Psych 253 - Lecture 6: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Persuasion pt.1

Attitudes

Evaluations of people, objects, and ideas.

Where do attitudes come from? - Nature/Nurture

• asked both identical and paternal twins and found that identical twins tends to have more similar attitudes, suggesting genetic component

Mere Exposure Effect

• Robert Zajonc (1968): Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure

• Mere Exposure Hypothesis: People come to have positive attitudes toward those stimuli to which they are frequently exposed - (the more you see something the more you like it)

• IV: # of times different “Turkish words” were shown to participants (something unfamiliar to them with no bias)

• DV: ratings of whether these words meant good or bad things (on a continuous scale)

Showed the words different amount of times

Measure:

Sometimes people can tell what words in other languages mean simply by the sound of the word. Please indicate with a check mark along the scale whether each of the following Turkish words sounds like something good or bad to you.

nansoma

good :___:___:___:___:___:___:___: bad

kadirga

good :___:___:___:___:___:___:___: bad

enanwol

good :___:___:___:___:___:___:___: bad

Mere Exposure Effect - Meta-analysis

Meta-analysis of 268 mere exposure effect studies

• Found evidence for the mere exposure effect, but with a few caveats and

modifications:

• Did not find mere exposure for auditory stimuli, only visual stimuli

• Children had much larger mere exposure effects than adults

• Pattern of results is curved; liking does not just continue to go up with more exposures, which makes sense

Classical Conditioning

• A stimulus that elicits an emotional response is paired

with a neutral stimulus

• Neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of

the first stimulus

Operant Conditioning

Freely chosen behaviors increase or decrease when followed by reinforcement or punishment.

Positive/Negative Reinforcement, Positive/Negative Punishment

Persuasion (2)

Persuasion is the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors

We will discuss central and peripheral routes to persuasion

Central routes employ direct, relevant, logical message; requires controlled processing to be effective

Peripheral routes rely on superficial cues that have little to do with logic (does this remind you of something?)

Ethical ways to persuade people video - rewatch and complete notes and know examples

1. Reciprocity - Obligation to give when you receive For the mint study, just remember that for the DV of tipping, the IV order of effects is: 1 mint + another mint “just for you > 2 mints > 1 mint

• be the first to give and make it personizlied and…

2. Scarcity - People want more of those things there are less of Changing perceived scarcity is enough to change people’s attitudes toward products Also a big part of art’s value, as well as various collectible items

3. Authority - Follow the lead of credible, knowledgable experts

when receptionist told customer how qualified realtors were before transferring, more people signed up with them

Pitfalls: expertise in one domain can be mistaken for expertise in others: e.g., “I’m a doctor” Or, authority can be faked with signals like degrees or uniforms

4. Consistency - Looking for, and asking for commitments that can be made

Foot-in-the-door refers to a small initial commitment that is then escalated with larger requests

People asked (versus not asked; IV) to put a small “drive safely” card in their window more likely to agree to put up a large yard sign (DV)

4. Liking - Prefer to say yes to people they like

People like those that are similar to us, those who pay us compliments, and those who cooperate with us

Straightforward; related to impression management strategies Also: part of using athletes and celebrities to hawk products

6. Consensus - People will look to the actions of others to determine their own

Saying that “a high percentage of people do this” is a good strategy for persuading people to do a given behavior

Tied to do the idea of social norms (Prentice & Paluck)