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Summary: Resistance & Persuasion (Master: CIS/CIW/NMD/BDM) 2024
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Resistance & Persuasion Summary lectures, seminars, lecture notes etc. for exam 2024.
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RESISTANCE & PERSUASIONLECTURE 1 Resistance:
- Reaction against change (I don’t like it, I don’t believe it, I don’t want it)
- The ability to withstand a persuasive attack
- An outcome: not being moved by pressures to change
- A motivational state: motivation to oppose and counter pressures to change
LITERATURE 1.1: THE IMPORTANCE OF RESISTANCE TO PERSUASION
McGuire’s inoculation strategies increased resistance in two ways:
- By increasing motivation to resist
- By arming the person with the weapons needed to accomplish the resistance
Resistance:
- The outcome of not being moved by pressures to change.
- The motivation to oppose and counter pressures to change.
Attitude structure:
- Affective (I don’t like it)
- Cognitive (I don’t believe it)
- Behavioral (I won’t do it)
Brehm (1966): reactance is caused by external threats to one’s freedom of choice.
Four faces of resistance:
Reactance: when someone feels threatened by a persuasive attempt. The influence is
directly perceived, and people react with negative emotions:
o Affective: I don’t like it!
o Motivational: I won’t do it!
Distrust: when people don’t trust the message or person. People become guarded and wary
when faced with a persuasive message to change. They wonder what the motive behind the
proposal might be, what the true facts are.
o Affective: I don’t like it!
o Cognitive: I don’t believe it!
Scrutiny: when people become aware that they are the target of an persuasive message, a
natural reaction is to attend more carefully and thoughtfully to every aspect of the situation.
They pay close attention to both the strengths and weaknesses of the argument, which can
lead to either acceptance or rejection based on their evaluation.
o Cognitive: I don’t believe it!
Inertia: when someone resist change and prefers to say the way they are. To the extent that
a request, an offer, or a persuasive message asks for change in affect, behavior, or belief, the
inertia of personality and attitude frustrates that change.
,LITERATURE 1.2: RESISTANCE. THE INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEALTH COMMUNICATION
Resistance is often defined as ‘a reaction to change and as ‘the opposite of Persuasion’.
Several motivations for resistance to persuasive health messages:
- Reactance theory: a counter attitudinal/behavioral health message, a message advocating an
attitude or behavior not in line with recipients’ attitudes of behavior may elicit a threat to
freedom in message recipients.
When people feel threatened in their freedom to choose, they are motivated to regain their
freedom, by showing:
o The opposite behavior, resulting in a boomerang effect (direct restoration)
o Dismissing the message or the source (indirect restoration)
o Demonstrating other unhealthy behavior as an alternative for the threatened
unhealthy behavior (vicarious restoration)
- Need for accuracy: can make people skeptical towards persuasive health communication.
People strive for correct attitudes and want to be right and may question the provided
health information or the source.
- When people are confronted with a counter attitudinal message and see no effective way of
changing their behavior, they might experience resistance and show defensive reactions to
diminish the perceived threat.
- Resistance can also be induced when people’s self-esteem is threatened by a health
message that disapproves their behavior.
Strategies to reduce defensive reactions toward threatening health information:
- Self-affirmation: based on the idea that people protect their self-integrity. If someone is
threatened in one domain, self-integrity can be protected by emphasizing the other positive
domains.
- Entertainment education: incorporates health and other educational messages into popular
entertainment media with the goal of positively influencing awareness, knowledge,
attitudes, and/or behavior.
- Empathy arousal: Showing understanding and compassion in a message can help people
relate to the message and be more open to it:
o Affective empathy: the understanding and sharing other people’s negative and
positive feelings
o Cognitive empathy: recognizing, understanding, and adopting another person’s
viewpoint
,LECTURE 2: PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE & POLITENESS THEORY
Reactance theory and politeness theory developed in different times but can be used together.
Week without meat: people feel threatened in their freedom to make own decisions
Literature 2.1: the nature of psychological reactance revisited
Reactance: motivational state directed toward the reestablishment of a threatened freedom.
Reactance theory (Brehm, 1966):
- Threat to freedom: we want to make our own decisions
- Reactance
- Restoring freedom
o Directly: performing opposite behavior (boomerang effect)
o Indirectly:
Derogate the source of the threat
Increase liking to threatened choice
Deny existence of threat
Exercise different freedom
Psychological reactance theory explains how individuals respond when a freedom has been
threatened or lost.
