PSY403 Social Psychology

 PSY403 Social Psychology 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KGxHirJyMWzqfGe7sQW-KmE_dG--H1uJ?usp=sharing

ATTITUDE CHANGE

 

Behavior changing attitudes

·         _ From self-perception theory (Bem, 1965) we know that we can infer our attitudes from observing our own behaviors (i.e., behaviors can cause attitudes)

·         _ Ours behaviors can also change attitudes, if they are unexpected...(if we suddenly realize we are good at something )

Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957)

·         _ A feeling of discomfort caused by performing an action that is inconsistent with one’s attitudes

·         _ Principle of Cognitive consistency were first introduced by Fritz Heider (1946)

·         _ A motivational instead of a cognitive approach; has Gestalt roots that human beings not only expect and prefer their perceptions to be coherent but they are motivated to do so.

·         _ Festinger maintained that instead of engaging in rational behavior, we often engage in irrational and maladaptive behavior, and much of the time we engage in rationalizing our behavior.

Festinger & Carlsmith’s study (1959)

·         _ Participants perform a boring task (emptying and filling trays; turning 48 wooden pegs)

·         _ Told to lie to next participant (it’s a great task!)

·         _ $1 vs. $20 payment for lying

·         _ An interviewer then asks how fun and interesting you in fact found the tasks to be

·         _ Which condition will lead to greater favourability or attitude shift?

·         _ Findings are counter to what operant conditioning would suggest (attitudes rewarded more will be more favourable)

·         _ BUT...$1 participants experienced a greater inconsistency (dissonance) between their attitude and behaviour than $20 participants (and unpleasant state), i.e., ‘It was a boring task’, ‘I told someone it was fun’. Festinger maintained that like hunger dissonance is analogous to hunger in aversiveness.

·         _ The $1 participants have insufficient justification so the only way to resolve the unpleasant inconsistency is to change their attitude to be in line their behaviour (‘The task was fun!’)

·         _ Two inconsistent cognitions led to either adding a third cognition or by changing attitude. We need to be able to explain why we do things. The $20 participants can explain their attitude behaviour inconsistency through reward (the $20 was a sufficient justification for the behaviour) by adding a 3rd cognition to explain their counter attitudinal behaviour. However, $1 participants changed their attitude to maintain consistency.

Factors affecting dissonance

·         _ Justification; e.g., Doomsday cult group (as referred in previous lectures) transformed the bad experience into a good one to reduce dissonance

·         _ Freedom of choice: e.g., if we are forced to do something this explains why we did it in contravention of our attitudes, so it does not create dissonance.

·         _ Investment: e.g., supporting a political party even when evidence of incompetence, immorality, etc. escalates (refuse to accept evidence of impropriety because of all the time invested in believing the party’s ideals)

Cognitive dissonance and Persuasion

·         _ Cognitive dissonance is attitude change via an internal discrepancy

·         _ Persuasion is attitude change via an external message

·         _ Persuasion is the process of consciously attempting to change attitudes through the transmission of some message.

Factors that influence the persuasiveness of a message

·         _ Source: Who is communicating?

·         _ Message variables: What is the content?

·         _ Audience: To whom the message is delivered?

Source Factors: Who is communicating?

·         Source credibility

_ Expertise

_ Trustworthiness

·         Source attractiveness

_ Physical appearance

_ Likeability

_ Similarity

Source Factors: Credibility

“Propaganda, to be effective, must be delivered. To be delivered, it must be credible”

·         _ Expertise: Bochner & Insko’s study (1966): Written powerful statements claiming that about fewer than 8 hours’ sleep is required for effective functioning and same statements were attributed to either to eminent psychologists or YMCA director. Obviously, those people who were told that the statements were written by the eminent psychologist believed more in the statements.

_ “We are not won by arguments that we can analyze but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man

himself”

·         _ Trustworthiness: Walster et al.’s study (1966) about the arguments of either a convicted criminal or a judge about the importance of police’s ability for maintaining law and order than the rights of criminals. The criminal’s arguments appeared more impressive to people because people who argue for actions that benefit them are not trusted, hence they suffer from low credibility. In contrast, those who argue for actions that are contrary to their vested interests have high credibility.

The ‘sleeper effect’ low credibility as a discounting cue

The delayed effectiveness of a persuasive message from a no credible source

Hoveland & Weiss’s study (1951)

·         _ Read article stating that nuclear submarines were safe

·         _ Author = Oppenheimer (nuclear physicist supervising the construction of atom bomb) vs. Pravda (Soviet newspaper); (High vs. Low credibility for US students in 50’s)

·         _ Persuasion is not very straightforward and uncomplicated; 4 weeks later credibility lost its effectiveness. Other studies have also shown the delayed effects of credibility.

·         _ Immediate effect - High credibility source --> greater persuasion; Tested 4 weeks later? Not much difference.

Explanation of the sleeper effect

Source memory:

_ Forgetfulness over time: i.e., over time, people forget where the source originated from and only remember the content (so credibility of source would have no effect) the credible source became dissociated from the message

_ Explains increase in low credibility source persuasion as well as decrease in high credibility persuasion.

_ Kelman & Hovlan (1953) replicated the original experiment but reminded participants of the source before their attitudes were reassessed. The sleeper effect was removed.

Three factors that promote the sleeper effect (A meta-analysis of over 70 studies by Kumkale & Albarrachin, 2004):

_ The message must be convincing enough in itself to lead to persuasion

_ Credibility information given after the message (or no processing of content will occur)

_ The low credibility source information decays faster than the message content

Source Factors: Attractiveness enhances persuasiveness

_ During 1920s when feminists were demonstrating against female inequality

_ Nephew of Freud, Edward Bernays, used attractive “liberated” women in an ad campaign for the cigarette industry to serve as a “torch of freedom” symbol.

_ Women had a campaign with anti-smoking slogans in 1929 Easter parade in Manhattan.

_ Many women adopted the “torch of freedom habit

_ The cigarette company’s profits soared with this newfound “liberated-female” market

Factors indicating attractiveness

Physical appearance

_ Attractive university UG were more likely (41%) to persuade fellow students to sign a

petition as compared to less attractive (32%)

_ Commercials use central or peripheral route processing for persuasion. Usually attractive

females are used, who are consciously placed in commercials to attract male viewers and to

induce positive feelings, using the principle of classical conditioning, without even making

the viewer conscious of this purpose. That is why this is called peripheral route.

Likeability:

Merely saying nice things is enough to get people to like you (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)

Similarity:

Communicators can be similar to their audience in a number of ways:

_ Sharing attitudes and values is the most important condition (Simons et al., 1970)

_ Similar backgrounds

_ Appearance (dressing )