Transcript of Audio Lecture
Welcome to lesson six,
module two.
Let’s get started by
moving to slide two. First we’re going to talk about Balance Theory.
This lesson’s going to be primarily concerned with attitude change.
Balance theory is also called POX theory or POX theory, essentially
because it involves a person and another person or perhaps an object and
some third thing 'x'. Let’s say that we have this person.
This person is our girlfriend and here we are, a student and we feel very
positively about this person, our relationship is going well and we see
marriage in our near future so that would be a positive relationship. We
would also have an object, perhaps a university we would like to attend
and let’s say that we really like this university. It offers the major we
want and so on. So that link would also be positive. However, our partner
does not care for this university, it’s too cold or perhaps the
residential setting is not as pleasant as they would like. This causes a
problem. We have two positives and one negative. If you multiply those,
the answer is negative, therefore unbalanced. In order to balance this,
one of the signs will have to change. Now clearly one positive and two
negatives would work or all three positives. All three negatives would
again be unbalanced. So we might choose not to go to that school and to
find a school that our partner would be more comfortable with. This would
create a negative relationship between the university and ourselves,
continuing to keep our positive relationship with our partner. This would
be a balanced situation. A negative times a negative times a positive is
a positive. We could also choose to no longer see our spouse or partner.
We may break up and choose to attend the university because that will be
better for our future and again this would be balanced. A negative times
a negative times a positive is positive. Clearly if we could convince our
partner that this is in fact the good university to go to, then all three
links would be positive and again we would have a sense of balance.
Let’s move on to slide
three. Accessibility. The ability for our attitudes to change is related
to how accessible our attitudes are. We know the correlation between
attitude and behavior rises when attitude is acceptable. In addition
brand alliance is most common if that brand is accessible. That is why
companies are very adamant about keeping their logos copyrighted and
similar to ones that they’ve used in the past that have been successful.
We also know that there’s more elaboration or processing of arguments when
our attitudes are accessible. Accessibility is key and remember
accessible means it’s on top in our minds. We also know that attitudes
change depending on the setting. Our attitudes in private versus public
settings might be quite different. We can talk about conformity versus
compliance as being another thing that depends on private versus public
settings. If we conform to an idea or an attitude or what society thinks
we should do, it means we’ve internalized it, we believe it is absolutely
the right thing to do. However, if we’re not sure that privately we
really believe that, that we’ll do it to go along with the crowd, that
would be compliance. If we think about public versus private attitudes,
we would see that we’d be more likely to get politically correct attitudes
in public versus those that people thought they were privately expressing.
Let’s move on to slide
five. One attitude change approach is the message learning approach, the
idea of who says what to whom with what effect. The who is the messenger
or agent. We know that people who are experts, people who have commanding
or powerful voices, indeed masculine voices, the attractiveness of the
messenger, the status of the messenger and if the messenger is an in-group
member, will all increase the persuasiveness of the message. The message
also has characteristics. This is the "what" and "how" of a message. A
message may have strong or weak arguments, it could be longer or shorter,
it could be very informative or it could be very vague. The medium is
also important. That is, if it’s delivered via a written format, is it
delivered in a magazine or a newspaper, via radio, a television ad or in
person. What does message do, does it request some action from the
listener or does it order them to do something. The to whom part of this
is the target or the person listening to the message. The target's
characteristics also influence whether or not their attitude will be
changed. These characteristics include things such as age, socioeconomic
status, education, and expertise. When trying to change someone’s
attitude, it’s important to consider all of these components to the
message learning approach.
Let’s move on to slide
six. In order for attitude change to occur, some cognitive processing is
in order. Cognitive processing can be thought of as effortful or not very
effortful. We discussed this in a previous chapter. Another way to put
this is that processing can be systematic or it can be heuristic, it can
be central or peripheral. It can require a high level of elaboration or a
low level of elaboration. Systematic, central and high levels of
elaboration likelihood are all high effort ways of thinking about
something. This is the route or way in which we will think if the
decision is very important to us. For example we might systematically
choose a marriage partner, centrally process information about buying a
new house, and be highly likely to elaborate buying a different kind of
car. However, if we’re only buying gum, we’d probably use heuristic cues
such as what color it is or what gum was closest to our hand, peripheral
cues and being less likely, or have a low elaboration likelihood. These
ideas come essentially from two models. The HSM and the ELM. The HSM is
the heuristic systematic model and it involves systematic versus heuristic
processes. The elaboration likelihood model involves high elaboration
likelihood and low elaboration likelihood and also uses the term central
and peripheral routes to persuasion.
