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I. Attitude: What Is It ?: Session 5 Attitude Change, Persuasion

This document summarizes research on attitude change and persuasion. It discusses what attitudes are, factors that influence the relationship between attitudes and behavior like attitude strength and accessibility, and how attitudes are formed through sources of learning and mere exposure effect. It also examines how the communicator, message, and audience can impact the effectiveness of persuasion and attitude change. Finally, it outlines several compliance techniques researchers have studied like foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face that make people more likely to agree to a request.

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Jonas Scheck
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66 views3 pages

I. Attitude: What Is It ?: Session 5 Attitude Change, Persuasion

This document summarizes research on attitude change and persuasion. It discusses what attitudes are, factors that influence the relationship between attitudes and behavior like attitude strength and accessibility, and how attitudes are formed through sources of learning and mere exposure effect. It also examines how the communicator, message, and audience can impact the effectiveness of persuasion and attitude change. Finally, it outlines several compliance techniques researchers have studied like foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face that make people more likely to agree to a request.

Uploaded by

Jonas Scheck
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SESSION 5

ATTITUDE CHANGE, PERSUASION

I. Attitude : what is it ?

Attitude: general feeling or evaluation (positive or negative) about some person (friends…), object (course)
or issue (environment protection). How much you like/dislike it.
 Whether positive or negative, gives orientation towards objects (Fazu 1989)

Characteristics:
- Relatively permanent: persist across time and situations. Momentary feeling not an attitude
- Limited to socially significant objects
- Generalizable (Crêpes au beurre in Bretagne – Like it so generalise with all crêpes with Nutella
etc…)
 Relative enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings, and behavioural tendencies towards socially
significant groups, objects, issues…

II. Can attitude predict behaviour?

Old theory: Have attitude towards behaviour  will have that behaviour. BUT: influence from other parties

A) Balance theory (Heider, 1946)

Cognitive consistency theory:


- Balanced triads: +++, - - +
- Unbalanced triads: ++ -, - - -
When someone you don’t have an attitude towards speaks to someone you don’t like, will also have negative
attitude toward the unknown person: consistent!

B) Attitude strength (Holland, Verplanken & Van Knippenberg, 2002)

Aim: Investigate the influence of attitude strength on the relationship between attitude and behaviour
Procedure: Measure of attitude towards Greenpeace and attitude strength towards it. Later can donate.
 When strong attitude, can more accurately predict behaviour compared to weak attitude

C) Attitude accessibility (Fazio & Williams,1986)

Aim: Investigate influence of attribute accessibility on relationship between attitude and behaviour
Procedure: Measure attitude towards 2 presidential candidate and time taken to answer. Then, asked again.
 When (not) accessible attitude, correlation between attitude and behaviour strong (weak)
 When accessible, easy to predict behaviour, will influence our behaviour

 Link between Attitude and behaviour influenced by Attitude strength and Attitude accessibility

D) Norm of the group (Terry and Hogg, 1996)


Aim: Investigate influence of group norms on relationship between atitudes and behaviour
Procedure: Measure attitude towards exercise, what relatives think, group identification. Then, measure
exercise.
 Group norm and group identification will influence behaviour (subjective norms)

E) Theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980)


SESSION 5
ATTITUDE CHANGE, PERSUASION

Subjective norms+ Attitude towards behaviour  Behavioural intention  Behaviour

F) Perceived behavioural control (Schlegel et al., 1992)


Aim: Investigate influence of perceived behavioural control, on prediction of behaviour
 Attitude influenced by friends and family’s opinion about getting drunk. Perceived control
of drinking behaviour (if feel have control, less tendency to getting drunk)

G) Theory of planned behaviour


Subjective norms + Attitude towards behaviour + Perceived behavioural control  Behavioural intention 
Behaviour

III. Formation of behavioural approach

By seeing something several times, start creating positive attitude towards it


 Mere exposure effect

A) Behavioural approach, Sources of learning (Atkin, 1977)


Aim: Test effect of mass media on attitude
Procedure: Measure number of times each Presidential candidate viewed on TV, attitudes towards candidate
 The more they see candidate, the more positive the attitude will be

B) Third person effect (Price & Tewksbury, 1996)


Aim: Investigate 3rd person effect
Procedure: Read paragraph about accusation of sexual abuse, Measure of self and other’s attitudes
 People think they are less influenced by media than others

 How do people form attitudes?


o Behavioural approaches: Attitudes enhanced by mere exposure effect
o Sources of learning: Parents, Friends, Media, School
o 3rd Person effect: Most people think they are less influenced than others

IV. Attitude change

A) The communicator (Chaiken 1979)


Aim: Investigate effect of attractiveness of communicator on persuasion
Procedure: Attractive and unattractive communicator, Topic of persuasion
 Attractiveness influences the communication of message

B) Message (Moons, Mackie & Gercia-Marques, 2009)


Aim: Investigate effetc of repetition of arguments on persuasion
Procedure: Argument in favour of unpopular opinion (Weak vs strong arg, New vs repeated arg, Relevance)
 Strong argument always better than weak, except when arguments are repeated and low
relevance

C) Audience (Zuwerink &Devine, 1996)


Aim: Investigate effect of attitude importance on persuasion
SESSION 5
ATTITUDE CHANGE, PERSUASION

Procedure: Measure of attitude importance. Then, listen to speech against gay people in military, list
thoughts during speech, measure of attitude
 When people had important attitude, they will have unfavourable thoughts about message
and speaker

 Effectiveness of communication through source/message/audience

V. Compliance technique

A) Foot in the door technique (Dolinski, 2000)

 When small question before will be more likely to accept the large request

B) Door in the face (Ebster & Neumayr, 2008)


Big request to small request
 The other is making a “concession”, so people feel the need to make a concession as well
and accept the deal

C) Low ball (Guéguen & Pascual, 2014)


Modify the terms of the good deal
 More likely to comply to a higher price/etc.. if already accepted the first time with previous
terms

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