Lecture notes on marketing and persuasive communication
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Course
Marketing en persuasieve communicatie (S_MPC)
Institution
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
In this document, all the lectures in this course have been carefully and extensively developed. The exam almost only asks questions about the lectures, so learn these carefully! I myself got a 9.4 for the exam. Good luck learning:)
- Corporate spere:
◼ Marcom, advertising
◼ Sales/negotiations
◼ Motivating/leadership
◼ Online campaigns/influencing
- Public sphere:
◼ Health com
◼ Pol com, public opinion
- Individual sphere:
◼ Friends, relationships
◼ Kids/upbringing
◼ Neighbours, bus drivers, shop owners, bosses
Why do we need a scientific approach to persuasion:
- People often do not understand their own beliefs, attitudes and behavioral motives let alone
those of others
- We need objective evidence to understand why people change their behavior
Good looking people are seen as more intelligent, nicer, more outgoing
- Effect: more positive responses, credible, reliable
- Effect: more persuasive
- Effect: better (paid) jobs, nicer partners
By a street survey we would probably find no relation between attractiveness and intelligence:
, - People do not admit that they think there is such a relation (political correctness/social
desirability)
- People are not aware that they make this connection
Persuasion (definition by Perloff): a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other
people to change their attitudes or behaviour regarding an issue through the transmission of a
message, in an atmosphere of free choice
So:
- Symbolic process -> communication
- Intentional influence
- Beliefs, attitudes and behavior
- Sender, receiver, message, object, context
- Receiver has free choice
News may influence attitudes, but there usually is no persuasive intent. If there is persuasive intent ->
persuasion
Lecture 2 attitudes (and balance)
Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change
their attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an
atmosphere of free choice
In case of unequal power/hierarchical contexts there is no free choice, hence: no persuasive
communication
What are attitudes?
- A mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive
and dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situation with which
it is related
- The predisposition of the individual to evaluate a particular object in a favorable or
unfavourable manner
- A tendency to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a
given object
- A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree
of favor of disfavor
Key characteristics of attitudes:
- Tendency: longer than emotions, shorter than personality traits
- Learned: through experience or other
- Evaluative: has a valence (positive or negative) and intensity (weak or strong)
, - Directed at object: person, issue, group, etc.
Attitude functions:
- Attitudes are (psychologically) useful
- Katz (1960): ego-defensive, value-expressive, instrumental and knowledge function
- Smith, Bruner & White (1956): social adjustive function
(1) Knowledge function of attitudes:
- Attitudes organize our thinking; make the world understandable/predictable
- Attitudes help us predict how people will respond/situation will work out
- E.g. good guys vs. bad guys
(2) Instrumental function:
- Attitudes and associated behaviour (approach; avoid) will help obtaining positive outcomes
- Usually result from learning processes (rewards and punishments): e.g. children develop
positive attitudes based on associated positive outcomes
(3) Ego-defensive function:
- Attitudes help maintain a positive self-image
- In- vs. outgroup: negative attitudes toward other groups confirms own superiority
- E.g. negative attitudes toward immigrants
(4) Value-expressive function:
- People want to express their identity
- Attitudes help to express central values, obtain social approval
- E.g. liking classical music to show refinement
(5) Social adjustment
- People like others with similar beliefs
- Expressing attitudes helps in forming or maintaining (or blocking) relationships
, - Relative (personal) importance of belief: “I hate arrogant people”
- Certainty of belief: “Is he a right wing extremist now or just a bit unhinged..?”
- Uniqueness of belief: “Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband”
Measuring attitudes:
Lecture 3 cognitive dissonance
Before cognitive dissonance: balance theory (Heider, 1946)
An example of the balance theory is the owner having a car they
love, but it breaks down a lot (the imbalance)
In similar schemes, there is spoken of a balance when there are 0
or 2 minuses.
How to reduce imbalance?
- Denial: the car does not break down all the time
, - Bolstering: to support something or make something stronger; I love the car so much, it
doesn’t matter that it breaks down
- Differentiation: I love the car, it is just the engine inside I don’t like (this can be fixed)
- Integration/transcendence: ignorance of the problem, you are above it
Cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger 1957):
- How people persuade themselves.
Background:
- Deals with relations between cognitive elements (attitudes, beliefs, behavior)
- Three possible relations:
1. Irrelevant
2. Consonant
3. Dissonant
Examples of dissonance:
Assumptions:
- People do not like inconsistent cognitions
- Dissonance is an aversive state
- People are motivated to reduce dissonance
Degree of cognitive dissonance = (dissonant cognitions x importance) : (consonant cognitions x
importance)
How can dissonance be resolved:
- The importance of the dissonant cognitions can be reduced
- The dissonant cognitions can be changed
- Consonant cognitions can be added
- The importance of consonant cognitions can be increased
Dissonance between beliefs/behavior, what can you do?
- Change beliefs/attitudes
- Change behavior
- Try not to care (transcendence)
(1) Decision making: choice behavior/rationalization:
- Dissonance is a post-decision phenomenon
- The more similar the alternatives, the more dissonance
- Dissonance greatest just after choice
- Dissonance reduction after choice: spreading of alternatives
(2) Mass communication: selective exposure:
- Selective exposure hypothesis:
◼ People seek information that confirms their attitudes
◼ People avoid information that contradicts their attitudes
- Klapper (1960): minimal effects of mass media through selective exposure? Selective
exposure may subsequently determine attitudes and behavior
(3) Induced compliance
(Festinger & Carlsmith 1959)
- What happens to a person’s attitude if that person has to engage in behavior that goes
against this attitudes?
- Participant perform a very tedious task. 1/3 gets $1, 1/3 gets $20 to explain that the job is a
lot of fun, and 1/3 doesn’t have to
- Results: participants in the $1 conditions begin to rate the task more positively
- Explanation: $20 is a better excuse to lie than $1, $1 causes more dissonance
- Induces compliance is also applied in marketing by for instance making products expensive
and difficult to obtain on purpose
(4) Sunk cost:
Gambling on horses (Knox and Inkster, 1968):
- Right after placing bet, people overestimate chances of winning (more than before)
◼ The idea that money was wrongly invested creates dissonance and therefore people tend
to overestimate their investment
- Throwing bad money after good money (Concorde effect):
◼ People investing more in failing project as there has already been invested large sums of
money
(5) Education & hypocrisy induction
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