Summary Social Psychology theme 4 - Persuasion & cognitive dissonance
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Module
Social Psychology: People in Groups (ESSBP1010)
Institution
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
This summary is about theme 4 of social psychology: Attitudes to persuasion & Cognitive dissonance. You’ll read about the different theories concerning these subjects, how they relate and differ from each other.
[Kassin – 224-261]
Persuasion by communication
- Persuasion: the process by which attitudes are changed.
- Central route to persuasion: the process by which a person thinks carefully about a
communication and is influenced by the strength of its arguments.
- Peripheral route to persuasion: the process by which a person does not think carefully
about a communication and is influenced instead by superficial cues.
- Elaboration: the process of thinking about and scrutinizing the arguments contained in a
persuasive communication.
- McGuire (1968) explained that a recipient’s self-esteem and intelligence are unrelated to
persuasion. These characteristics have opposite effects on reception and acceptance.
- > people who are smart or high in self-esteem are better able to learn a message but are
less likely to accept its call for a change in attitude. People who are less smart or low in
self-esteem are more willing to accept the message, but they may have trouble learning its
contents.
- Researchers found that participants spend 64% more time on articles that supported rather
than opposed their existing attitudes.
- Self-validation hypothesis: people do not only elaborate on a persuasive communication
with positive or negative attitude-relevant thoughts but also seek to assess the validity of
these thoughts.
- > those thoughts that we hold with high confidence will have a strong impact on our
attitudes, those we hold with low confidence will not have a strong impact.
- Attitude embodiment effects: shaking head yes or no while seeing if headphones could
endure physical activity - nodding: later agreed more, shaking head: later disagreed more.
Persuasive communication: message intended to change an attitude and related behaviors of an
audience.
Yale approach
Persuasive communication outcome of three factors:
- A source (who)
- A message (says what and in what context)
- An audience (to whom)
, What makes some communicators in general more effective than others?: credibility and
likability
- High-credibility sources are more persuasive than low-credibility sources.
- For communicators to be seen as credible, they must have two characteristics: competence
and trustworthiness. Competence= speakers ability, knowledgable, smart -> persuasive by
virtue of their expertise.
- Target only knows a message through the medium of communication: what a person has
to say and how that person says it.
- People scrutinize non-experts more than experts when they advocate a position we agree
with, but they scrutinize non-experts more when they advocate a position we oppose.
- Just as source similarity can spark persuasion, dissimilarity can have the opposite
inhibiting effect.
- Study attractiveness result: attractive sources were able to get 41% of respondents to sign
the petition. Whereas those who were less attractive succeeded only 32% of the time.
- Personal involvement determines the relative impact of the expertise of the source and the
quality of speech.
Sleeper effect: a delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a non-credible source. Participants do not
learn who the source is until after they have received the original message. we tend to remember the
message but forget the source.
- > Experiment 1: participants changed their immediate attitudes more in response to a
message from a high-credibility source than from a low-credibility source. When attitudes
were measured again after 3 weeks, the high-credibility source had lost impact, and the
low-credibility source had gained impact – the sleeper effect.
- Source characteristics have more impact on those who don’t care enough to take the
central route.
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