PSYC1030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Physical Attractiveness, Pole And Polar, Cognitive Dissonance
PSYC1030 Lecture Five: Persuasion
• There's an art to persuasion, but there's also a science. By learning the techniques, one
is able to defend themselves against others who are trying to influence them
e.g. getting ripped off, taken advantage of, etc.
If one can master the science of social influence, there are a huge number of benefits
in a range of domains
• Traditional forms of persuasion go about changing someone's attitude, and so their
behaviour, by presenting them with a strong persuasive message, as seen in McGuire's
(1969) chain of persuasion:
for a message to be effective, the person being persuaded needs to listen to it, they
have to understand it, and then accept it before remembering it and translating it into
their behaviour
• Brock's (1967) model of cognitive response analysis makes a similar point. According
to this perspective, a persuasive message is the focus of elaborate thoughts
-elaborate thoughts are whether or not someone thinks favourably about the
persuasive message, these thoughts being the ones that lead to attitude change
• Accoringing to these two-process models, attitude change happened when people
think about the message at least under some conditions. Under other conditions it's
also about shortcuts that suggest that the message is correct or something that people
should be persuaded by
• There are other ways that people can be influenced that don't rely on a persuasive
message explicitly. It's also possible to persuade people without them needing to
engage in elaborate thought. It's even possible to persuade people to do something
even though they might not have a positive attitude about that behaviour at all.
• This is called compliance which is agreeing to a request from someone who does not
have the authority to make others obey, which can be done by following a set of
principles of compliance by Robert Cialdini (2007)
The reason most of these strategies work is because they make use of powerful social
rules
that govern behaviour.
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Reciprocation
• Reciprocation is one of the most important things in social lives—if someone does
something nice for another person, that person will want to do something nice back.
Sometimes, the inability to repay good deeds can be quite anxiety provoking. People
feel obligated to provide gifts, favours, services and aid to those who provided such
things first, often giving larger favours than those received.
• The rule with this is that people should be more willing to comply with a request from
someone who have previously provided a favour of concession.
• The norm for reciprocating behaviour, whether good or bad, is all throughout society.
(Byrne & Rhamey, 1965). This norm allowed society to develop and form the basis of
trade and other relationships, and without this norm, people wouldn’t be able to trust
that the other person would go through with their side of a deal.
• Unlike one would think, the likability of someone seldom pays into reciprocation, and
people are more inclined to reciprocate if they perceive a good deed as a gift rather
than asking for something in return for it. This norm can be easily exploited by people
who want to elicit donations or want to sell things
• Sometimes people don’t have anything to try and persuade reciprocation, sometimes
the context or situation isn't appropriate or normal for a gift but the principle of
reciprocation is still used. Rather than being given as a gift, they are given as
concessions, and ask the recipients for a concession in return aka door-in-in-the-face
technique. The idea is to start with an extreme request that is expected to be rejected
due to its unreasonableness, then after the rejection, retreating to a more moderate
request, this request being the intended request all along. The success rate of this
technique is typically 50% as provided by Robert Cialdini and colleagues in 1975. The
concession made by this technique creates pressure on the recipient to make a
reciprocal concession back. This is an example of an ambit claim or Blue Sky demand,
where a ridiculous demand is made
first, with the expectation of future compromise.
• Part of the reason that it works is because humans are better at making relative
judgments
than absolute judgments—when preceded by a very large request, subsequent
requests seem more reasonable.
• Gordon Liddy and Watergate
Consistency
• Humans strive to be consistent in life and it's a powerful motivator both in their
thoughts and behaviours
• According to both Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance and Heider's (1957) balance
theory, people are strongly motivated to maintain a consistent set of thoughts.
Festinger thought that inconsistency was actually aversive, or uncomfortable, and the
drive to restore consistency was similar to the drive to satisfy hunger or thirst.
According to Roy Baumeister (1982) the desire to appear consistent was also very
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