Social Psychology Chapter 7

What determines whether people take the central versus the peripheral route to persuasion?

the key is motivation and ability to pay attention to the facts

There three components of attitudes

1) cognitive 2) affective 3) behavioral

What is the behavioral component of attitude?

how people act toward the attitude object

When trying to decide what our attitude is about something, we often rely on

how we feel

Intentions are based on three things

1) attitudes toward the specific behavior 2) their subjective norms 3) their perceived behavioral controls

Considering how many ways you can be persuaded, how can you make sure you don't turn into a quivering mess of constantly changing opionion

1) attitude inoculation 2) being alert to product placement 3) resisting peer pressure

If affectively based attitudes come from so many sources, we can group them into one family, why?

1) do not result from rational examination of the issue 2) are not governed by logic 3) are often linked to values

Where do attitudes come from?

1) there seems to be a genetic link 2) social experiences play a role

If affectively based attitudes don't come from examining facts, where do they come from?

1) values (religion or moral beliefs) 2) sensory reactions (liking the taste of chocolate) 3) aesthetic reactions (admiring a painting or car) 4) and conditioning

An example of an affectively based attitude

I just really like that car even though it has terrible gas mileage and it has awful safety ratings. I am so attracted to this person even though she has 4 kids from 4 different men

To effect real change, what kind of justification is needed?

Internal justificiation

When does accessibility matter?

When we have to act on the spot, without time to think it over

When do fear arousing appeals fail?

When you don't show people how to change or when you overwhelm with strong of a message.

Can attitudes change?

Yes

Can a person have more than one opinion on something?

Yes, if they have one attitude based in childhood experience (implicit) and one based on recent experience (explicit)

When do we know that we are dealing with a behaviorally based attitude?

You ask someone a question, or you are asked a question, and the answer is based on a behavior. For example, you ask your father if he like to exercise. He responds, "I guess I like it because I always seem to be going for a run or heading to the gym." The attitude is based more on the observation than on her cognitions or affects

But when is it best to stress the factors central to the communication? When is it best to stress the factors peripheral to the logic of the arguments, such as the attractiveness of the person delivering the speech? The "elaboration likelihood model" comes in to play. What is it?

a model explaining two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: centrally, when people are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication, and peripherally, when people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics (such as who gave the speech)

Some attitudes are formed without much experience, such as an attitude towards homeless based on

a newspaper article

What is "need for cognition"

a personality variable reflecting the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities

In this context, a heuristic is

a simple rule people use to decide what their attitude is without having to spend a lot of time analyzing every detail about the topic at hand (again, experts are always right)

The more direct experience people have with an attitude object, the more _______ their attitude is

accessible

What is the theory of planned behavior

according to this theory, when people have time to contemplate how they are going to behave, the best predictor of there behavior is their intention

One of field is based on this premise

advertising

When you have an attitude rooted more in emotions and values than on an objective appraisal this is what kind of attitude?

affectively based attitude

What are behaviorally based attitudes?

an attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an object

What is the "heuristic systematic model of persuasion?

an explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically processing the merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts, such as "experts are always right."

If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them how to reduce fear, the person will be motivated to

analyze the message carefully and will be likely to change their attitudes via the central route

What is an implicit attitude?

attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious

What is an explicit attitude?

attitudes we consciously endorse and can easily report; they are what we think of as our evaluations when someone asks us what our opinion is of something

Why do we need to know peoples subjective norms to predict behavior?

because it can change everything. Ex: Kristin doesn't like hip hop. We ask her if she plans to go to the next concert. We would think not. But her friend loves hip hop and wants her to go. Knowing this might lead us to make a different prediction

Why is it important what a person pay attention to, the message or the peripheral cues?

because people who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments will be more likely to maintain this attitude over time, more likely to behave consistently with this attitude, and more resistant to counterpersuasion than people who base their attitudes on peripheral cues

One thing you can do to strengthen your argument is to consider the arguments against your attitude when?

before someone attacks it. The more people have thought about pro and con arguments beforehand using the technique known as "attitude inoculation," the better they can ward off attempts to change their minds using logical arguments

