Summary Persuasion: Theory and research, O’Keefe, 3rd edition
Answers on the For Review-questions, Sanne Hamelink
Chapter 1 Persuasion, Attitudes and Action
Paradigm (exemplary) cases of a concept are the sorts of instances that nearly
everyone would agree were instances of the concept in question; they are
straightforward, uncontroversial examples. By identifying the common features of
paradigm cases, one can get a sense of the concept’s ordinary central application,
without having to draw sharp-edged definitional lines. This is beneficial because no
matter where the line is drawn, some objection is possible. An example of a paradigm
case is a chair being described as an instance of the category “furniture” (but is a
television a piece of furniture, of an appliance?).
The shared features of exemplary cases of persuasion are
♡ A successful attempt to influence: the notion of success in embedded in the
concept of persuasion. I does not make sense to say “I persuaded him but failed”,
but one can say “I tried to persuade him but failed”. To say simply “I persuaded
him” is to imply a successful attempt to influence.
♡ The persuader’s intending to influence: someone might say “I accidentally
persuaded Mary to vote for Brown” because in the circumstance in which the
speaker does not want a hearer to draw the usual inference of intent; absent such
mention of accident, the ordinary inference will be that the persuasion was
purposeful.
♡ Some measure of freedom on the persuadee’s part: consider a robbery vs. a
television ad inducing someone to make a donation.
♡ Having the effects be achieved through communication: consider someone
physically lifting you and throwing you off a roof vs. someone talking you into
jumping of a building.
♡ A change in the persuadee’s mental state: some ordinary instances of persuasion
may be described as involving only a change in mental state, but even when
behavioral change is involved there is ordinarily presumed to be some underlying
change in mental state that gave rise to the behavioral change.
The shared features of exemplary cases of persuasion can be strung together into
something that looks like a definition (a successful intentional effort at influencing
another’s mental state through communication in a circumstance in which the
persuade has some measure of freedom) but it should be apparent that
constructing this would not eliminate the fuzzy edges of the concept of persuasion.
Such a definition leaves open to dispute just how much success is required, just
how intentional the effort must be, and so on. By recognizing the shared features
of paradigm cases, one can get a sense of the central core of the concept, but one
need not draw sharp definitional boundaries around that concept.
The mental state that has been seen to be most centrally implicated to be changed in
persuasion is that of attitude. An attitude is a person’s general evaluation of an object,
where object is understood in a broad sense, as encompassing persons, events,
products, policies, etc. Influencing these objects will often involve influencing people’s
attitudes. Because attitudes represent relatively stable evaluations that can influence
behavior, they are a common persuasive target.
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,Explicit attitude measurement techniques directly ask the respondent for an evaluative
judgment of the attitude object. Two commonly employed explicit assessment
procedures:
1. Semantic differential evaluative scales: respondents rate the attitude object on a
number of 7-point bipolar scales that are end-anchored by evaluative adjective
pairs (good-bad, etc.). The respondent places a check mark at the point on the
scale that best represents his judgement. The investigator can straightforwardly
assign numerical values to the scale points and then sum each person’s responses
to obtain an indication of his attitude toward the object.
2. Single-item attitude measures: a single questionnaire item that asks for the
relevant judgement. A single-item attitude measure is an attractive technique for
circumstances such as public opinion polling.
- Pros: can be undertaken orally, question is typically straightforward and easily
comprehended, the question can be asked and answered in a short time.
- Cons: potentially weak reliability (a person’s response to a single attitude
question may not be as dependable an indicator of attitude as the person’s
response to three or four items all getting at roughly the same thing).
A single-item attitude measure familiar to U.S. survey researchers is the “feeling
thermometer” which asks respondents to report their evaluation on a scale akin to
a Fahrenheit thermometer: the endpoint of the scale are zero degrees (very “cold”
or unfavorable feelings) and 100 degrees (very “warm” or favorable feelings).
Quasi explicit attitude measurement techniques assess attitude not by directly eliciting
an evaluative judgment of the attitude object but by eliciting information that is
obviously attitude-relevant and that offers a straightforward basis for attitude
assessment. The most common quasi-explicit attitude measurement procedures are
those devised by Thurstone (list of statements and check the ones with which you
agree) and by Likert (strength of agreement with each statement though some
appropriate scale). In their procedures, the respondent’s attitude is inferred from
agreement or disagreement with statements that are rather obviously attitude-relevant.
