Persuasion Final

Likelihood

Elaboration can be either likely or unlikely

scarcity

People want more of what they can have less of; highlight unique benefits and exclusive information; importance of loss language

Prescriptive beliefs

"ought" or "should" statements that express conceptions of preferred end-states.

Practical Persuasion Tips (box 5.4)

1. ask yourself if the topic is something that engages the audience or is one of little consequence. 2. Ask yourself what is central, or most critical to my attempt to change the other's mind. 3. Put yourself in the mind of those receiving your message, and consider how they will react to what you say and how you package your message. 4. On the other side of the persuader stick, ask questions: who, what, why, etc. and what route I think I'm using to choose.

Relationships between attitudes and behaviors

3 options: behaviorism, utopian/marketing ideal, complex striving for consistency

Situational factors

A norm is an individual's belief about the appropriate behavior in a situation; Roles are parts we perform in everyday life, socially prescribed functions like professor, student, parent, child, and friend; an 'organized bundle of expectations about an event sequence' or an activity

compatibility principle

A strong relationship between attitude and behavior is possible only if the attitudinal predictor corresponds with the behavioral criteria. 'Corresponds with' means that the attitudinal and behavioral entities are measured at the same level of specificity. Thus, specific attitudes toward a behavior predict highly specific acts. General attitudes predict broad classes of behavior that cut across different situations.

Inoculation theory

Along with warning an audience of impending persuasion, provide a weakened version of the opponent's argument, creating antibodies and resistance that will fend off persuasion when it actually occurs

Dysfunctional attitudes

An attitude that helps an individual satisfy certain needs can be detrimental in another respect... attitudes can be functional for one individual, but dysfunctional for others; the same attitudes can serve different functions for different people.

Value-Expressive

An important reason people hold attitudes is to express core values and cherished beliefs

symbols

As a result of early learning experiences, people develop strong attitudes toward their country, as well as religious values, ethnic loyalties, and racial prejudices. These 'symbolic predispositions,' as they are called, lie at the core of people's attitudes toward social issues;

Ego-defensive

Attitudes can serve as a 'defense' against unpleasant emotions people do not want to consciously acknowledge. People adopt attitudes to shield them from psychologically uncomfortable truths.

social adjustive

Attitudes help us 'adjust to' reference groups; adopt attitudes not because they truly agree with the advocated position, but rather because they believe they will be more accepted by others if they take this side.

Affect

Based on information to unify the head and heart

Perloff intersections of attitudes, values, and beliefs

Beliefs are the centerpiece of attitude; beliefs and evaluations can predict attitudes toward topics

Cialdini's principles conclusion

Best when combined, can compound their impact; Accessible, concise, easily applicable system; concedes to and focuses on principles most likely to be effective for peripheral processing; deceptively simple; without much acknowledgment

Assimilation/Contrast

Connecting or rejecting

Electoral Road Show

Candidate appearance- influenced by appearances Endorsements- serve as peripheral cues Names- name recognition

Complex Striving for Consistency

Complex interrelationships. There are relationships between the two but it cannot be understand in any mechanistic way.

Judging consistency and hypocrisy

Don't call attention to the call-out of hypocrisy when people communicate through persuasion etc-- can cause defensiveness.

ELM

Dual-process model: claims that there are two different mechanisms by which communications affect attitudes; tells us when people should be particularly likely to elaborate, or not elaborate, on persuasive messages

Jargon

Fake people out by using terms they aren't familiar with, almost forces people to process peripherally because they won't have the motivation to seek out additional information

Concreteness

Helping to make an image clearer and solid in a person's mind; To make ideas clear, explain them in terms of human actions and sensory information

Functional approach/theory

Instead of taking attitudes as a given, attitudes help people manage and cope with life. In a word, attitudes are functional.

symbolic approach

It calls attention to the role that associations play in attitude structure

The antiauthority

It can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allow them to act as authorities

central route for processing

It occurs when individuals focus in depth on the central features of the issue, person, or message.

Oprah Book Club Effect

Lack motivation and even ability to seek out additional information to be less persuaded; powerful peripheral cues- people don't think too much of it

Behaviorism

No relationship between the two. If this is the case, then there is no reason to study attitudes, only behaviors.

Utilitarian

On a more material level, attitudes help people obtain rewards and avoid punishments.

