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    Attitude and Persuasion

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    Kelvin Arthur
    The document discusses attitudes and persuasion. It defines attitudes and how they are formed through experience, social factors and learning. It also discusses the structure of attitudes and how attitudes can influence behavior. The document then covers persuasion, the paths and elements of persuasion including the communicator, message, channels and audience.

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    Attitude and Persuasion

    Uploaded by

    Kelvin Arthur
    72 views32 pages
    The document discusses attitudes and persuasion. It defines attitudes and how they are formed through experience, social factors and learning. It also discusses the structure of attitudes and how attitudes can influence behavior. The document then covers persuasion, the paths and elements of persuasion including the communicator, message, channels and audience.

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    ATTITUDE AND PERSUASION

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    The document discusses attitudes and persuasion. It defines attitudes and how they are formed through experience, social factors and learning. It also discusses the structure of attitudes and how attitudes can influence behavior. The document then covers persuasion, the paths and elements of persuasion including the communicator, message, channels and audience.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    72 views32 pages

    Attitude and Persuasion

    Uploaded by

    Kelvin Arthur
    The document discusses attitudes and persuasion. It defines attitudes and how they are formed through experience, social factors and learning. It also discusses the structure of attitudes and how attitudes can influence behavior. The document then covers persuasion, the paths and elements of persuasion including the communicator, message, channels and audience.

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    ATTITUDE AND PERSUASION

    Outline
     Define attitude
     Where attitude comes from
     Attitude structure
     Attitude and culture
     Evolutionary theory of persuasion
     Path of persuasion
     Elements of persuasion
     Source variable who the communicator
     Message variables what the content
     Channel variable how
     Receiver variable the target
    What is attitude?
     How Do Psychologists Define Attitudes?
     Psychologists define attitudes as a learned tendency to evaluate
    things in a certain way. This can include evaluations of people,
    issues, objects, or events. Such evaluations are often positive or
    negative, but they can also be uncertain at times. For example,
    you might have mixed feelings about a particular person or issue.
    A predisposition or a tendency to respond positively or
    negatively towards a certain idea, object, person, or situation.
    Attitude influences an individual's choice of action, and
    responses to challenges, incentives, and rewards (together called
    stimuli).
    How Do Attitudes Form?

     There are a number of factors that can influence how and why attitudes
    form.
     Experience
     Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They may emerge due to
    direct personal experience, or they may result from observation.
     Social Factors
     Social roles and social norms can have a strong influence on attitudes.
    Social roles relate to how people are expected to behave in a particular role
    or context. Social norms involve society's rules for what behaviors are
    considered appropriate.
     Learning

     Attitudes can be learned in a variety of ways. Consider how


    advertisers use classical conditioning to influence your attitude
    toward a particular product. In a television commercial, you see
    young, beautiful people having fun in on a tropical beach while
    enjoying a sports drink. This attractive and appealing imagery causes
    you to develop a positive association with this particular beverage.
     Operant conditioning can also be used to influence how attitudes develop.
    Imagine a young man who has just started smoking. Whenever he lights up
    a cigarette, people complain, chastise him, and ask him to leave their
    vicinity.

     This negative feedback from those around him eventually causes him to
    develop an unfavorable opinion of smoking and he decides to give up the
    habit.
    Finally, people also learn attitudes by
    observing the people around them. When someone
    you admire greatly espouses a particular attitude,
    you are more likely to develop the same beliefs. For
    example, children spend a great deal of time
    observing the attitudes of their parents and usually
    begin to demonstrate similar outlooks.
    STRUCTURE OF ATTITUDE
    Cognitive Component

    Affective Component

    Behavioral Component
    How Do Attitudes Influence Behavior?
    We tend to assume that people behave according to their
    attitudes. However, social psychologists have found that
    attitudes and actual behavior are not always perfectly
    aligned.

