Functional Approaches

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Functional Approaches

• Assumption much of the research on attitude
  change assumes that individuals are motivated to
  hold valid attitudes, and that they will change
  their attitudes if a different attitudinal
  position can be shown to be more valid.
• In fact, considerable theory and research
  suggesting that attitudes serve a much broader
  range of functions than this (knowledge, ego
  defense/externalization, social adjustment, value
  expressive).

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Functional Approaches

• Functional approach assumes that people hold and
  express particular attitudes because they derive
  psychological benefit from doing so, and that the
  type of benefit varies among individuals.
• So, attitudes are understood according to the
  personal and interpersonal needs they meet, the
  functions they serve. Unless we know the function
  of an attitude, we are less able to predict when
  and how it will change.

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Functional Approaches

• Note William James (1890/1983) was first of many
  theorists to observe that psychology is an
  inherently functionalist discipline.
• Most psychological frameworks rest on
  functionalist assumptions about the goals that
  people try to achieve by thinking, feeling, and
  behaving as they do.

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Functional Approaches

• Katzs approach personality-based
  motives/functions.
• Kelmans framework interpersonal motives
  (compliance, identification, internalization).
• Kelmans 3 processes differ according to whether
  change is at a superficial, overt level, or at a
  deeper level that involves more durable change
  (integrated into the persons belief system and
  value system).

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Functional Approaches

• Developments
• Despite its intuitive appeal, integrative nature,
  and explanatory potential, functional approach
  was prominent in the 1950s, early 60s, but
  displaced by dissonance and other approaches to
  persuasion for most of the 60s and 70s. Why?

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Functional Approaches

• 1. Functionalism clashed with the rise of
  interactionism at the time. Identified as more of
  a trait-based approach.
• 2. Convergent not divergent approach like
  cognitive dissonance. Latter approach applied a
  theory to different phenomena functional
  approach convergent brought together different
  theories to study a single phenomenon.

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Functional Approaches

• 3. Difficult to manipulate antecedent conditions
  for the arousal of a particular process in a
  clear way in order to test the theory.
• 4. Idealized types of functions in most cases,
  an attitude serves several functions.
• 5. Most important, lack of a method for assessing
  functions on anything other than an ad hoc basis
  limited the influence of the functional
  approach for a long time.

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Functional Approaches

• Revival of the functional approach
• Researchers began to identify strategies for
  operationalizing attitude functions in the
  1980s.
• 1. Herek argued for methods that directly
  identified the functions of individuals
  attitudes toward a given target group (e.g., gay
  and lesbian people), rather than assessments of
  personality assessments.

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Functional Approaches

• Hereks Neofunctional approach Goal was to
  develop an empirical method for directly
  assessing attitude functions that would not be
  tied to personality assessments.
• Early work content analysis of samples of verbal
  behavior RE heterosexuals attitudes toward
  lesbians and gay men. Wrote short essays
  explaining their attitudes, and the patterns and
  themes in the essays were categorized according
  to function (64 reflected a single theme
  balance 2-3 themes)

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Functional Approaches

• Experiential-specific Rs based attitudes
  primarily on past experiences with specific gay
  people.
• Defensive based on insecurities and intrapsychic
  conflicts concerning their own gender and
  sexuality attitudes protect self from anxiety
  associated with these conflicts.

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Functional Approaches

• 3. 2 types of self-expressive
• Value-expressive attitudes whose primary
  motivation stems from ones need to affirm sense
  of self via values integral to self-concept.
• Social-expressive associated with attitudes
  motivated by a need to be accepted by important
  others.
• Developed Attitude Functions Inventory to assess
  experiential and defensive functions (Herek,
  1987).

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Functional Approaches

• Neofunctional the same attitude can serve
  different functions for different people, and
  different functions can be the basis for ones
  attitudes in different domains.
• Link to Persuasion Messages are most likely to
  change attitudes when they are congruent with the
  persons predominant function. So different
  strategies are required for changing attitudes
  serving different functions.

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Functional Approaches

• Herek (1986) compare two attitude domains atts
  toward residential treatment facility for
  deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients, and
  atts toward similar facility for persons w/ AIDS.
• Consider two hypos (Ms. Wagner and Mr. Adams)
  both of whom are opposed to the two facilities
  but for different reasons.

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Functional Approaches

• Ms. Wagner Mr. Adams
• Mental object appraisal adjustive
• Health
• AIDS value expressive ego-defensive

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Functional Approaches

• Ms. Wagner Mr. Adams
• not all are violent not all
  neighbors disagree
• personal interaction will still be
  liked if he disagrees
• appeal to religious values?
  Difficult bust up link
• AIDS not divine punishment but to
  conflict. AIDS not
• a challenge from God to test unique
  to gay men.
• love of her neighbor
  Insight?

