Social Lecture 5: Attitude Change

For the remaining lectures, I want to look at how attitudes are formed and changed. Although our behavior in a situation is primarily determined by what goes on in that situation, it is obviously determined as well to a great extent by ideas, feelings, and beliefs that we bring into that situation. We talk about opinions, beliefs, and attitudes as though they were the same thing, but an attitude is more complex than either an opinion or a belief. For a psychologist, an attitude contains three components: First, an attitude involves a cognitive component consisting of a set of beliefs about some class of objects, people, or ideas. For example, our attitude toward nuclear weapons may involves the beliefs that nuclear war would devastate the planet, that nuclear weapons increase rather than decrease the chances of war, and that they are too dangerous to produce. Second, an attitude involves an emotional component; a set of feelings about the subject of the attitude. Again, our attitude toward nuclear weapons might include the fear that they increase the risk of conflict, feelings of anger that such weapons exist, and feelings of anxiety about the future after a nuclear exchange. Finally, an attitude involves a behavioral component: A set of tendencies to behave in certain ways as a result of our beliefs and feelings. For example, out beliefs and feeling about nuclear weapons might lead us to avoid those who disagree with us, to send letters to our MPs about the threat of the arms buildup, or even to picket armed forces bases. All these three components must be present in an attitude: a set of beliefs about the attitude object, a set of emotional responses to it, and a set or predispositions or tendencies to act in certain ways in connection with the attitude object(s). We have attitudes about a lot of things: about types of government, about moral or ethical issues, about races, nations, classes, or occupations, and about products and people. These attitudes are important because they may have a pervasive influence on our behavior. Attitude change is an multimillion-dollar business in our society, and we are constantly confronted with attempts to manipulate our attitudes every time we read a newspaper or watch a television commercial. Indeed TV commercials are often much more carefully crafted than the TV programs that surround them! We said that an attitude consists of three components: beliefs, emotions, and behavioral tendencies. An attitude can be changed by manipulating any one of these, bu today we will consider primarily attempts top change attitudes by manipulating their cognitive or belief components. The method of attitude change we are going to focus on are those where someone tells you something in an attempt, usually an obvious one, to change your attitude on some topic. These situations involve three components: There is the source, the person making the attempt to change your attitude, there is the message the source delivers to change your attitude, and then, of course, there is the audience, in this case you, and perhaps hundreds or thousands of others like you if the message is being delivered via mass media, such as newspapers, TV, radio, etc. The characteristics of each of these components, the source, the message and the audience, determine how successful an attempt to change attitudes is. Let's take a look at each of these parts of the attitude-change situation, and see what it is about each of them that makes them more or less effective in producing attitude change.

The Source An attempt to change your attitudes usually consists of a message delivered by someone, the source. The amount of attitude change depends on the credibility of the source. Just how willing are we to believe and accept what the source says?
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The credibility of the source, in turn, depends primarily on three chracteristics (which are often related): First, the amount of expertise the source has in the area. In a discussion on nuclear weapons, for example, we are much more likely to believe the statements of a physicist or nuclear scientist that those of a rock star or talk show host (in general The second factor determining the credibility of the source is the prestige of the source. In general, we are more likely to be influencd by a source with high prestige rather than one with low prestige. A government figure, or a rock star or entertainer, will be more effective in changing our attitudes than our neighbor, or someone we dislike. Finally, the credibility of the source depends the self-interest of the source. If the source stands to gain from our change in attitudes, we are less likely to change our attitudes. Conversely, if the position advocated by the source seems to be contrary to his interests, then we are more likely to be persuaded. For example, a plea to eliminate the death penalty is more effective coming from a policemen than from an inmate serving time for murder. It also seems that we are more likely to be convinced if we think that the source does not intend to change our attitudes. In one study, for example, subjects heard a speaker advocate a certain position. Some subjects were spoken to directly by the source, while a second group of subjects overheard the source deliver his message to someone else. The results of the study indicated that the more attitude change took place in the group that had overheard the source than for the group who heard the source directly.

The Message Obviously, the message itself is important in determining how much attitude change actually occurs. Quite apart from the what is actually said (the actual ideas and arguments), other aspects of the message also help determine its effectiveness: 1. Discrepancy One factor determining the effectiveness of the message is discrepancy: The difference between the position it advocates, and the position currently held by the audience. In general, the amount of attitude change increases directly with discrepancy - up to a point. Beyond that point, more discrepancy produces less attitude change. Where that point ais depends on how the audience feels about the source. The more they like or trust the source (the higher the source's credibility), the greater is the optimal level of dispcrepancy. If the source is not well liked or respected, then the optimal discrepancy for attitude change is much lower. Just exactly where the optimal discrepancy is cannot be specified (especially since it is hard to quantify discrepancy.).

