communicators? (2)
- used more warmth-related arguments,
- warmth-related arguments more persuasive among low-power audiences
On what factor do message and audience interact?
Need for cognition/affect
What was found in the Lemphur study comparing an affect-oriented message and a cognition-oriented message to people with differing needs for affect and cognition?
- Found that an affect-oriented message appealed more to people high in need for affect than people low in it so changed their attitude more positively. There was no significant difference between the attitudes after hearing a cognition-oriented message for people high or low in need for affect
- The same effect was found with need for cognition - high need for cognition = more persuaded by the cognition-oriented message than low need for cognition. No significant effect of need for cognition on how affected they were by an affect-oriented message
What do the 3 levels (source, motivation and audience) interact to determine?
Level of processing
What are the two arguments for how type of processing differs when listening to a source high or low in expertise?
- High expertise = more heuristic as they are probably right
- High expertise = more systematic as they are more closely listened to