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Functional Approaches

• Revival of the functional approach
• Hereks neofunctional approach
• Shavitt use the nature of the attitude object
  as a basis for predictions concerning which
  function it fulfills.
• ?Attitude functions are associated with
  different attitude objects. So, attitude objects
  serve different purposes for individual vs.
  attitudes serving different functions for the
  same person.

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Functional Approaches

• E.g., most marketing and consumer psy
  applications. Attitudes toward luxury products
  like perfume. Such objects more likely to serve
  value-expressive functions than utilitarian ones,
  and attitudes toward such objects should be more
  influenced by appeals to value-expressive
  functions.
• Key research issue objects must reliably differ
  in the attitudinal functions they engage.

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Functional Approaches

• 3. Most promising strategy has been to argue that
  different personality types are characterized by
  differing motivations.
• Key contribution Snyder DeBonos work on the
  functional approach and self-monitoring
  (individual difference strategy). Attitudes held
  by low and high SM should be esp. influenced by
  persuasive messages that play on these concerns.

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Functional Approaches

• Lavine Snyder (1996) for high SMs, appeals
  that emphasized the social adjustive functions of
  voting (e.g., enhancing ones attractiveness to
  others) elicited more favorable evaluations and
  greater attitude change than appeals that
  emphasized the value-expressive function of
  voting (e.g., as a way to express values).
• For Low SMs, appeals with value expressive
  arguments yielded more favorable evaluations and
  were more persuasive.

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Functional Approaches

• Petty Wegener (1998) matching between attitude
  function and message orientation does not always
  enhance persuasion, but instead enhances careful
  thought about an appeal. Experimentally
  demonstrated that matched messages increased
  scrutiny of message content, but enhanced
  persuasion only when the message contained
  strong, cogent arguments not when message
  presented weak arguments.

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Functional Approaches

• Methodological caution RE matching
• ?Because functionally matched messages
  potentially address important aspects of
  recipients self-concepts, the kind of careful
  processing suggested by Petty Wegener will not
  always be objective and unbiased.

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Functional Approaches

• ?Such appeals may instigate thoughtful but
  defensive processing e.g., match could create
  distress by pointing out that relevant personal
  goals had not yet been achieved. If so, then such
  messages are more likely to yield counterarguing
  and resistance, and thus be less influential.
• Point the traditional assumption has been that
  different motives are associated with unique
  mechanisms that generate attitude change and with
  unique forms of change.

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Functional Approaches

• e.g., the desire for an informed, correct
  position supposedly orients message recipients to
  process the content of the appeal (match) which
  results in enduring private changes in judgments.
• But research by Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, Chen
  and by Petty Wegener suggests that
  informational, accuracy-seeking motives can lead
  either to extensive processing and enduring
  attitude change, OR to more superficial
  processing and temporary change.

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Functional Approaches

• In other words, different motives can have
  influence through a common set of information
  processing mechanisms.
• A dual process model point the activation of
  motives for change are not preferentially related
  to change mechanisms or outcomes. Accuracy
  motives as well as social adjustive or ego
  defense motives can yield careful, systematic
  processing and enduring change.
• What do we mean by dual process?

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Dual Process Models

• Classical model messages are presented,
  processed, and, if successful, recipients
  attitudes shift toward the advocated position.
  Revised attitude may then influence subsequent
  behavior under appropriate conditions.
• ELM and HSM exemplars of dual-process models
  that embody this general process of message
  reception, attitude change and possibly behavior
  change.

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Dual Process Models

• DPM hold that if receivers are able and properly
  motivated, they will elaborate (systematically
  analyze) persuasive messages.
• If message is well-reasoned, data-based, logical
  (i.e., strong), it will persuade if not, it will
  fail. Auxiliary features of the persuasion
  context (e.g., an attractive source) will have
  little influence on these outcomes.

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Dual Process Models

• But if message targets are unmotivated or unable
  to process a message, then they will use
  auxiliary features in the context (peripheral
  cues) or heuristics (Dad is usually right) to
  short-circuit the more effortful elaboration
  process in forming an attitudinal response.
• Such attitudes are less stable and less likely to
  impel behavior than those formed as a result of
  more thorough processing.

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Dual Process Models

• DPM most influential persuasion models today.
  All involve ideas that message source and message
  content, and motivation and ability to process
  info, determine outcomes of persuasive
  communications.
• BUT Kruglanski and colleagues have challenged the
  DPM with their unimodel of persuasion.

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Dual Process Models

• Unimodel accepts the importance of motivation and
  ability in persuasion, but argues that a single
  (not dual) cognitive process accounts for the
  effects of source and message in persuasion.
  (1999 Psychological Inquiry exchange)
• Also, cognition in persuasion model (Albarracin)
  takes a single-process perspective but
  postulates a series of processing stages that
  occur in response to persuasive messages.
• Point how do we understand the fundamental
  psychological processes associated with
  persuasion?.