2. Explicit vs Implicit Conclusions Most persuasive communications or messages contain a series of facts or ideas designed to lead the listener to a specific conclusion. But is it better if this conclusion is explicit, or if it is implicit, leaving the audience to draw this inevitable conclusion on its own? That depends on the nature of the audience. If the audience is intelligent, then it is better to leave them to draw the conclusion for themselves. If the audience is not intelligent, then it is better to draw the conclusion explicitly, since otherwise they may not draw the right conclusion. This is especially true if the issue is complex.

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3. One- vs Two-Sided Arguments Another important aspect of the message is whether it presents one or both sides of an issue. If you are trying to convince an audience to support nuclear power, you might just present all the facts and arguments in favor of nuclear power. Or you might present some of the arguments against nuclear power, rebut them and then present arguments in favor of nuclear power. Which of these approaches, one-sided or two-sided, is more effective? Again, the answer depends on the nature of the audience. (a) If the audience already leans toward your point of view, then a one-sided argument will probably be more effective. This may be one reason that political speeches, especially those to the party faithful, tend to be very one-sided. (b) If the audience does not know much about the issue (and therefore is unlikely to be familiar with the arguments on both sides), then a one-sided argument will again be more effective. (c) If the audience is not very intelligent, then a one-sided argument will probably be more effective. As you might expect, a two-sided argument is likely to be more effective in exactly the opposite cases: (a) When the audience is initially opposed to your point of view. (b) When the audience is familiar with the issue, and has therefore probably heard arguments on both sides. (c) When the audience is intelligent, and therefore aware that there are probably two sides to the argument, whether they know what they are or not. (d) And one more factor: A two-sided message seems to work better in general if you expect that your audience will later be exposed to counter-arguments. And if a two-sided message is going to be used, your arguments should be presented first.

5. Emotional Appeals So far, we have talked about changing attitudes by presenting information. Such messages change attitudes by working on the cognitive or belief component of those attitudes. Since attitudes have an emotional component as well, we could try to change an attitude by appealing not to the more rational intellectual component by presenting facts, but by an emotional appeal. Appeals to patriotism, sympathy, and so on are fairly common, and seem to work reasonably well. This sort of emotional appeal has not been extensively studied, however. One aspect of emotional appeals that has received some attention is the question of whether appeals to fear are more or less effective than those that do not arouse strong negative emotions. Examples of fear appeals might include attempts to change peoples' attitudes toward smoking with films that show the effects on the lung of prolonged smoking. Or commercials urging people to fasten their seat belts by portraying the gory aftereffects of a traffic accident. It has been shown experimentally that in some cases, the use of very strong fear appeals is less effective in changing attitudes than more rational, or less arousing emotional approaches. The reason seems to be that when strong emotions are aroused, people often defend against them by ignoring or repressing the message, thus reducing its effect on attitudes and behavior. It does seem, however, that fear appeals can be effective if the message provides reassurance that something can be done to avoid the fearful situation, and if that something (that action, usually) is explained in some detail, or made easy to do.

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The Audience The last aspect of an attitude change situation that can effect its effectiveness is the audience itself. We have already mentioned in connection with the message, several aspects of the audience that may influence how effective an attempt to change attitudes is. There are a number of other characteristics of the audience that may be important, but I want to mention only two. The first is the environment of the audience when it receives the message. If the audience is surrounded by others who agree with the speaker, then the message will be more effective than if the audience is alone, or worse still, surrounded by others who disagree with the speaker. A second factor is whether or not you can get the individual to engage in some behavior, no matter how small, that is consistent with the attitude you want him to adopt. For example, if you can get them to raise their hands in agreement with some point that the speaker makes, or can get them to take some literature that expounds the speaker's point: In short, any public acknowledgement that they agree with some aspect of the message will increase the likelihood that they will change there attitudes in the direction of the speaker's message. This last point is an important one: For most of the time we have talked about changing attitudes primarily through verbal attempts to manipulate the knowledge or beliefs that underlie the attitude, or through arousing an emotional response inconsistent with the current attitude. Now we seem to have come across a way in which attitudes can be changed by changing the subject's behavior. Next time we will talk about such approaches, and about the theoretical analysis of such attempts.

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