The attitude assessment instrument then consists of statements to which the
respondent reacts (by agreeing or disagreeing with each one), and the respondent’s
attitude is inferred from the pattern of responses. The key is to identify those
statements that can dependably be taken as indicators of attitudes.
Because quasi-explicit procedures involve acquiring attitude-relevant information
(rather than the attitude itself), these procedures offer information not available with
explicit measurement techniques (causation, comparatives). But this additional
information is obtained at a cost: procedures such as paired-comparison ratings or
ranking tasks may take more time to administer, as attitude scales have to be
constructed anew for each attitude object.
Implicit attitude measurement techniques include
♡ Physiological indices, such as autonomic responses and measures of brain
activity;
♡ Priming measures, in which attitudes are assessed by examining the speed
(reaction time) with which people make evaluative judgments when those
judgments are preceded (primed) by the attitude object;
♡ The Implicit Association Test (IAT), in which attitudes are assessed by examining
the strength of association (as measured by reaction time) between attitude objects
and evaluative categories;
♡ And a variety of others.
What is common to all implicit measures is that it is generally not obvious to
respondents that their attitudes are being assessed. For that reason, implicit measures
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,are likely to be most attractive in circumstances in which one fears respondents may
distort their true attitudes (rather uncommon in research on persuasion).
Attitude has been taken to be a key mental state relevant to persuasion because of a
presumed relationship between attitudes and actions. Attitudes are important
determinants of behavior and that one avenue to changing a person’s behavior will be
to change that person’s attitude. The degree of attitude-behavior consistency has been
found to vary depending on other “moderating” factors: factors that moderate or
influence the relationship between attitudes and behaviors. Two well-studied factors:
1. Correspondence between the attitudinal and behavioral measures: the nature of
the measures involved. A general attitude (toward religion for example) will
probably not be especially strongly correlated with any one particular specific
behavior (reading religious books), but may well be strongly correlated with a
general behavior index based on multiple behaviors (reading religious books,
attending religious services, watching religious programs, etc.). The average
correlation between general attitude and any single-act index is roughly 0.3, the
average correlation between general attitude and multiple-act behavioral measure
is approx. 0,65. These findings underscore the importance of carefully considering
the focus of persuasive efforts.
2. The degree of direct experience: attitudes based on direct behavioral experience
with the object have been found to be more predictive of later behavior toward the
object than are attitudes based on indirect experience. Two persons may have
equally positive attitudes but may differ in whether they act consistently with those
attitudes because of underlying differences in the ways in which the attitudes were
formed.
Sometimes a persuader’s challenge is not to change a person’s attitude but to get that
person to act on their attitude. Three strategies:
1. Enhance perceived relevance: “You might not have realized it, but hits really is an
opportunity to act consistently with your attitude”.
2. Induce feelings of hypocrisy: “You haven’t been acting consistently with your
attitude, but here is an opportunity to do so”.
3. Encourage anticipation of feelings: “Here is an opportunity to act consistently with
your attitude, and think how bad you’ll feel if you don’t”.
These three strategies all seek to tap some general desire for consistency as a way of
influencing behavior in a circumstance in which persons will have an opportunity to act
consistently with some existing attitude. But the strategies vary in the means of
engaging that motivation.
Although attitude has been considered the key mental state relevant to persuasive
effects, attitudes are not the only possible focus for persuasive efforts.
♡ Sometimes the focus of a persuasive effort will be some determinant of attitude,
such as a particular belief about the attitude object. The appropriate assessment
of the campaign’s persuasive effectiveness would involve changes in that belief,
not changes in the overall attitude toward the product.
♡ Sometimes persuaders want to influence some property of an attitude other than
its valence (positive or negative) and extremity. They might want to change the
salience (prominence, accessibility) of the attitude, the confidence with which it is
held, the degree to which it is linked to other attitudes, etc. These attitudinal
properties have been grouped together under the general heading of “attitude
strength”.
♡ Persuasive efforts sometimes will be concerned not with any aspect of attitudes
but rather with other mental states. For example, the key to changing some
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, behaviors might involve not influencing person’s attitudes but rather changing their
perceived ability to perform the desired behavior.
Chapter 2 Social Judgment Theory
The central tenet of social judgment theory is that messages produce attitude change
through judgmental processes and effects. More specifically, the claim is that the effect
of a persuasive communication depends upon the way in which the receiver evaluates
the position it advocates. Hence attitude change is seen as a two-step process:
1. The receiver makes an assessment of what position is being advocated by the
message.