    After all, plenty of people support a particular candidate


    or political party and yet fail to go out and vote.
    Factors That Influence Attitude Strength

    Researchers have discovered that people are more likely to


    behave according to their attitudes under certain conditions:
    when your attitudes are the result of personal experience
    when you are an expert in the subject
    when you expect a favorable outcome
    when the attitudes are repeatedly expressed
    when you stand to win or lose something due to the issue
    Attitudes Can Change to Match
    Behavior
    In some cases, people may actually alter their attitudes
    in order to better align them with their behavior.
    Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon in which a
    person experiences psychological distress due to
    conflicting thoughts or beliefs. In order to reduce this
    tension, people may change their attitudes to reflect
    their other beliefs or actual behaviors
    Attitude Change
    While attitudes can have a powerful effect on behavior, they are
    not set in stone. The same influences that lead to attitude
    formation can also create attitude change.
    Learning Theory of Attitude Change: Classical conditioning,
    operant conditioning, and observational learning can be used to
    bring about attitude change. Classical conditioning can be used
    to create positive emotional reactions to an object, person, or
    event by associating positive feelings with the target object.
    Operant conditioning can be used to strengthen desirable
    attitudes and weaken undesirable ones. People can also change
    their attitudes after observing the behavior of others.
     Elaboration Likelihood Theory of Attitude Change: This theory of
    persuasion suggests that people can alter their attitudes in two ways.
    First, they can be motivated to listen and think about the message,
    thus leading to an attitude shift. Or, they might be influenced by
    characteristics of the speaker, leading to a temporary or surface shift
    in attitude. Messages that are thought-provoking and that appeal to
    logic are more likely to lead to permanent changes in attitudes.

     Dissonance Theory of Attitude Change: As mentioned earlier,


    people can also change their attitudes when they have conflicting
    beliefs about a topic. In order to reduce the tension created by these
    incompatible beliefs, people often shift their attitudes.
    Attitude change follows a series of stages:
     attend the message,
     comprehend the message, and
     accept the message
    WHAT IS PERSUASION?
    Persuasion is the communication process of getting
    someone to do something by convincing him that it is
    the logical and reasonable thing to do.

    Itis also seen as the process by which a message


    induces change in believe, attitude or behavior

    The conscious attempt to change attitudes through


    the transmission of some message
    PATHS OF PERSUASION

    There are two paths of persuasion

    A. The Central Route

    B. The Peripheral Route


    A. The Central Route

    The central route to persuasion consists of


    thoughtful consideration of the arguments
    (ideas, content) of the message. When a
    receiver is doing central processing, he or she
    is being an active participant in the process of
    persuasion.
    Central processing has two prerequisites: It can only
    occur when the receiver has both the motivation and
    the ability to think about the message and its topic.
    If the listener doesn’t care about the topic of the
    persuasive message, he or she will almost certainly
    lack the motivation to do central processing
    . On the other hand, if the listener is distracted or
    has trouble understanding the message, he or she
    will lack the ability to do central processing
    B. The Peripheral Route
    The peripheral route to persuasion occurs when the
    listener decides whether to agree with the message based
    on other cues besides the strength of the arguments or
    ideas in the message. For example, a listener may decide
    to agree with a message because the source appears to be
    an expert, or is attractive. The peripheral route also
    occurs when a listener is persuaded because he or she
    notices that a message has many arguments -- but lacks
    the ability or motivation to think about them individually.
    . In other words, peripheral cues, like source expertise
    (credibility) or many arguments in one message, are a
    short-cut. I don’t want to or can’t think carefully about the
    ideas in this persuasive message, but it is a fair gamble to
    go ahead agree with the message if the source appears to
    be knowledgeable or if there are many arguments in
    support of the message. This route occurs when the
    auditor is unable or unwilling to engage in much thought
    on the message. Receivers engaged in peripheral
    processing are more passive than those doing central
    processing.
    ELEMENTS OF PERSUASION

     THE COMMUNICATOR (the who)

     THE MESSAGE (what )

     THE CHANNELS (how)

     THE AUDIENCE (whom )


    THE COMMUNICATOR (the who)

    Credibility (expert and trustworthy)

    Expertise(knowledgeable and confident)

    Trustworthiness

    Attractiveness (physical, similarity)


    THE MESSAGE (what )

    Reason and emotion

    Discrepancy

    One-side vs two-side

    Primacy vs Recency
    THE CHANNELS (how)

    Active and passive

    Personal (face-to-face) vs media


    THE AUDIENCE (whom )

    Analytical or emotional

    Age
    Resisting Persuasion
    Strengthening Personal commitment
    Challenging beliefs
    Developing counterarguements

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