Social Psychology Chap 7- Persuasion

Creditability

Believability. A credible communicator is perceived as both expert and trustworthy

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.

Central Route to Persuasion

Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

Peripheral Route of Persuasion

Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker's attractiveness.

Sleep Effect

A delayed impact of a message that occurs when an initially discounted message becomes effective. Such as we remember the message but forget the reason for discounting it.

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

Tendency for people who first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Lowball Technique

A tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it.

Door-In-The-Face Technique

Strategy for getting a concession. After turning first turning down large request (door-in-face), the same requester counters with more reasonable request

Primacy Effect

Information presented first usually has the most influence (Equal on other things)

Recency Effect

Information presented last sometimes has biggest influence. Less common

Channel of communication

The way the message is delivered -- whether face to face, in writing, on film, or some other way

Two-step flow of communication

Process by which media influence often occurs through opinion leaders, who in turn influence others

Need for cognition

The motivation to think and analyze. Assessed by agreement with items such as "The notion of thinking abstracting in appealing to me" and disagreement with items such as "I only think as hard as I have to."

Attitude Inoculation

Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that whe stronger attacks come, they will have refutations available

Counterarguments

Reasons why a persuasive message might be wrong