The curse of knowledge

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. It becomes difficult to share our knowledge with others; we can't readily recreate our listeners' state of mind. You can't unlearn what you already know

Commitment (consistency)

People align with their clear commitments; make their commitments active, public, and voluntary; Most people wish to appear consistent to others

Social Proof

People follow the lead of similar others; use peer power whenever it's available; persuasion can be extremely effective when it comes from peers

Social Identity

People hold attitudes to communicate who they are and what they aspire to be.

Liking

People like those who like them; uncover real similarities and offer genuine praise; influence people by winning friends

Theory of Planned Behavior

Perceived behavioral control is the individual's perception of how much control he or she has over the behavior; it is a subjective estimate of how easy or difficult it will be to perform the behavior. The more I perceive that I can perform the action, the more successful I should be in translating intention into behavior

Utopian/Marketing Ideal

Perfect Correspondence. One to one relation. If you have an attitude it will automatically translate to a particular behavior.

knowledge example

Religious attitudes fulfill this function for many people, particularly those who have experienced personal tragedies

Made To Stick

SUCCESs; Core, compact, and useful in making predictions and decisions

Implications of attitude-behavior consistency issues for persuasion

Target relevant beliefs, locate relevant reference groups

Stories

Tell stories that help your audience mentally rehearse for real experiences that might happen in the future; The right ones make people act

Accessibility Theory

The core notion of accessibility theory is that attitudes will predict behavior if they can be activated from memory at the time of a decision. -the attitude must come spontaneously to mind in a situation -the attitude must influence perceptions of an issue or person, serving 'as a filter through which the object is viewed

Velcro theory of memory

The more hooks an idea has, the better it will cling to memory

Social Identity example

This is one reason people buy certain products; they hope that by displaying the product in their homes (or on their bodies), they will communicate something special about themselves.

Credibility

To build confidence, help people test your ideas for themselves

Emotions

To get people to care about your ideas, make them feel something

Perloff Attitude Definition

a learned, global evaluation of an object (person, place, or issue) that influences thought and action.

Balancing-Perloff

a strategy to address cognitive inconsistency

Bolstering

add mental elements to an attitude, giving more cushion to one's own beliefs to make the attitudes consistent

Differentiation

agree to disagree- know that there are differences in beliefs but the actual relationship is fine

Expectancy-Value Approach

asserts that attitudes have two components: cognition and affect (or head and heart). your attitude is a combination of what you believe or expect of a certain object and how you feel about these expectations

Cognitive Response Model/Approach

asserts that people's own mental reactions to a message play a critical role in the persuasion process, typically a more important role than the message itself; people play an active role in the persuasion process.

yale-model shortcomings

assumes that people are sponge-like creatures who passively take in information they receive; You may remember message arguments, yet probably recall with greater accuracy your own criticisms of the speaker's point of view.

Theory of Reasoned Action Shortcomings

assumes that people have control over their behavior—in other words, that they are psychologically capable of acting on their attitude or carrying out their intentions; consider consequences of behavior itself AND what will people think of me if I don't go to the final

Attitude toward the behavior

behavioral beliefs (beliefs about the consequences of the behavior) and outcome evaluations (evaluations of the consequences)

Unexpectedness

breaking out of the social norms and societal expectations; For ideas to endure, generate interest and curiosity with unexpected information

Transcendence

bringing two conflicting beliefs together

specific attitude

called attitude toward a behavior, is evaluation of a single act, or specific behavior that takes place in a particular context at a particular time

Strong Attitudes- Characteristics, how to understand based on approach

developed at an early age; importance, ego involvement, extremity, certainty, accessibility, knowledge, hierarchical organization; Strong attitudes are particularly likely to forecast behavior

Distraction

distraction facilitates persuasion by blocking the dominant cognitive response to a message

implicit attitude definition

evaluations that have an unknown origin, activated automatically, influence implicit responses- namely uncontrollable responses and ones that people do not view as an expression of their attitude and thus do not attempt to control.

Peripheral route for processing

examine the message quickly or focus on simple cues to help them decide whether to accept the position advocated in the message

Universal Values

freedom, equality, a world of beauty

ELM Motivation

high in involvement when they perceive that an issue is personally relevant or bears directly on their own lives; low in involvement when they believe that an issue has little or no impact on their own lives

Personal Characteristics (self-monitoring, direct experience)

high self-monitors exhibit less attitude-behavior consistency than do low self-monitors;

Perloff Values Definition

ideals, 'guiding principles in one's life,' or overarching goals that people strive to obtain; more global and abstract than attitudes

Behavior

intention to perform a particular behavior should predict the actual performance of the act; intention is most likely to predict behavior when it corresponds with—is identical to—the behavior in key ways

Behavioral Intention

intention to perform a particular behavior, a plan to put behavior into effect... Intention is a function of attitude toward the behavior and subjective norm

Complexity of central processing

is not rational and free of bias. The key is the degree to which the issue touches on an individual's strong attitudes, values, or ego-entrenched positions.

