Social Influence, Public Communication And Advertising (201700824)
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SIPA - All lectures for the exam - Fully typed out (Social Influence, Public Communication and Advertising)
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Social Influence, Public Communication And Advertising (201700824)
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Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Fully typed out document of lectures 1, 2, 3 and 5 (exam material) for Social Influence, Public Communication And Advertising (SIPA).
Lecture 1: (Dis)trust and resistance; The human parking brake.
Lecture 2: Social heuristics; mechanics of human decision-making (Cialdini).
Lecture 3: Motivation an...
Social Influence, Public Communication And Advertising (201700824)
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Lectures ‘Social Influence, Public Communication and Advertising’
Lecture 1: (Dis)trust and resistance: The human parking
brake
1a: Regulatory Focus
- The developer of this theory, Regulatory Focus theory is Tory Higgins, he’s a psychology professor
from Colombia University in New York.
- So what is this all about? When we think of persuasion we often think about telling people how
great something is. So if you think of a rose, we might tell people how beautiful and red the leaves
are. But, some people may not be focused on the leaves, but may be focused on the thorns, that
means that telling about the red leaves may not persuade these people.
- So some people are in a promotion focus. They want to: enjoy, own things, learn, be slim, have
friends, be health etc. So they are focused on growth, advancement and progress. These type of
people we call promotion focused people.
- And others they are more focused on what they don’t want, on what they find scary for example.
They don’t want to: fail, lose money, be rejected, look stupid, make mistakes, get sick, etc. They are
focused on maintaining security and safety, and on adhering to fair duties. So, this is what we call
prevention focused people.
Examples promotion vs prevention focused people
- So an illustration of promotion and prevention focused people we can find in the current COVID
crisis. On the left you see people who hug everybody, and even though it’s against the COVID rules
they still are only thinking about well I only want to hug somebody. And it feels so good to hug
somebody. And they just do it because they want to. And on the right side you see people who are
not huggers. They may be more scared of infecting somebody, for example their parents. And they
adhere more to the rules, which say you can’t just hug everybody. So huggers vs non-huggers might
be an example of how promotion and prevention focus people play out in the current crisis.
- Perhaps you’ve seen a person in Canada who developed a hugging station (hugging trough plastic),
now this is very creative because in a way it caters to both prevention and promotion focused
people. So prevention people, they care about safety, so when they see this, they might think well is
this safe enough. And a promotion focused person may think about is this hug good enough given
that there’s a lot of plastic involved. But if it’s safe and the hug is good, you could say this thing is
catering to both kind of people.
- Even in student life there you can see differences between promotion focused students and
prevention focused students. So for example think of this course, when you registered for this course
you may think ‘I want to read extra material, I want to make the most of this course, I want to really
grow and advance and learn’ and you might be focused on the difference between 0 and 1. On the
other hand, I know there’s also students who are more like ‘I want to adhere to course requirements,
I want to follow every rule that is in this course, I want to not fail’ and they are more focused on the
difference between -1 to 0. So as you can a value of 0 is very different for people in a promotion or
prevention focus. For people in a promotion focus it’s negative, because they failed to get any gains.
However, for people in a prevention focus it’s actually good, because they succeeded in not having
losses.
Scholer et al. (2019)
- And in the chapter by Scholer et al you can read a number of very fundamental differences between
people in a promotion and a prevention focus.
- So for example you can find that differences between these people arise from either chronic or
temporal accessibility. That means people differ chronically on how promotion or prevention focused
they are, but also temporary, so depending on the context.
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, Lectures ‘Social Influence, Public Communication and Advertising’
- And these orientations are orthogonal. Which means they are independent. So a person can be
both prevention and promotion focused. They’re independent motivational orientations. However,
on any given moment, one of the two motivational systems is going to dominate. Depending on the
situation.
- And you measure prevention and promotion focused with a questionnaire. This is an example from
a questionnaire of Lockwood and colleagues. And you might find questions like: ‘I often think about
the person I would ideally like to be in the future’ (promotion focused item) and ‘I frequently think
about how I can prevent failures in my life’ (prevention focused item).