2. Attitude change occurs after this judgment, with the amount and direction of
change dependent on that judgment.
On any given persuasive issue, a number of different positions or points of view are
likely to be available. A person is likely to have different assessments of these various
positions, finding some of them acceptable, others objectionable and some neither
particularly acceptable or unacceptable. For obtaining person’s judgments of the
different positions, social judgment theory researchers developed the Ordered
Alternatives questionnaire. This questionnaire provides the respondent with a set of
statements, each representing a different point of view on the issue being studied. The
statements are chosen so as to represent the range of positions on the issue and are
arranged in order from one extreme to the other. The respondent is asked first to
indicate the one statement that he finds most acceptable (++), then the other
statements that are acceptable to him (+), the one statement that is most objectionable
(--) and the other statements that are unacceptable (-). Some of the positions can be
left blank. These responses form the person’s judgmental latitudes on the issue. The
structure of these latitudes can vary from person to person.
♡ Latitude of acceptance: range of positions that the respondent finds acceptable.
♡ Latitude of noncommitment: range of positions that the respondent neither accepts
or rejects.
♡ Latitude of rejection: range of positions that the respondent finds unacceptable.
Social judgment theory proposes that the structure of the judgmental latitudes
systematically varies depending on one’s level of ego-involvement with the issue.
There is some uncertainty about what the concept of ego-involvement comes to. Very
broadly speaking it is roughly the same as would be meant in informally referring to
someone’s being “involved with an issue”. Ego-involvement is distinct from the
extremity of the most preferred position. Social judgment theory does suggest that the
two will be empirically related, such that those with more extreme positions on an issue
will tend to be more ego-involved in that issue.
One’s level of ego-involvement on an issue will influence the structure of one’s
judgmental latitudes on that issue: as one’s level of ego-involvement increases, the
size of the latitude of rejection will also increase. The more involved person will find
relatively few stands on the issue to be acceptable, won’t be neutral or noncommittal
toward very many positions, and will find many positions objectionable.
In early studies of the relationship of ego-involvement to the structure of the judgmental
latitudes, the participants were often persons whose involvement levels could be
presumed on the basis of their group memberships. In studies such as these, persons
in the presumably higher-involvement groups had larger latitudes of rejection than did
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,presumably less involved participants. On this basis, the size of the latitude of rejection
on the Ordered Alternatives questionnaire has been recommended as a measure of
ego-involvement: the larger one’s latitude of rejection, the greater one’s degree of ego-
involvement.
A second measure of ego-involvement was derived from what is called the Own
Categories procedure. Participants are presented with a large number of statements
(60 or more) on the topic of interest and are asked to sort these statements into
however many categories they think necessary to represent the range of positions on
the issue. Participants who are higher involved create fewer categories than do low-
involvement participants (with increasing ego-involvement, increased perceptual
distortion is likely). This suggests the use of the Own Categories procedure as an index
of ego-involvement: the fewer categories created, the greater the degree of ego-
involvement.
Assimilation and contrast effects are perceptual effects concerning the judgment of
what position is being advocated by a message. An assimilation effect is said to occur
when a receiver perceives the message to be advocating a position closer to his or her
own position than it actually does. A contrast effect is said to occur when a receiver
perceives the message to be advocating a position farther away from his or her position
than it actually does. Social judgment theory offers a rule of thumb concerning the
occurrence of assimilation and contrast effects. Broadly speaking, a communication
advocating a position in the latitude of acceptance is likely to be assimilated, and a
communication advocating a position in the latitude of rejection is likely to be
contrasted. Thus, the perceived position of a persuasive communication may be
different for persons with differing stands on the issue.
Assimilation and contrast effects appear to be magnified by ego-involvement. This
relationship can be seen to underlie the previously described involvement-related
differences revealed in the Own categories procedure: Because higher ego-
involvement means a greater propensity toward perceptual distortion, the higher-
involvement perceiver finds it difficult to discern fine differences between advocated
positions.
However, assimilation and contrast effects are minimized by messages that make
clear what position is being advocated. Only relatively ambiguous messages are
subject to assimilation and contrast effects.