There is research to try to determine where implicit attitudes come from. There is some evidence to suggest that implicit attitudes come from _______ and explicit attitudes are rooted in _______

childhood experiences; recent experiences

The theory states that under certain conditions people are motivated to pay attention to the facts of the communication and will be persuaded when these facts are logically compelling. When people elaborate on what they hear, carefully think about and process the content of the communication, this is the

central route to persusion

One way that attitudes change is when people behave inconsistently with their attitudes and cannot find external justification for their behavior. This is what theory?

cognitive dissonance

Sometimes our attitudes are based primarily on the relevant facts, such as the objective merits of an automobile: how many miles to the gallon, safety rating, and so on. To the extent that people's evaluation is primarily based on their beliefs about the properties of an attitude object, we say it is what kind of attitude?

cognitively based

Although dissonance techniques are powerful, its very hard to carry out on a grand scale, such as would be needed in mass media. For example, if you wanted your friend to stop smoking, you would have them give a speech on the dangers of smoking....and not give them a big reward because you want them to experience dissonance and then find internal justification and believe their own speech and therefore be more likely to quit. However, you can't do this on a grand scale. So what do you do if you are the American Cancer Society and you want to effect change on a larger scale. So you might come up with a persuasive communication. What is a persuasive communication?

communication advocating a particular side of an argument

The more accessible it is, the more likely their spontaneous behaviors will be

consistent with their attitudes

What exactly are attitudes?

evaluations of people, objects, and ideas

Attitudes can take on a positive or negative affect through classical or operant conditioning. Give me examples of what that might look like

examples

Once an attitude develops, it can exist at two levels

explicit and implicit

One way to get people's attention is by using fear. This is known as

fear arousing communication

Emotions can act as _____ and determine ______

heuristic; attitudes

According to the "heuristic systematic model of persuasion" when people take the peripheral route to persuasion, they often us

heuristics

With this knowledge, it makes sense that which attitudes will be more likely to predict spontaneous behavior?

highly accessible attitudes

Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are

highly accessible to people

Example of operant conditioning and attitudes

imagine that a four year old white girl goes to the playground with her father and begins to play with a black girl. Her father expresses disapproval, telling her "we don't play with that kind of child." It won't take long before the child associates interacting with blacks with disapproval, and therefore adopts her father's racist attitudes

Do fear arousing communications work?

it depends on whether fear influences people's ability to pay attention to and process the arguments in a message

What about using emotions as a heuristic?

it is a way to change attitudes by acting as a signal for how we feel about something.

What is attitude inoculation?

making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of arguments against their position

Remember, heuristics are

mental shortcuts that people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently

When accessibility is low, you attitude comes to mind

more slowly

According to the reactance theory, if kids feel their freedom to smoke is threatened, they may need to

need to smoke to reduce the aroused reactance

People also infer their attitudes from their behavior only when there is

no other plausible explanations for the behavior

Are stronger messages better to get your kid not to do something?

no, the stronger they are the more likely to boomerang causing an increase interest

Is this a good way to gauge attitudes?

no, we could be feeling good or bad about something else

Do attitudes predict behavior

not always. In order for attitudes to predict behavior, there must be specifiable conditions

How might we go about doing this?

not only inoculate your teen with logic to combat logically arguments, but also inoculate them them with emotional arguments they may hear. Maybe role play possible scenarios of situations

How much teens be less likely to be resistant to peer pressure?

one possible way is to extend the logic of McGuire's inoculation approach to more affectively based persuasion techniques such as peer pressure.

This seems backwards. How do we know how we behave if we don't already know how we feel? Remember self perception theory? Under certain circumstances

people don't know how they feel until they see how they behave

Why does product placement work?

people don't realize that someone is trying to influence their attitudes and behaviors. Our defenses are down when we are watching our shows

When it is difficult to pay attention (too tired, distracted, heavy material) people are more likely to pay attention to _________

peripheral cues

When people are not motivated to pay attention to the facts; instead, they notice only the surface characteristics of the message, such as how long it is and who is delivering the message, they will not be swayed by the logic of arguments, because they are not paying close enough attention to what the communicator say. Instead, they are persuaded if the surface characteristics of the message make it seem like a reasonable message. This is the

peripheral route to persuasion

One thing that determines whether a person is motivated to pay attention is

personal relevance

The definition of "fear arousing communication"

persuasive message that attempts to change people's attitudes by arousing their fears