Development of promotion and prevention focus
- So how do people develop these promotion and prevention focus? Well in their caregiving
environment. So we were brought up by our parents in a certain way. And as you might know there
are different types of parenting styles. Four of them: 1authoritarian (focus on obedience, punishment
over discipline; and they really punish children when they fail to adhere to rules and norms);
2
authoritative (create positive relationship, enforce rules; which means they ask of their child to be
their best and develop positive habits, however, they focus more on helping a child creating their
ideals and wishes); 3permissive (don’t enforce rules, ‘kids will be kids’); 4uninvolved (provide little
guidance, nurturing, or attention).
- Especially the first two are very important. And as you may expect the authoritarian way of
parenting often leads in children to a prevention focus. And the authoritative style leads children to
have a more promotion focused orientation. The bottom ones are less clear, but there are some
findings that even a permissive style leads to a prevention focus.
Promotion vs prevention system; approach vs avoidance
- So perhaps in previous courses you learned about approach and
avoidance behavior. And you might think that approach is related to
promotion and avoidance to prevention. Well, there is some relation,
but in fact they’re not the same. Because think of a promotion system,
and you want to pursue your ideals and your wishes and you are in for
progress, you can do that either in an approach or in an avoidance way. So you can approach growth
and gain, but you can also avoid nongain. So you can avoid situations where there’s nothing to gain.
And the same holds for prevention. You can either prevent losses by approaching safe environments,
or by avoiding unsafe environments.
Brain activation
- So promotion and prevention goals also activate different regions in the brain. You don’t have to
remember these brain regions, but it’s just important to know that they activate different regions of
the brain. So: promotion goals: they activate inner regions of the brain that are related to intuition
and reward sensitivity; prevention goals: they activate brain systems that are more on the outer layer
of the brain and they are more related to self-awareness and social adaptation.
Research on promotion and prevention focus
- In research promotion and prevention focus are often manipulated in experiments. And you can do
this in many ways, for example: if you ask a person ‘what are your current ideals in life’. Or how have
your ideals changed since your childhood. And that will bring people in a promotion focus. And ‘what
are your current duties in life’ if you ask this to a person he/she will be more in a prevention focus.
- And you can also do it with a game. So with two mazes, in one of them the mouse has to find the
cheese, and that’s a promotion goal manipulation. And in the other one the mouse has to flee from
an owl, if you do this game you’re likely to be more in a prevention focus.
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, Lectures ‘Social Influence, Public Communication and Advertising’
- So if you want to influence somebody, a group or person, it would be very helpful to know whether
he/she is in a prevention or a promotion focus.
People in a promotion focus…
- Have different preferences. They are interested in promotion-oriented products for example. They
attend to promotion-oriented attributes of products (e.g., luxury vs reliability; when they evaluate a
car, they are more focused on the luxury of the car and less on the reliablity).
- Are motivated by different factors. For example, they’re inspired by positive (not negative) role
models (think of a health context for example where promotion focused people are inspired by
healthy and fit examples, and not by examples that are more negative and that might function as
warning signals, like people who got sick because they were unhealthy). They are also more
motivated to praise for excellent work (and by positive feedback instead of negative feedback).
- Process information in an eager way. So they prioritize speedy decision making. They focus on the
big picture instead of the details. They focus on obtaining the best option, and not on eliminating the
worst option from a situation where they can choose from various options. And they’re also more
creative in how they solve problems.
- Have different self-views. So people in a promotion focus are more politically liberal. They think of
themselves more as independent persons (and not as interdependent; independent people
fundamentally see themselves as individuals and their sense of self is really based on their own
capacities/goals/desires; whereas interdependent people think of themselves as fundamentally part
of a group, and they think more about the connections they have to other people). And they
generally have a higher self-esteem.
- Now all these aspects are relevant for advertising and consumer behavior. And Madelijn will give us
some examples in a minute. But given this list of attributes we can also of course turn it around and
talk about prevention focused people.
People in a prevention focus…
- Have different preferences. They are more interested in prevention-oriented products. They attend
to prevention-oriented attributes (like reliability of a car, instead of luxury).
- Are motivated by different factors. They are inspired both by positive and negative role models. And
they are motivated by criticism about their work.
