Untitled Quiz

Smoking Cessation

• Participants: 255 college students who were current smokers
• Participants came from the University of Hawaii and were multicultural
• Participants completed a survey assessing:
  • Standard TPB variables – attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and intentions
  • Self-construals – independent self and interdependent self
  • Cultural values – collectivism and individualism
  • Smoking-related attitudes and subjective norms
• Researchers found that attitudes and subjective norms predicted intentions

Cognitive Consistency

• People prefer attitudes that are consistent with each other (balance theory; Heider, 1958)
• P-O-X triads can be balanced or unbalanced
  • Balanced when odd number of positive relations
  • P = person (self)
  • O = other
  • X = attitude object

Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance: A state of psychological tension or discomfort caused by inconsistencies in cognitions (or inconsistencies in cognition and behaviour).
• Festinger (1957) established that dissonance reduction strategy is a major component of the theory

Measuring Attitudes

• Physiological measures:

  • heart rate, facial expression
  • Bogus pipeline

• Overt behaviour:

  • interpersonal space

Cross-Cultural Attitudes

• Important factors to consider when measuring attitudes across cultures:
  • Wordingdifferences (meaning of the words can be different)
  • Response pattern can differ and how individuals approach measures
  • Extreme response bias
  • Authorityfollowing differences
  • Social Desirability
  • Acquiescence

### Persuasion

• Deliberate attempts by someone to change someone’s attitude
• Persuasive communication and attitude change is, however, generally narrowly focused and has been most thoroughly applied to advertising and marketing on the assumption that behavioural change ‘obviously cannot occur without [attitude change] having taken place’.
• Two important questions:
  • What factors determine whether persuasion will occur?
  • How does persuasion occur? (covered in mini-lecture 6.2b)

The Yale Model

• Factors influencing persuasion:
  • Source (who)
    • Similarity: More persuaded by similar others
    • Attractiveness: More persuaded by attractive others
    • Credibility/expertise: More persuaded by people with expertise/credibility
  • Message (what)
    • One-sided vs two-sided:
      • More intelligent audience - two-sided argument
      • Firm position of audience - two-sided argument not effective
    • Fact vs feeling: Matching of appeal (i.e., cognitive vs affective) to basis on which attitude is held
    • Fear:
      • Routinely used in advertising (e.g., smoking adds)
      • Inverted U-curve between fear and attitude change
      • As fear increases, so does attitude change, unless the fear is extreme
    • Effects of repetition:
      • Advertising agencies have argued it is persuasive though sceptics think it would be irritating
      • Familiarity does increase liking so can be effective
    • Framing a message: The way the message is framed changes persuasiveness and effectiveness
    • The sleeper effect:
      • Routinely used in advertising (e.g., smoking adds)
      • Refer to next slide
    • Channel (how)
      • Video vs audio vs written:
        • Simple message – video > audio > written
        • Complex message – written > video & audio
  • Audience (to whom)
    • Gender: It depends on the topic
    • Self-esteem:
      • Low self-esteem: uncomplicated messages
      • High self-esteem: more complicated, well-supported messages
    • Prior beliefs: Arguments incompatible with prior beliefs = scrutinized longer and judged weaker
    • Age: Multiple suggestions however which of these is accurate is still debated

The Influence of Source

• Aim: To examine the interacting factors influencing advertising effectiveness.

Cognitive Dissonance

• Post-decision dissonance:
  • Dissonance greater when:
    • The decision is more important
    • The choices were equally desirable
    • You perceive you made the choice freely
    • The choice is irrevocable (i.e., you’re committed!)

Cognitive Dissonance Across Cultures

• Most research has focused on comparing Eastern and Westerners experience of dissonance.
• Dissonance is experienced in both, but culture shapes the situations in which dissonance is aroused and reduced.
• For instance, Kitayama and his colleagues have reported differences between Japanese and American participants in their experience of cognitive dissonance.
• Japanese feel dissonance only when social cues are active, such as becoming aware of their peers’ opinions when making a decision.