Whether receivers will change their attitudes following reception of a persuasive
communication depends on what position the message is perceived to be advocating
(the location of the communication with respect to the latitudes). The general principle
(rule of thumb) is: A communication that is perceived to advocate a position that falls
in the latitude of acceptance or noncommitment will produce attitude change in the
advocated direction, but a communication that is perceived to advocate a position that
falls in the latitude of rejection will produce no attitude change and may even provoke
“boomerang” attitude change. This principle has important implications for the question
of the effects of discrepancy on attitude change. With increasing discrepancy, more
favorable attitude change will occur, up to the latitude of rejection. Beyond that point,
increasing discrepancy will produce less favorable reactions (inverted U-shape curve).
If a message that advocates a position in the receiver’s latitude of rejection is perceived
as advocating an even more discrepant position (contrast effect), then the chances for
favorable attitude change diminish even more. When an assimilation effect occurs, it
will reduce the amount of attitude change obtained. So both these effects reduce the
effectiveness of persuasive messages. Persuaders can minimize these effects by
being clear about their position on the persuasive issue. Only relatively ambiguous
messages are subject to assimilation and contrast effects. One might then think that
the prevalence and success of ambiguity in political campaigns suggests that
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,something is amiss. To understand this phenomenon, it is important to keep in mind
that ordinarily the candidate is not trying to persuade audiences to favor this or that
approach on an issue. Rather, the persuasive aim of the campaign is to get people to
vote for the candidate, and candidates are never ambiguous about that.
As mentioned before, social judgment theory emphasizes that a persuader needs to
know more than simply the receiver’s most preferred position; the structure of the
judgmental latitudes is also important. Even if two receivers have the same most
preferred position, a given persuasive message might fall in the latitude of acceptance
for one person but in the latitude of rejection for another, leading to quite different
reactions to a given message. Persuaders are often not in a position to vary their
advocated view for different audiences.
Chapter 3: Functional approaches to Attitude
One general approach to the analysis of attitudes focuses on the functions that
attitudes can serve. The basic idea is that attitudes may serve various functions for
persons. The relevance of this idea for understanding persuasion is that the most
effective technique for changing an attitude may vary depending on the attitude’s
function.
Katz’ (1960) four attitude functions:
1. Utilitarian: Attitudes serving this function will be susceptible to change when the
attitude (and related activities) no longer effectively maximizes rewards and
minimizes punishment. Most effectively changed by creating new rewards and
punishments or by changing what is associated with existing rewards and
punishment.
2. Ego-defensive: attitudes serving this function do the job of defending one’s self-
image. They are exemplified most clearly by prejudicial attitudes toward minorities.
Most effectively changed by removing the threat to the ego or giving persons
insight into their motivational dynamics.
3. Value-expressive: with attitude serving this function, persons get satisfaction from
holding and expressing attitudes that reflect their central values and self-images.
Most likely to change when the underlying beliefs and self-images change, or when
an alternative, superior means of expressing the values is presented.
4. Knowledge: this function reflects the role of attitudes in organizing and
understanding information and events (good guys vs. bad guys). Attitudes can
serve as at least a superficial mechanism for organizing one’s understanding of a
situation. Most effectively changed through the introduction of ambiguity; such
ambiguity indicates that the attitudes are not functioning well to organize
information, thus making the attitudes more likely to change.
There is no consensus about a particular typology of attitude functions, Katz’ list is only
one of the many proposed. One broad distinction has been found widely useful and
seems contained in a great many attitude function analyses: a distinction between
symbolic an instrumental attitude functions.
♡ Symbolic functions focus on the symbolic associations of the object; attitudes
serving a symbolic function do the jobs of expressing fundamental moral beliefs,
symbolizing significant values, projecting self-images, etc.
♡ Instrumental functions focus on the intrinsic properties of the object; summarizing
the desirable and undesirable aspects of the object, appraising the object through
specific intrinsic consequences or attributes, etc.
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,Ways to assess the function of a given attitude:
1. Coding relevant free-response data: Respondent freely write down how they feel
about an attitude object and why. Responses are then classified on the basis of
the apparent attitude function. Different attitude functions will have different
characteristic clusters of affiliated beliefs, spawned by the different motivations
behind the attitude, and hence examination of such freely elicited beliefs will
illuminate attitude functions.
2. Use of a standardized questionnaire: respondents are asked to indicate the degree
to which each statement is true of them.