- Process information in a vigilant way. They prioritize accuracy when they make decisions, and not
speed. They focus on the details. And they focus on eliminating the worst options from a
consideration set. They favor repetition, and therefore are less creative.
- Have different self-views. They tend to be more conservative politically. And more interdependent
(so fundamentally they see themselves as part of a social network, and connected to others). And
they have generally a lower self-esteem.
Regulatory fit
- And relevant for advertising and social influence is that we need to find the fit with our target
group. So a person’s motivational orientation leads them to prefer products and messages that help
them sustain their orientation. So they want to stay in the orientation that they were already in. It
makes them ‘feel right’ during message reception. And it also increases their strength of engagement
with the message.
- An example: Florack et al. (2014). They had
two types of sun lotion, and one was
presented in a very prevention focused way
‘Give sunburn no chance. Avène provides
safe protection. Avène – the double
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protection’. And the more promotion focused way ‘Enjoy the warm rays of the sun. Clarins for
healthy tan. Clarins – enjoy the sun’. And as you might expect, participants in a promotion focus they
liked the Clarins sun lotion more. And people in a prevention focus, they preferred the Avène one.l
- Another example: Cesario et al. (2013). They had 120 participants. And first they measured their
chronic promotion (ideal) and prevention (ought) strength by using a reaction time task. And the
independent variable in this experiment was the framing of a product, in this case a mouthwash. So
for some participants, they were asked: ‘Think about what you would gain by buying this bottle of
mouthwash’ (so they were focused on the pleasure you can get from this mouthwash). And in the
other group they were asked: ‘Think about what you would lose by not buying this bottle of
mouthwash’ (so they were focused on the pain of not buying it). And then they measured the
dependent variable: willingness to pay (so how much are they willing to pay for this mouthwash).
- And here you see the results. So on the left side you can see on the x-axis the promotion focus, the
strength of people’s promotion focus, or ideal strength as they call it. And as you can see in the
dotted line is that when the promotion focus becomes stronger, participants were willing to pay
more for the mouthwash. And this is only when they focused on the pleasure of buying it. Not when
you look at the solid line, when they were focusing on the pain.
- On the right side you see what happens with the prevention focus. So on the x-axis you see the
strength of the prevention focus, or ought strength. And on the solid line you can see that when
participants had a stronger prevention focus, they wanted to pay more for the mouthwash, but only
when they had focused on the pain of not buying it. When they were focusing on the pleasure as you
can see in the dotted line, this relation was the other way around, it was actually negative.
- So this shows us that the fit is important. The way participants are allowed to think about a product
has to fit their motivational orientation. And then they like the product more. And also you see in
these two graphs that prevention and promotion are independent. So, some people may be both
promotion focused and prevention focused.
- Cesario & Higgins (2008). Research also shows that non-verbal behavior is important to people in
different motivational orientations. So here in this research they had a school teacher promoting a
new assistance program for children after school. And in all cases he was promoting the same
assistance program. However, he did it in 2 different ways. One group of participants was presented
to his speech when he was presenting it in a very eager way (leaning forward, talking in a very high
speed, very high speed gestures and energetic, open/broad gestures). And in the other group he
presented in a more vigilant way (speaking more slowly, gestures more precise, also gestures of
pushing down which illustrates slowing down/take it easy, and his voice was a bit softer). And the
first one has a greater fit with people in a promotion focus. And the second one has a greater fit with
people in a prevention focus. And what they found in this research is that participants were more
likely to accept the proposal and implement the ideas presented in it depending on their
motivational focus.
- Aaker & Lee (2001). Interdependent vs independent self-view. So here’s another example of how
this might play out in advertising. So people with an interdependent self-view, they see their close
relationships, social roles, and group memberships essential to their sense of self. And they see
themselves fundamentally as connected to their social environment. And people with an
independent self-view, they see their own personality, abilities, values and attitudes essential to their
sense of self. They see themselves as fundamentally independent from others. And it has been found
that prevention focus activates an interdependent self-view. This is because prevention focus is often
related to rules, duties and expectations set by others. And it has been found that promotion focus
activates an independent self-view, this is because promotion is often related to deviating in a
positive way from others. And that is why people in a prevention focus tend to be more persuaded
by images of a family, and people in a promotion focus tend to be more persuaded by images of
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