PSYC105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Normative Social Influence, Suggestibility, Petrified Forest National Park
1 Jun 2018
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Persuasion:
• The Message-Learning approach to persuasion
• Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
• Enhancing compliance
• Considerations
Persuasion;
• Message intended to change an attitude and related behaviour of an audience
• Persuasion is part of everyday life
• Hare Krishna Society → were not very popular, yet they encouraged everyday
people to donate money to them
o Subtle, but effective persuasion tactic – they give you books (giving
you things – principle of reciprocity)
• Persuading people to give up everything – Jonestown
Message-Learning approach to persuasion (developed by Yale group):
• Message-learning (Hovland et al. 1949)
• Attitude change follows a series of stages:
o Attend to the message
o Comprehend the message
o And accept the message
• Incentives of new message > old
• Factors influencing persuasion
o Source variables
▪ Attractiveness
• Physical appearance
• Likeability
• Similarity to the audience
▪ High vs. Low credibility
• Fast talkers seem more credible (they seem what they’re
talking about)
o Message variables (including medium/channel variables)
▪ Vivid information is generally more persuasive
• Except when it interferes with the comprehension of the
message
▪ Fear appeals
• Inverted U function (too much fear = not persuasive)
▪ Humour
• Relevance to message
▪ Repetition
• Mere exposure (Zajonc, 1968 Chinese characters)
• Initially negative stimuli
▪ Medium
o Target/audience variables
▪ Self-esteem
• Curvilinear – those with low self esteem don’t really
attend to the message very well thus less persuadable,
those with high self-esteem already know things
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Mood (happy/sad)
• Affect as information (Schwartz, 1990 – weather
experiment; weather has an affect on mood state)
• Sadness increases buying prices and reduces selling
prices (Lerner et al 2004)
• Many research findings
• Third person effect
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM);
o ELM – people want to be correct in their attitudes
o Two routes to persuasion:
▪ Central route (able and motivated) – when we evaluate details
e.g. contents of food etc.
▪ Peripheral route (unable or unwilling) – superficial way of
processing information
o Attitude change can occur without comprehension
Enhancing compliance;
o Compliance → behavioural response to a request from another person
o Reciprocity
▪ Door-in-the-face (Cialdini et al. 1975)
▪ Large request followed by small request
o Social Proof and uncertainty
▪ Jonestown; Petrified Forest national park → many past visitors
have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the
natural state of the Petrified Forest (pictures of several visitors
stealing wood) – more wood was stolen with the picture saying
‘collecting petrified wood prohibited’
o Flattery will get you everywhere (Drachman et al 1978)
o Scarcity; we want what we cannot have
▪ Psychological reactance
o Consistency
▪ Foot-in-the-door → a small request followed by a large request
• “Drive carefully” billboard (Freedman and Frazer 1966)
→ asked residents in California if they were able to put
up a drive carefully billboard around their house, signed
a keep California beautiful petition two weeks before
o Those who signed the petition were 50% more
likely to allow billboard
▪ Low-ball technique → after an initial agreement to a request,
hidden costs are revealed
• Car sales
• Recruiting subjects for a 7am experiment – phoned
students if they would like to participate on thinking
processes, 24% agreed if it was a 7am time (not very
attractive), 56% agreed if they were told 7am time after
they had agreed on the study (Cialdini et al 1978)
• Low ball makes people happier with poor choices
Considerations;
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Persuasion: the message-learning approach to persuasion, elaboration likelihood model (elm, enhancing compliance, considerations. Message-learning approach to persuasion (developed by yale group): message-learning (hovland et al. 1949: attitude change follows a series of stages, attend to the message, comprehend the message, and accept the message. Inverted u function (too much fear = not persuasive: humour, relevance to message, repetition, mere exposure (zajonc, 1968 chinese characters) Enhancing compliance: compliance behavioural response to a request from another person, reciprocity, door-in-the-face (cialdini et al. May i use the copy machine because i have to make copies?" (spurious reason offered) Conformity and obedience: conformity, normative social influence, sherif"s studies of norm formation, asch"s conformity studies, obedience (empathy test) The experimenter requires that you continue: 3. It is absolutely essential you continue: 4. The empathy test: the subjects tried to disobey, but failed (ineffective and indecisive disobedience, confusion and uncertainty (strange thing with a guy in a lab coat, box hooked up what"s going on?)