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Dual Process Models

• Least-effort principle (Moskowitz, 2005) link
  to impression formation processes and
  stereotyping and prejudice research. In fact,
  term dual process model coined by Marilynn
  Brewer (1988) in context of her impression
  formation model.

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Dual Process Models

• People tend to rely on less effort and
  categorical thinking when evaluating others. The
  categories they rely on and the lack of effort
  (even automatic processing) exerted in drawing
  conclusions about others leads to the application
  of faulty and inaccurate categories leaning on
  stereotypes and prior expectations and
  preexisting theories people hold about others
  and issues. NOT objective appraisal and
  systematic analysis.

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Dual Process Models

• Tough to exert the effort in many instances, and,
  to a certain extent, the effort-less mode may be
  adaptive in many instances. Fighting through
  cognitive load, time pressure, and complex tasks.
• But people are capable of being more flexible and
  rising above simplistic thinking. They can exert
  more effort and be more objective. Flexible
  interpreters or motivated tacticians. This is
  the basic premise of the dual process models,
  too.

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Dual Process Models

• Caveat being more effortful in evaluating others
  is not a guarantee of fair and objective thinking
  about others. Rationalizations are an effortful
  way to maintain beliefs about others and issues
  that people wish to maintain (Kunda).
• Key question What is it that motivates people to
  shift from the ease and comfort of top-down,
  categorical thinking, to exerting the effort
  associated with more systematic processing?
  (Motivation and ability e.g. behavior of
  target person). So, when, why, and how are
  people willing and able to make this shift?

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Dual Process Models

• Stepping Back Greenwald (1968) and the cognitive
  response approach.
• The idea When people receive a persuasive
  communication, they will attempt to relate new
  info to their existing knowledge about the topic.
  Self-generated cognitions that may agree with the
  position advocated by the source, disagree, or be
  entirely irrelevant. Active, constructivist
  view of people as info-processors.

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Dual Process Models

• Point the valence of these self-generated
  cognitions mediates persuasion. Audience is not
  passive but counterargues. Previous research had
  made little attention to actual cognitive
  responses in the persuasion context (remember
  weak empirical connection between attitude change
  and memory for message content)

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Dual Process Models

• Central premise of cognitive response theory
  that recipients attitudinal responses to a
  persuasive communication will depend more on
  their cognitive appraisals of message content
  (elaborative processes), than on their learning
  and retention of the arguments themselves
  (reception processes).
• Reception processes are important to attitude
  change, but at the time there were few sensitive
  measures of argument retention.

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Dual Process Models

• Additional hypotheses that attitudes based on
  issue-relevant thinking are more temporally
  stable (at least over a week or two), more
  resistant to counterattack, and more highly
  predictive of future behavior than are
  peripherally-mediated opinions.
• Methodological hallmark thought-listing
  technique.

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Dual Process Models

• Goal of cognitive response research to determine
  how various features of the persuasion situation
  influence the amount of pro or con arguments that
  will occur (e.g., premessage inductions
  forewarning - can produce resistance to
  persuasion also, various message, context, and
  recipient variables)

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Dual Process Models

• Typical Predictions
• 1. Messages that evoke predominantly positive
  thoughts in Rs should be effective in changing
  attitudes in direction advocated by message,
  while negative thoughts will fail to change
  attitudes or even have a contrary effect to what
  is being advocated.

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Dual Process Models

• 2. Amount of attitude change effected by a
  message is a function of the amount of cognitive
  responding of a particular type messages that
  evoke more cognitive responses will tend to have
  greater impact on attitude change.
• E.g. Petty, Wells, Brock (1976) distraction and
  cognitive responding study.

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Dual Process Models

• e.g., Involvement (Allport, 1943)
• H recipients who are personally involved in an
  issue are more highly motivated to engage in
  thinking that is relevant to the message and/or
  the issue.
• H involvement should enhance the effectiveness
  of messages containing strong arguments, but
  decrease the effectiveness of messages containing
  weak arguments.
• Eagly Johnson (1989) meta-analysis

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Dual Process Models

• At last The Link
• Dual process approach to attitude change is
  closely related to the cognitive response
  approach in that one of the two processes
  believed to be responsible for attitude change is
  based on the perception of and responses to
  persuasive arguments contained in the message.

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Dual Process Models

• What the dual process approach adds is the notion
  that under some conditions, attitude change may
  result from factors other than the arguments
  themselves.
• ELM and HSM.
• Kruglanskis theory of lay epistemics and
  unimodel development.