3. Using proxy indices such as personality characteristics to stand in for more direct
assessments of function. The most frequently employed has been the individual-
difference variable of self-monitoring. High self-monitors are concerned about the
image they project to others and tailor their conduct to fit the particular
circumstances they are in. low self-monitors are less concerned about their
projected image and mold their behavior to fit inner states rather than external
circumstances. Self-monitoring is taken to be broadly reflective of differences in
likely attitude function. For any proxy measure, the key question is the degree to
which the proxy is actually related to differences in attitude function.
Factors that can influence attitude function:
1. Individual differences: different persons can favor different attitude functions. For
example, high self-monitors appear to favor social-adjustive functions, whereas
low self-monitors seem more likely to adopt value-expressive functions.
2. Nature of the attitude object: objects can differentially lend themselves to attitude
functions. For example, are conditioners commonly evoke predominantly utilitarian
thoughts (‘keeps air cool’), where wedding rings are more likely to elicit social-
identity thoughts (‘represents a sacred vow’). Multifunctional objects are easily able
to accommodate different attitude functions, for example automobiles can easily
permit both symbolic and instrumental functions
3. Situational variations: different situations can elicit different attitude functions. For
example, if the situation makes salient the intrinsic attributes and outcomes
associated with an object, presumably instrumental (utilitarian) functions will be
more likely to be activated. Social-identity functions might be engaged by situations
that involve using or affiliating with an attitude object in public.
Individual differences and situational variations are likely to have the greatest effect on
attitude function for multifunctional attitude objects.
To adapt the persuasive message to the audience in a functional approach, we match
the persuasive appeal to the functional basis of the recipient’s attitude: Function
Matching. High self-monitors favor social-adjustive functions and low self-monitors
favor value-expressive functions: the appeal variation consists of using arguments
emphasizing correspondingly different aspects of the attitude objects. In the specific
domain of consumer products, the contrast can be characterized as a difference
between appeals emphasizing the image of the product or its users, and appeals
emphasizing the intrinsic quality of the product. The same goes for the effectiveness
of different appeals for different types of products.
It is not entirely clear why function-matched appeals are more persuasive than
unmatched appeals. Two broad possibilities:
1. Functionality matched appeals simply speak to a receiver’s psychological needs in
ways that unmatched appeals do not.
2. Function-matched messages are processed more carefully than mismatched
messages.
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, The general idea of functional analysis can be of use in illuminating attitudes and
persuasion processes, even without some universal scheme of attitude functions. It
has proved possible to distinguish different attitudinal functions in a way that is
dependable and that provides insight into attitudes on that subject. Of course there is
variation in the specific functional typologies used to analyze these different particular
attitudes. On one subject it may be helpful to distinguish various subtypes of a function,
but distinguishing those subtypes may not be necessary when considering attitudes
on a different topic (generalized utilitarian function for amusement parks vs. for
democracy).
There is a distinction between the functions of having an attitude and the functions of
expressing an attitude. Similarly there is a distinction between the functions of an
attitude and the functions of an attitude object. Finally, there is a distinction between
the functions of an attitude object and the function of expressing an attitude. These
three elements are commonly conflated in theory and research on attitude functions.
Reconsiderations:
The procedures commonly used for assessing attitude functions sometimes don’t
actually assess the attitude functions but can instead be understood as assessing
variations in the perceived value or importance of attributes (or functions) of the
attitude object.
Value-expressive attitudes have commonly been distinguished from utilitarian attitudes
on the basis for the nature of the outcomes sought: abstract, prosocial ends indicate
value-expressive attitudes, whereas concrete self-enhancing ends indicate utilitarian
attitudes. But plainly this way of distinguishing attitudes seems less a matter of attitude
function than a matter of the abstractness or nobility of the ends served by the object.
But value-expressive attitudes and utilitarian attitudes arguably do not actually serve
different attitude functions; the underlying attitude function is identical in the two cases
(evaluative object appraisal in the service of obtaining satisfactory outcomes), although
the criteria for assessing objects (the outcomes of interest) may vary.
Chapter 4: Belief Based Models of Attitude
The central theme of belief-based approaches to the analysis of attitude and attitude
change is that one’s attitude toward an object is a function of the beliefs that one has
about the object. Salient beliefs are the prominent beliefs at any given time, which are
claimed to determine one’s attitude. One might elicit the respondent’s salient beliefs
by asking the respondent to list the characteristics, qualities and attributes of the
object. Across a number of respondents, the most frequently mentioned attributes
represent the modally salient beliefs, which can be used as the basis for a standardized
questionnaire.
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