Justification of Counter-Attitudinal Behaviour

• Doing something contrary to our attitude + insufficient justification for that action and attitude change

Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance

• Aim: To examine how participants would justify counter-attitudinal behaviour

• Method: Participants completed simple motor tasks for 1 hour

• Randomly allocated to one of three groups:

  1. No dissonance/control – left the experiment after the motor task

  2. Low dissonance – paid $20 to tell the next person the task was fun

  3. High dissonance – paid $1 to tell the next person the task was fun

     Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance Results

• Greatest enjoyment reported in the $1 (high dissonance) condition

Obedience

• Participants: Adults recruited via community & online advertising
• Procedure: Replicated Milgram’s procedure with 150V identified as the critical point in the experiment – no shocks given beyond this
• Ethical considerations – Participants were screened; informed of right to withdraw; supervised by clinical psychologist; immediate debriefing

Obedience Results

• 70% of participants continued to administer the item after 150V
• No significant differences based on gender, age, ethnicity, or education

Obedience Explanation

• Obedience to authority
• Responsibility for harm assigned to the experimenter
• Gradual increases in demands
• Limited sources of information in a novel situation

### Factors that Reduce Obedience

• Original study: 65% obedience
• Learner in same room: 40% obedience
• Teacher places learner’s hand on electrode: 30% obedience
• Experimenter phoned instructions: 21% obedience
• Experimenter not in uniform: 50% obedience
• Study conducted in office building (not University): 48% obedience

Obedience A Further Explanation

• Social identity theory perspective (Reicher & Haslam, 2012)
  • Not obedience, but identification
  • Participants could identify with the experimenter or learner
  • Which identification occurred likely influenced by situational factors

Obedience: Culture

• US (Milgram, 1963):
  • Male general population: 65%
  • Female general population: 65%
• Australia (Kilham & Mann, 1974):
  • Male students: 40%
  • Female students: 16%
• The Netherlands (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986):
  • General population: 92%
• Jordan (Shanab & Yahya, 1978):
  • Students: 62%
• India (Gupta, 1983):
  • Students: 42%

Obedience: Culture Analysis

• Cross-cultural comparisons are challenging given differences in study designs
  • Participants, learner, obedience task, instructions, etc.
• A substantial number of people in a variety of countries carry out orders from authority.
• Cultural dimensions/values do suggest differences (e.g., Hofstede)
  • Individualism-collectivism
  • Power distance
• Research in the parenting field shows variations in the nation-level popularity of independence and obedience (e.g., Park & Lau, 2016)

Obedience: Cultural Context

• “Obedience to authority is vital for the success of most human groups and organizations”
• “The commands of authority often act as the voice of culture” (Ent & Baumeister, 2014)
• To understand obedience in a culture, the particular social context and the meaning of the orders given may need to be considered.

Conformity

• Behaviour intended to avoid standing out from the group
• Deep-seated, private, and enduring change in behaviour and attitudes due to group pressure

Conformity and Social Norms

• Involves alignment with group norms
• According to Sherif (1936), groups provide a frame of reference
• More central positions are typically perceived as more correct
• Social norms emerge from convergence to that position

Sherif (1936)

• Method:
  • Study relied on the autokinetic effect – optical illusion that a pinpoint of light in a dark room appears to move
  • Participants asked how much the light moves
  • Tested either:
    • Alone first and then in groups
    • In groups first and then alone

Sherif: Results

• Participants converged on a group norm.
• Participants used this group norm when alone.

Asch (1951)

• Method:
  • Participants sat at a table with 6 confederates
  • Asked to indicate aloud which of 3 comparison lines matched the standard line (participant was 2nd last to give answer)

Asch: Results

• In the standard trial: confederates gave the same right answer.
• In the test trial: confederates gave the wrong answer, to see how the participants would respond.