PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13.3: Processing Fluency, Cognitive Dissonance
14 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC 13.3
Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication
Changing People’s Behaviour
• Most common approaches to attempt to change the public’s behaviour on a large scale
o Technological: making things easy
o Legal: policy change
o Economic: financial incentives and penalties
o Raising awareness: gets information right, educate everybody
Persuasion: Changing Attitudes Through Communication
• Give us a set of tools to influence all sorts of behaviours
o Get us to buy more stuff
• Promote positive, pro-social behaviour changes, changes that benefit other people and society in general
• Elaboration likelihood model: when audiences are sufficiently motivated to pay attention to a message (e.g.
they care about the issue) and they have the opportunity for careful processing (e.g. they have the cognitive
resources available to understand the message), they will be persuaded by the fact of the argument, the
substance; when either of these two factors, motivation, and opportunity, are missing, people will tend to be
persuaded by other factors
• Central route to persuasion: occurs when people pay close attention to the content of a message, evaluate
the evidence presented, and examine the logic of the arguments
• Peripheral route to persuasion: persuasion will depend on other features that are not directly related to the
message itself, such as attractiveness of the person delivering the information
o Not as powerful
Using the Central Route Effectively
• Need to be confident that the facts are on your side
Make it Personal
• Make information self-relevant
• Construal-level theory: describes how information affects us depending on our psychological distance from
the information
Value Appeals
• Relevant to values of the audience
Preaching of Flip-Flopping? One-Sided vs. Two-Sided Messages
• Preach (only argue for your perspective)
• Flip-flop (acknowledge different perspectives)
• More persuasive to acknowledge opposing arguments
• Attitude inoculation; a strategy for strengthening attitudes and making them more resistant to change by
first exposing people to a weak counter-argument and then refuting that argument
Emotions in the Central Route
• Climate change: so much misinformation that people are left confused on what the truth is
• Processing fluency: which is the ease with which information is processed
• Message complexity can affect communication
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Changing people"s behaviour: most common approaches to attempt to change the public"s behaviour on a large scale, technological: making things easy, legal: policy change, economic: financial incentives and penalties, raising awareness: gets information right, educate everybody. Using the central route effectively: need to be confident that the facts are on your side. Make it personal: make information self-relevant, construal-level theory: describes how information affects us depending on our psychological distance from the information. Value appeals: relevant to values of the audience. Emotions in the central route: climate change: so much misinformation that people are left confused on what the truth is, processing fluency: which is the ease with which information is processed, message complexity can affect communication. Using the peripheral route effectively: can"t ignore peripheral route. Authority: experts and authority figures to deliver a message can enhance the impact of the message, be pleasant and appealing.