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Dual Process Models

• All dual process models contain 3 major
  components
• They provide accounts of how people process in
  quick and dirty fashion.
• How they process when willing and able to engage
  in extensive thought.
• What conditions encourage such effortful
  processing?

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Dual Process Models

• ELM (Petty Cacioppo and colleagues)
• Central route to persuasion.
• Peripheral route to persuasion.
• See Effects of a Treatment figure.
• DV message processing/elaboration likelihood.

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Dual Process Models

• Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM Chaiken and
  colleagues)
• Two broad info-processing strategies or two
  end-points on a processing continuum (Moskowitz,
  2005).
• Heuristic processing reliance on prior
  knowledge in the form of stereotypes,
  expectancies, schemas. People preserve resources
  and rely in superficial assessment (heuristics
  that are learned through experience, that are
  then activated by context). Top-down processing.

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Dual Process Models

• Consensus implies correctness.
• Lack of consensus implies incorrectness.
• Expert statements can be trusted.
• Famous people are trustworthy.
• Attractive people are sociable.
• Peoples actions reflect their attitudes.
• People generally agree with people they like.
• Length implies strength.

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Dual Process Models

• Systematic processing detailed examination of
  qualities of stimulus information/persuasive
  communication. Requires use of processing
  resources and degree of motivation. May doubt
  validity of heuristic thinking and switch to more
  systematic processing. Bottom-up processing.
• DPM Qs (1) why assume one is the default mode
  and (2) what are the conditions that lead to
  shift from default mode to other mode of
  processing?

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Dual Process Models

• HSM two principles that answer these Qs the
  least-effort principle and the sufficiency
  principle.
• Least effort principle Plenty of empirical
  evidence that people use heuristics as the
  default strategy, and rely on simple and easy
  rules to evaluate issues and products and other
  people.

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Dual Process Models

• Sufficiency principle for whatever task is
  involved, people reach a point where they feel
  that their task is completed and they can move
  on. When the person feels confident that they
  have sufficiently performed the task given to
  them. Level will vary from task to task. Feeling
  level seen as a sufficiency threshold.
  Confidence in the validity of their own beliefs
  and attitudes, e.g. Is a threshold point that may
  change from situation to situation.

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Dual Process Models

• Effort and Sufficiency
• People must exert enough effort to reach the
  sufficiency threshold. May only need heuristics
  to reach judgmental confidence (see top figure on
  handout) if inadequate (i.e., level of
  confidence falls short of the threshold), then
  more effort will be exerted on task until
  sufficiency is achieved, and threshold is
  surpassed.

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Dual Process Models

• Hydraulic model between effort and confidence
  motivation to shift from effortless to effortful
  thinking is a pressure to have greater accuracy
  and greater confidence.
• When relying on least-effort principle is
  insufficient and falls below the sufficiency
  threshold, there is a confidence gap (see middle
  figure A of handout). Effort continues via
  systematic processing until confidence gap is
  overcome (see bottom figure B of handout).
  Experiments by Chaiken and colleagues test the
  influence of various factors that undermine
  confidence and motivate people to process
  systematically.

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Dual Process Models

• So, assessing WHEN people shift from heuristic to
  systematic revolves around issue of when
  heuristic processing is insufficient. One
  motivation gap between actual and desired
  confidence which is experienced as unpleasant
  tension. When there is motivation for systematic
  processing, then impact of heuristic processing
  is attenuated. Presence of goals in situation or
  within individuals can promote systematic
  processing (goal of accuracy or personal
  involvement or personal relevance goal or
  accountability goal).

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Dual Process Models

• Fast, low effort, associative processing mode vs.
  relatively slow, high effort, rule-based
  processing mode.
• Relationship between alternative processing
  modes?
• Do they operate simultaneously or in stage-like
  manner? Mutually exclusive?
• Lie along a continuum, or dichotomous?
• Operate independently, or interact and if so, in
  what forms?
• 3. Antecedents and consequences of alternative
  modes.

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Dual Process Models

• Kruglanskis theory of lay epistemics (1980,
  1990)
• How is it that people come to know what they
  believe they know. (1) Generate limited of
  hypotheses about causes of events, and (2) test
  and validate these hypotheses.
• Theorys focus when and why and how people shift
  from (1) to confidently adopting a single account.

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Dual Process Models

• Two factors that bear on when people attain
  closure (1) cognitive capacity, and (2)
  motivation to engage in hypothesis generation.
  Goals drive how much effort is expended. Energize
  or de-energize the epistemic process.
• Need for closure/structure vs. Fear of
  invalidity quick closure approach (freezing
  when appropriate solution reached) vs. expend
  greater effort.

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Dual Process Models

• Kruglanski Orehek (2007)
• Dual mode vs. dual systems
• Confound critique are 2 qualitatively distinct
  processing systems necessary?
• May be reconceptualized into one model.