PSYC340 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cognitive Dissonance, Victim Blaming
9 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER #10
Attitudes: positive/negative evaluations of objects of thought, may include social issues (capital
punishment/gun control), groups (liberals, farmers), institutions (the Lutheran church, the Supreme Court),
consumer products (yogurt, computers), and people (the prime minister, your next-door neighbour), vary
along several crucial dimensions, including strength, accessibility (how often), and ambivalence (both
positive and negative), Cognitive component: made up of the belifs that people hold about the object of an
attitude, Affective component: consists of the emotional feelings stimulated by an object of thought,
Behavioural component: consists of predispositions to act in certain ways towards an attitude object
Attributions: inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others’ behaviour, and their own
behaviour (Ex. If you conclude that a friend turned down your invite because she is overworked, you have
made an attribution about the cause of her behaviour), People make attributions mainly because they have a
strong need to understand their experiences, they want to make sense out of their own behaviour, others’
actions, and the events in their lives
bystander effect: people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are
alone
Source: the person who sends a communication, factors: persuasion tends to be more successful when the
source has high credibility, credibility is given based on expertise, trustworthiness, or likeability
Receiver: the person to whom the message is sent, factors: forewarning a receiver gets about a persuasive
effort and the receiver’s initial position on an issue, generally seem to be more influential than the
receiver’s personality, stronger attitudes are more resistant to change, and resistance can promote resistance
Message: the info transmitted by the source, factors: persuasive messages frequently attempt to arouse fear,
frequent repetition of a message is an effective strategy
Channel: the medium thru which the message is sent
cognitive dissonance: exists when related cognitions contradict each other, creates an unpleasant state of
tension that motivates people to reduce their dissonance, usually by altering their cognitions Ways to
reduce cognitive dissonance: change attitude to be consonant with their behaviour, change behaviour to be
consonant with their attitude, maintain both the attitude and the behaviour, but introduce an additional
consonant cognition to restore consonance between them both, rationalizing undesirable behaviour by
arguing that it has some positive benefits, reducing the importance of one of the dissonant cognitions and/or
increasing the importance of one of the consonant cognitions
Counter-attitudinal behaviour: behaviour that is counter to, or inconsistent with, an individual’s attitudes
collectivism: involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of
the groups one belongs to (one’s family, tribe, work group, social class, etc.)
commitment: an intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs that may arise
companionate love: warm, trusting, tomerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with
one’s own, can be subdivided into intimacy and commitment
conformity: tendency for people to yield to real/imagined social pressure
defensive attribution: tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be
victimized in a similar way (if a friend gets mugged/severly beaten, you may attribute it to your friends
carelessness/stupidity rather than bad luck, in order to avoid the reality that it could just as easily happen to
you)
discrimination: involves behaving differently, usually unfairly, towards the members of a group
elaboration likelihood model: asserts that there are two basic routes to persuasion, the central route is
taken when people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive messages and the peripheral route
is taken when persuasion depends on nonmessage factors (such as the attractiveness and credibility of the
source, or on conditioned emotional responses)
ethnocentrism: the tendency to favour one’s ingroups
foot-in-the-door technique: involves getting people to agree to a small request to increase the chances that
they will agree to a larger request later
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