General attitude

is the global evaluation that cuts across different situations

6 benefits for functional attitudes

knowledge, utilitarian, social adjustive, social identity, value expressive, ego-defensive

Perloff Characteristics of Attitudes

learned, global, emotional (not just cognitive); evaluations, "large summary evaluations of issues and people. (They are global, or macro, NOT micro.), influence thought and action

knowledge

make sense of the world and explain baffling events, overarching framework one that assists individuals in cognitively coming to terms with the array of ambiguous and sometimes scary stimuli they face in everyday life

Perloff Beliefs

more specific and cognitive; number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands; cognitions about the world- subjective probabilities that an object has a particular attribute or that an action will lead to a particular outcome

Subjective Norm

normative beliefs ('the person's beliefs that specific individuals or groups that he should or should not perform the behavior') and motivation to comply (the individual's motivation to go along with these significant others

Simple

not diluting the message- making it easy for audiences to understand; Prioritize and exclude relentlessly to find your core message

Implicit Attitudes

outside conscious awareness; the more people mentally rehearse the association between an object and evaluation, the stronger the connection will be; objects toward which we have accessible attitudes are more likely to capture attention; accessible attitudes serve as filters for processing information

authority

people defer to experts; expose your expertise, don't assume it's self-evident

Social Judgment Theory

people evaluate issues based on where they stand on the topic; receivers do not evaluate a message solely on merits of the argument; people compare the advocated position with their attitude and then determine whether they should accept or not

Assimilation

people pull a somewhat congenial message toward their own attitude, assuming the message is more similar to their attitude than it really is.

Theory of Reasoned Action

people rationally calculate the costs and benefits of engaging in a particular action and think carefully about how important others will view the behavior under consideration; emphasis on conscious deliberation

Reciprocity

people repay kind; give what you want to receive

Descriptive beliefs

perceptions about the world that people carry around in their heads

Quick fix

peripheral processing- not going to seek for an actual solution, simply persuaded by the fastest problem-solving tactic

Cialdini's Basic Assumption

persuasion works by appealing to a limited set of deeply rooted human drives and needs, and it does so in predictable ways. Persuasion, in other words, is governed by basic principles that can be taught, learned, and applied

Contrast

push a somewhat disagreeable message away from their attitude assuming it is more different than it is

Latitudes

rande of acceptable and unacceptable positions

Elaboration

refers to the extent to which the individual thinks about or mentally modifies arguments contained in the communication

Self-enhancement values

self-fulfillment, excitement, recognition, power, achievement

ego-involvement

the attitude is linked to core values or the self; high involved when it is closely related to the self

Attitude accessibility and association

the degree to which an attitude is automatically activated from memory; links among the different components of the attitude

Payoffs

the theory offers a framework for predicting behavior from attitudes; behavior can be predicted, but you need to consider both likes and dislikes (attitudes) and people's natural propensity to want to please others (norms). The theory has an excellent track record in predicting behavior.

Yale-Model characteristics

theory-driven approach and commitment to testing hypotheses; persuasion entailed learning message arguments and noted that attitude change occurred in a series of steps. To be persuaded, individuals had to attend to, comprehend, learn, accept, and retain the message.

Denial

try to forget that inconsistency exists; say that the beliefs aren't actually different

Considering persuasion through lens of process

understand how people cognitively process messages, they can better explicate the impact that communications have on attitudes; the more accurately they can explain the diverse effects messages have on attitudes; you cannot understand the effects of communications on people without knowing how people process the message.

ELM Ability

we centrally or peripherally process messages depending on our cognitive ability, or knowledge; Situations can enhance or hamper individuals' ability to process a message

Forewarning

when a persuader warns people that they will soon be exposed to a persuasive communication

ELM key question

when people process centrally, when they prefer the peripheral pathway, and the implications for persuasion; two major categories of conditions: motivation and ability; impossible to process everything in our lives with central processing

Attitude consistency and ambivalence

when we feel both positively and negatively about a person or issue. characterized by uncertainty or conflict between attitude elements. When people have strong feelings on both sides of an issue or are torn between head and heart, and are less apt to translate attitude into behavior. Different feelings push people in different behavioral directions

ideologies

world view of topics- generally stronger opinions among political topics; attitudes are organized top-down, assumes people operate on an ideological approach