The nature of reactance: Dillard & Shen (2005) and Rains & Turner (2005):
- Purely cognitive: we generate cognitions that can agree or disagreement with the message
by thinking or reasoning (counterarguing)
- Purely affective: causing anger (emotions)
- Cognitive and affective: different effects > dual process
- Cognitive and affective: linear effects > linear process
- Cognitive and affective: intertwined effects > intertwined process (cognitive and affective
responses occur simultaneously and interact with each other)
A single process cognitive model: antecedence to reactance > cognition > attitude
A single process affective model: antecedence to reactance > anger > attitude
A dual process cognitive-affective model:
A linear process affective-cognitive model: (affective > cognitive)
,An intertwined process cognitive-affective model:
Using reactance to promote change:
- Persuasive strategy: reverse psychology (don’t join the army)
- Scarcity: freedom to have something has been threatened
The findings suggest that reactance, as conceptualized by the intertwined model, plays a crucial role
in the failure of persuasive messages. The study concludes that when our freedom is threatened, we
feel a mix of anger and counterarguing.
Literature 2.2: Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978)
The theory of psychological reactance: people have a fundamental need for autonomy and when
their free behaviors are threatened, they experience an aversive emotional state called reactance.
Reactance theory: resistance is a function of reactance aroused by the message
Politeness theory: people have a fundamental need for autonomy (negative face) and people also
have a fundamental need for approval and acceptance (positive face)
Politeness theory:
- Negative face wants: fundamental need for autonomy and independence
- Positive face wants: fundamental need for approval and the desire to be liked, respected,
and viewed as competent.
Messages that support positive and negative face wants are viewed as polite.
Politeness theory is a theory of language use that posits the systematic use of politeness strategies:
during a conversation, interactants are concerned with the wants of self and their conversational
partners.
Theory of language use:
- Face-maintenance in conversations (polite vs. Impolite)
- Language has a meta-communicative value (perceived social relationship)
- Resistance to persuasion is a defensive reaction to an unjustified relational claim
(threatening one or both aspects of face)
Persuasive messages as FTA’s (Face threatening acts):
- Containing forceful language:
o Using imperatives (you must/you can’t) such as commands and orders (controlling)
o Demeaning anyone who does not agree with the advocated stance
- Forceful message is less likely to be viewed as a threat to face when:
o Source has greater/legitimate power relative to recipient (teacher says be silent)
, o Situation legitimizes coercion (requires maximum efficiency) (emergency: saying get
out of the way when bus is coming)
Outcomes experiment 1: Being polite in how you talk can affect how persuasive you are. When
people feel like their freedom is threatened by the way someone talks to them, they also feel like
their ability to make good decisions is being questioned. This affects how they respond to the
message.
Forceful language can make people feel both positively and negatively threatened, not just
threatened in their freedom to decide. Feeling threatened in this way directly affects how they view
the person delivering the message (source derogation). If they feel negatively about the source, they
are more likely to dislike the message too (message derogation) If people feel criticized or controlled
by the language used, they are less likely to agree with the message.
Outcomes experiment 2: controlling language (commands and orders): participants feel like the
source has higher power over them > higher feeling of threat to face > more message derogation >
affect attitude, making them less likely to agree with it.
Reactance theory vs. Politeness theory:
Reactance Theory says resistance comes from feeling restricted by a message, often leading to
anger. This anger is likely aimed at the message source, especially when the language used suggests
unfair treatment or implies power over the recipient. This aligns with the idea that people think less
of the source and message when they feel their psychological needs are threatened.
Politeness Theory explains how the implied power in language affects how threatened people feel.
Reactance Theory doesn't account for this. However, Reactance Theory predicts that the importance
of the freedom being threatened affects how resistant someone is. Combining both theories could
help us better understand resistance.
Resistance to persuasion may be a motivational response resulting from a threat to our autonomy
Overall findings: a reactance-based approach to resistance to persuasion is incomplete because only
one type of threat is identified.
, LECTURE 3: ADVERTISING LITERACY
Resistance: avoidance, disapproval, negative cognitions, negative emotions, skepticism/suspicion
Resistance is an unintended consequence following the activation of persuasion knowledge (from
the marketeers/social marketing point of view)
Literature 3.1: persuasion knowledge
Persuasion knowledge: consumers knowledge and beliefs regarding marketers' persuasion goals and
attempts, as well as their underlying motives and tactics, and how persuasion works.
When do we apply persuasion knowledge? Dependent on the situation: cues that may show ulterior
motives/aspects related to the receiver
- Personalized advertising
- Unfamiliar products
- Cognitive abilities of the receiver: child vs adults, self-control
When people understand how ads try to persuade them, they react more negatively and resist the
ads. This knowledge can sometimes help people remember brands better and seems to reduce the
impact of ads. Factors, like the clarity of the ad or the age of the audience, can influence how much
this knowledge affects people's responses. Understanding how persuasion works in ads can help
consumers resist manipulation, but it also make it harder for marketers to persuade them.
Major part of persuasion knowledge research: advertising literacy
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