ATTITUDES AND PERSUASION

Activity  Raise your hands if you agree  Our country needs to address the growing number of homeless persons.  It is a good idea to floss your teeth daily.  The right to vote is one of the most valuable rights of Korean citizens.  Eating a variety of foods each day, including five or more servings of fruits and vegetables, contributes to good health.

Now answer yes/no  Do you personally do anything to help the homeless (e.g., volunteer at a homeless shelter or donate money)?  Do you floss your teeth everyday?  Did you vote in the last election for which you were eligible?  Do you regularly eat five servings of fruits and vegetables each day?

Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1954)  Conflict between our view of ourselves and a thought or behavior  When we surprise ourselves, feel stupid, or feel guilty  Feel dissonance (like physiological arousal)  Motivated to  Change behavior  Justify the behavior  Decrease how important the discrepancy is

Cognitive dissonance examples   /bad-credit /bad-credit  /disscorner.html /disscorner.html

Justifications  Justify behavior  Hypocrisy paradigm  Justify choice  In Japan, only happens when others are watching  Justify effort  Cultural differences

Even monkeys show cognitive dissonance  Monkeys and M&Ms  4 year old children

Cognitive dissonance  Shuts down the reasoning part of the brain  More emotional

Attitudes  An enduring disposition toward an object or issue  Can be  Cognitive  Affective  Both

Measurement of attitudes  Self-report  Observation  Implicit attitude test  Other indirect tests

Where do we get our attitudes?  Genetics  From others  Prior experience  From how they relate to other attitudes  Mere exposure

Tesser, A. (1993). The importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of attitudes. Psychological Review, 100(1), doi: / X © 1993 American Psychological Association

Tesser, A. (1993). The importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of attitudes. Psychological Review, 100(1), doi: / X © 1993 American Psychological Association

Attitude change  Yale attitude change approach  Source effects  Message effects  Audience effects

Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984)  Two routes to persuasion:  Central route Motivated and able to process message Message is relevant Use strong arguments Longer lasting change  Peripheral route Not motivated or relevant Use peripheral cues like number of arguments, attractiveness of source, credibility of source

Strong vs. weak arguments htm Need for cognition scale:

Draw expected results Low relevance or low need for cognition High relevance or high need for cognition

Fear appeals  Needs to be moderate amount of fear so people pay attention  Need to give recommendations on how to reduce the fear   ette.labels/index.html?on.cnn=2 ette.labels/index.html?on.cnn=2  Other examples?

Fear ad

Subtle persuasion  Product placements in tv shows  Video games:  Other examples?  Subliminal ads  Doesn’t work in everyday life  Can have an effect in lab

Subliminal examples

More “central route” approaches  Two-sided messages can be effective if you give good counterarguments.

Cultural effects  It’s easy when you have the right shoes.  Shoes for your family  American ads: individuality, self-improvement, benefits for me  Korean ads: family, concerns about others, benefits for one’s social group

Sample ads      

Attitudes and behavior  Remember the LaPiere study from the first reading?  Attitudes that are accessible predict spontaneous behaviors

Theory of planned behavior  l-link l-link