Let’s move on to slide
seven. If we’re going to centrally process something, we’re going to
focus on the context, we’re going to focus on the message, and we’re going
to focus on the argument strengths. If we’re processing peripherally,
we’re going to use heuristic rules and heuristic cues. We may buy simply
the cheapest gum or the gum that will be the one that we usually buy or
made by the company that we believe is a good company. Central processing
is when you would actually read the ingredients on the gum, decide if the
gum is being put forth in a specific way by being in the impulse aisle and
so on. If you process centrally, it’s likely that you’re highly
motivated, have a lot of cognitive resources and high cognitive ability.
In fact you must have those things in order to centrally process.
Let’s move on to slide
eight. So how are you processing? Classically they’ve used comprehensive
exams to determine what types of processing people are engaging in. In
these studies, they will have expertise as an independent variable, that
is you hear a message delivered either by an expert or by a student. In
addition they manipulate the strength of the argument. The argument is
very strong, very convincing or the arguments are weak and motivation.
They tell you that the test will be employed 10 years from now or
immediately. Clearly your motivation to process will be higher if you’re
told this is something that’s going to impact you directly by it being
implemented immediately. If you look at the graph, the graph on the left
shows the interaction of expert and student. If it’s going to happen now,
then your attitude is not much influenced by the source of the message.
Rather, by the relevance, how immediate it is. However, if it’s something
that’s not personally relevant, you’re going to use the heuristic of
expertise and change your attitude more in favor of the experts opinion
when you hear the expert and less in favor of the idea when you hear the
student’s opinion. Similarly, for strong arguments and weak arguments, we
see that you’re systematically processing. Clearly if it’s happening now
you need to think about that very carefully and the strength of the
arguments will matter, whereas if it’s happening 10 years from now,
argument strength is not very relevant, after all you’re relying on the
expertise of the messages source.
Let’s move on to slide
nine. The HSM or heuristic systematic model was proposed by Chaiken and
Eagly. The heuristic systematic model makes several predictions. First
that if you use heuristics to make your decision, then you’re going to be
less committed to that decision and the decision will be less stable. You
might be very likely to change your mind. Whereas if you systematically
process the decision, you’re going to be more committed to that answer and
the answer will be more stable. Now motivations can vary in the HSM. The
ELM, the elaboration likelihood model says you’re either motivated or not,
but HSM specifies various types of motivations you might have; personal
motivation, value motivation and so on. In addition you might both
systematically and heuristically process. For example you may look through
several consumer reports magazines systematically going through all the
arguments for and against the specific kind of car and in the end using
the heuristic by making a list of pros and cons and simply purchasing the
car with more pros than cons.
Let’s move on to slide
ten. The competing model, the elaboration likelihood model proposed
by Petty & Cacioppo says that elaboration likelihood is on a continuum, so as opposed to
heuristic and systematic themes, dichotomous and categorical, elaboration
is a continuous variable and they allow for motivation and personality
characteristics to influence the amount of elaboration as well as
situational factors.
Let’s move on to slide
eleven. Need for cognition is a personality variable that is linked to the
way in which you process information. Need for cognition is essentially
liking to think for the sake of thinking. People who enjoy riddles and
analysis and logic problems. Those who are often accused of over-analyzing
the situation. They tend to cognate or think simply because they enjoy
it. Those high in need for cognition are more likely to systematically
process than those who have a low need for cognition.
Let’s move on to slide
twelve. Moods also impact the way in which you process information and
whether or not we’ll be able to change your attitude. Moods can serve as
information or a cue, so if you’re in a good mood you may simply agree
because disagreeing is going to put you in a more negative mood, so you
use your mood to decide that things are going pretty well, there’s no
threat to the environment, so I’m going to go along with whatever is
suggested. Mood maintenance theory, on the other hand, says that you
don’t want to think too much because if you have to think too much, that
might bring your mood down. Therefore you go along not necessarily
because nothing’s wrong, but because if you have to think about it too
much, it might bum you out. There’s some evidence that positive mood
people are easier to persuade, that is they’re more likely to use their
heuristics. In a positive mood, we’re less likely to attend to
specifics within the message and therefore sometimes we’re more likely to
process heuristically in a positive mood. This is when we’re using mood
as a cue or as information.
Let’s move on to slide
thirteen. Fear appeals. For years advertising agencies and the CDC's
public health announcements have used fear trying to convince people to
brush their teeth, use condoms, wear a seat belt, not drink and drive and
so on. Fear appeal can work. However, they need to be personally
relevant. They need to appeal to the idea that you need to value you and
your family or your friends. The idea of valuing me and mine. In
addition, fear appeal must provide an effective solution. If you simply
say that drinking and driving will kill people, this will not be
effective.
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