Attitude change

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Attitude change

• Theories of attitude change
• Cognitive dissonance
• Persuasive communication
• Dual-process theory
• Evidence relating to these theories

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Consistency principle
Affect
Behaviour
Cognition
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3
Cognitive dissonance

• Based on the consistency principle
• Dissonance disagreement
• Attitude change occurs when a person has a need
  to reduce the dissonance between
• Different aspects of same attitude
• Different attitudes
• Attitude behaviour

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4
Cognitive dissonance
Affect
Affect
Affect
Affect
Behaviour
Behaviour
Behaviour
Behaviour
Dissonance within attitude
Dissonance within attitude
Dissonance within attitude
Cognition
Cognition
Cognition
Cognition
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5
Cognitive dissonance
I enjoy cigars
Smoking kills people
I smoke
How could Sigmund reduce his cognitive dissonance?
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6
Cognitive dissonance

• Festinger Carlsmith (1959)
• PPs spent some time doing a tedious task were
  then offered either 1 or 20 to tell another PP
  it was interesting enjoyable
• PPs were later asked to rate how enjoyable the
  task had been
• How do you think the ratings might differ between
  the 1 and 20 conditions?

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7
Cognitive dissonance
How enjoyable?
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Control (task only)
1 payment
20 payment
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Persuasive communication

• The idea that attitude change is brought about by
  conveying information.
• Success depends on 3 factors
• Source of message
• Content of message
• Nature of target

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9
Persuasive communication

• Source
• Expert
• Trustworthy
• Credible
• Attractive
• NB sleeper effects nature of the source
  matters less after a delay

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10
Cognitive dissonance
high credibility
low credibility
Attitude change
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Immediate
4 weeks later
Hovland Weiss (1952)
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Persuasive communication

• Content
• Fear anxiety
• Not enough or too much and people will ignore the
  message
• One or two sided argument
• One sided if target is already leaning towards
  the sources position
• Two sided if the target is intelligent

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12
Persuasive communication

• Target
• Intelligence
• Age, gender
• Strength of existing views

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13
Dual process theory

• The likelihood of attitude change is determined
  by how the target processes the message
• Superficial (peripheral) processing
• Systematic (central) processing
• Which route is taken depends on the relevance
  of the message to the target

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14
Dual process theory
High relevance
Central route
Thorough processing
Sound, logical arguments required
Message
Low relevance
Peripheral route
Superficial processing
The elaboration-likelihood model (Petty et al,
1994)
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Dual process theory

• Petty et al (1981)
• Student attitudes towards taking an additional
  examination
• Two IVs
• Level of involvement
• Strength of arguments

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Dual process theory
Level of involvement High Low
Strength of argument Weak Strong
Petty et al (1981)
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Resistance to change

• Reactance
• Forewarning
• Selective avoidance

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