COUN1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Boogie 2Nite, Ath, Cognitive Dissonance
Attitudes
Attitudes are feelings, often influenced by our beliefs that predispose us to respond in a
particular way to objects, people, and events
1. If we believe someone is threatening us, we may feel fear and anger toward the person and act
defensively.
2. The traffic between our attitudes and actions is two-way
3. Our attitudes affect our actions. And our actions affect our attitudes
Attitudes affect actions
• Consider the climate change debate
• One side are climate-change activists and the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(2014), which warn of accumulating GHG, melting glaciers, shrinking Arctic seas and rising sea
levels.
• On the other side are CC sceptics, which include many in the general public
• The % ho i thought the seriousess of gloal arig is geerall eaggerated
increased to 42% in 2014
• The % of Aerias ho i told Gallup the orr a great deal aout gloal aring
was essentially the same in 1989
• Knowing that public attitudes affect public policies, activists on both sides are aiming to
persuade.
• Persuasion generally takes two forms:
❖ Peripheral route persuasion – does’t egage i ssteati thikig, ut does produce
fast results as people respond to uninformative cues (such as celebrity endorsement) and
make snap judgements. A perfume ad may lure us with images of beautiful or famous
people in love
❖ Central route persuasion – offers evidence and arguments that aim to trigger favourable
thoughts. It occurs when people are naturally analytical or involved in the issues. Climate
scientists marshal evidence of climate warming.
• Persuaders try to influence our behaviour by changing our attitudes
• Other factors including the situation, also influence our behaviour
• Strong social pressures, for example, can weaken the attitude-behaviour connection
• E.g. politicians will sometimes vote what their supporters demand, despite privately disagreeing
• In such cases, external pressure overrides the attitude-behaviour link
• Attitudes are especially likely to affect behaviour when external influences are minimal, and
when the attitude is stable, specific to the behaviour, and easily recalled.
• Persuasion changes attitudes, which changes behaviour.
Actions affect attitudes
• Not only will people stand up for what they believe, they also will more strongly believe in what
they have stood up for
• Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behaviour
The foot-in-the-door phenomenon
• Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger
request
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Document Summary
Peripheral route persuasion does(cid:374)"t e(cid:374)gage i(cid:374) s(cid:455)ste(cid:373)ati(cid:272) thi(cid:374)ki(cid:374)g, (cid:271)ut does produce fast results as people respond to uninformative cues (such as celebrity endorsement) and make snap judgements. A perfume ad may lure us with images of beautiful or famous people in love. Central route persuasion offers evidence and arguments that aim to trigger favourable thoughts. It occurs when people are naturally analytical or involved in the issues. In such cases, external pressure overrides the attitude-behaviour link when the attitude is stable, specific to the behaviour, and easily recalled: persuasion changes attitudes, which changes behaviour. Actions affect attitudes: not only will people stand up for what they believe, they also will more strongly believe in what they have stood up for, many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behaviour. The foot- in-the-door tactic has helped boost charitable contributions and blood donations: to secure a big commitment, it often pays to put your foot in the door: start small and build.
