Attitudes, Attitude Change, and Persuasion

Attitudes, Attitude Change, and Persuasion Joshua Phelps February 14th 2005

Attitude Exercise • Demonstration of Attitude Research in Social Psychology • 15 minute questionnaire

Lecture Outline • Attitudes: What are they, Why are they important, How do we measure them?? • Attitudes and Predicting Behavior • Attitude Change and Persuasion • Compliance

What is an Attitude? • Summary evaluation of an object of thought (Bohner & Wänke, 2002) • Consists of Affective, Cognitive, and Behavioral components or evaluative responses

Examples

Why Are Attitudes So Important? • Relationship to Behavior • Personal Relationships • Politics and Public Opinion • Consumer Issues

Attitudes and Social Psychology • Individual, Interpersonal, and Societal Levels • Psykologisk Institutt Examples • Health Attitudes • Illegal Immigrants • Pro Social Attitudes

Function of Attitudes (Bohner & Wänke, 2002) • Knowledge • Higher Psychological Needs

Measuring Attitudes • Direct Measures • Self-Report • Indirect Measures • Disguised Attitude • Non-Reactive • Physiological • Implicit • https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Difficulties Measuring Attitudes • Operationalization • Demand Characteristics • Social Desirability

Attitudes and Behavior • LaPiere (1934) • Complex Relationship

Precision of Measurement Aspects of Attitude Individual Difference Situational Variables Factors Influencing Attitudes and the Prediction of Behavior

Attitude Change and Persuasion • When Does Behavior Influence Attitude(s)? • When and Why do Individuals Change their Attitudes?

Attitude Change • When a person’s evaluation of an attitude object changes from one value to another (Petty & Wegener, 1998).

General Approaches to Attitude Change • Behavior-Induced • Active Participation of the Person • Persuasion • An individual’s use of arguments to convince others to change mind or behavior

Behavior Influence on Attitudes • Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1967) • Self Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)

Cognitive Dissonance • Cognitive Dissonance: unpleasant state of arousal that motivates individuals to reduce dissonance • Three types of Cognitive Dissonance Effects • Effort-Justification • Induced Compliance • Free Choice

Persuasion • Persuasive Communication: Message intended to change an attitude and related behaviors of an audience (Hogg and Vaughan, 2005)

Factors Influencing Persuasion • Communicator • Credibility, likeability, attractiveness • Message • Repetition, Fear, Facts vs. Feelings, Framing • Republican National Convention • Audience • Self-Esteem, Gender, Individual Differences (Same as Attitude and Behavior), Age, prior beliefs, cognitive biases

Compliance • ”Superficial, public and transitory change in behavior and expressed attitudes in response to requests, coercion or group pressure.” (Hogg and Vaughan, 2005)

Tactics for Enhancing Compliance • Ingratiation • Reciprocity • Multiple Requests • Foot-in-the-Door • Door-in-the-Face • Low Ball

Cialdini’s 6 Compliance Principles • Reciprocation • Commitment/Consistency • Liking • Authority • Scarcity • Social Proof

Questions for Next Lecture • Email: joshph@psykologi.uio.no • Clarify any topic at the end of Culture Lecture (28/02/05)

Sources • Hogg & Vaughan (2005). Social Psychology (4th edition) • Bohner & Wänke (2002). Attitudes and Attitude Change • Cialdini (2001). Influence: Science and Practice

Topics I Didn’t Cover • Structure and Components of Attitudes • Cognitive Consistency • Theory of Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior • Three types of Dissonance Effects (pg 226-235) and alternatives to Dissonance. • Dual Process Models of Persuasion • Resistance to Persuasion

Attitudes, Attitude Change, and Persuasion