You have to find the perfect balance between

scaring them just enough to pay attention but not overwhelm

Most people don't listen to commercials anymore. The fast forward through them or mute them. So What are advertisers doing?

product placement in the show itself

And when they do, what is often this due to?

social influence

Our attitudes toward everything from the president to a brand of soap can be influenced by what other people do or say. This is why social psych is so interested in attitudes. Even something as personal and internal as an attitude is a highly

social phenomenon influenced by the imagined or actual behavior of others

What does this look like?

some people enjoy thinking things through

When an issue is not personally relevant, people pay less attention the arguments and instead

take a mental shortcut and follow the peripheral rules, such as who is delivering the speech

How do we know how best to construct persuasive communication?

the Yale Attitude Change approach

If a person is high for "need for cognition" they are more likely to pay attention to ________ and be persuaded best how?

the argument and be "central route persuaded"

When an issue is personally relevant, people pay attention to ______________

the arguments of the speech

When accessibility is high, your attitude comes to mind whenever you see or think about

the attitude ojbect

We also need to measure peoples subjective norms or

the belief about how people they care about will view the behavior in question

What makes attitudes accessible in the first place?

the degree of behavioral experience people have with the attitude object

What is the affective component of attitude?

the emotional reactions toward the attitude object

What is reactance theory?

the idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavor

People who like to think things through are said to be high in

the need for cognition

What is classical conditioning?

the phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response (such as your grandmother) is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not stimulate an emotional response (cookies), until the neutral stimulus (cookies) takes on the emotional properties of the stimulus (grandmother) and the neutral stimulus (cookies) elicits an emotional response all by its self

What is operant conditioning?

the phenomenon whereby behaviors we freely choose to perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment

When a topic was of low relevance, how did people feel about who was delivering the message?

the strength of the argument didn't matter but who was giving the argument mattered

Attitude accessibility refers to

the strength of the association between an object and a persons evaluation of it, which is typically measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object or issue

What is the Yale Attitude Change approach?

the study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on the source of the communication, the nature of the communication, and the nature of the audience

The best known theory of how attitudes predict deliberative behaviors is

the theory of planned behavior

What is the cognitive component of attitude?

the thoughts and beliefs that people form about the attitude object

The success of various attitude change techniques depend on

the type of attitude we are trying to change

The theory of planned behavior holds that only specific attitudes toward the behavior in question can be expected to predict that behavior. A study asked a sample of married women for their attitudes on birth control pills, ranging from the general (their attitudes towards birth control) to the specific (their attitude toward using bc during the next two years. Two years later they asked the women whether they used the bc pills at any time since the last interview. What did they find

the women's general attitude toward bc did not predict their use of bc at all. This general attitude did not take into account any other factors. The more specific the question was about the act of using bc pills, the better this attitude predicted their actual behavior. This tells us the questions have to be specific to predict behavior

What is another factor of a person's motivation to pay attention to a speech?

their personality

When a message is too strong and people become overwhelmed with fear, what happens

they become scared to death and become defensive, deny the importance of the threat, and be unable to think rationally

When a topic was of personal relevance, how did people feel about who was delivering the message

they didn't care who delivered the message as long as the argument was god

How do advertisers use this knowledge?

they want to make you feel good while in the presence of their product hoping that people will attribute some of that good feeling to the product itself

`Which attitudes are more likely to be affectively based

those topics that provoke emotions: sex, religion, politics, when you care more about how you feel than the facts

What is the purpose of this kind of attitude?

to classify the pluses and minuses of an object so that we can quickly tell whether we want to have anything to do with it

Remember that people infer their attitudes from their behavior only under certain conditions. Their initial attitude has be

weak or ambiguous, your unsure

Confidence study on bottom of pg 180

what did they find

Some attitudes are based on hands on experience, such as an attitude towards homeless based on

working at a homeless shelter

Is warning people an effective way to combat this type of persuasion?

yes, research seems to believe so

Can you be persuaded via emotions?

yes, think peer pressure