SOCP311 - LECTURE

WEEK 7 - ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
• BEHAVIOR AFFECTS OUR ATTITUDES.
WHAT IS ATTITUDES? 1. Role - A set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to
• Attitude is the beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event and the resulting behave.
behavior tendency. • WE PLAY DIFFERENT ROLE IN DIFFERENT SITUATION.
• Taken together, favorable or unfavorable evaluative reactions toward something often 1. With our family?
rooted in beliefs and exhibited in feelings and inclinations to act. 2. Being with loved ones?
3. Social psych class?
4. Psych Dept?
5. With our friends?
• “THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT?”
• “The roles and the behaviors we play affect our attitude”
• “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel.
The barrel corrupts anything that it touches.” Philip Zimbardo , 2004a, 2004b)“The roles
and the behaviors we play affects our attitude”
THE FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR PHENOMENON
• The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a
larger request.
• Give an example:
a. Bigger Allowance from your father?
b. Sexual advances?
c. Sales?
EVIL AND MORAL ACTS
• Our attitudes is also escalating!
• Research said that we tend to escalate our behaviours as time goes by.
• “OUR SELF-DEFINITIONS ARE NOT CONSTRUCTED IN OUR HEADS; THEY ARE FORGED BY
SO DOES OUR ATTITUDE CAN PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOR?
OUR DEEDS.”
• So why people do ironic behavior?
• Evil attitudes feeds evil attitudes, Moral attitudes feeds moral attitudes!
• Ex. A religious person who’s having pre-marital sex?
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
• “Moral Hypocrisy”
• The disjunctive between attitudes and actions. (Daniel Boston Et. Al) • Self-presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that
make us appear consistent.
HOW WELL DO OUR ATTITUDES PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOR?
•Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions
• So based on the idea. We didn’t really well predict behaviors through attitude.
to ourselves.
WHEN ATTITUDES PREDICTS BEHAVIOR? • Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing (when uncertain
1. When social influences on what we say are minimal. about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behavior, much as anyone else would).
2. When the attitude is specific to the behavior SELF-PRESENTATION THEORY
a. 2.1 When attitudes are examined
• It assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear
3. When the attitude is potent
consistent.
WHEN SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON WHAT WE SAY ARE MINIMAL • We want to look good to others!
• We minimized social influences. To predict behavior. • Example:
• Because social influence affects our true thoughts. o (Pag- galing sa church mga magulang)
o A newer and widely used attitude measure the implicit association test (IAT) o Nako! Kakasimba ko lang. ‘Wag mo ko pagisipin ng masama!
,uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts COGNITIVE DISSONANCE (LEON FESTINGER’S )
(Greenwald & others, 2002, 2003).
• One theory is that our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain
o It measure your Implicit and Explicit attitudes.
consistency among our cognitions.
Q: Do Implicit and explicit predicts behavior?
• Tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions.
o A review of the available research (now over 200 investigations) reveals that
both explicit (self-report) and implicit attitudes help predict people’s behaviors SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY
and judgments (Greenwald & others, 2008; Nosek & others, 2011). • The theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would
WHEN THE ATTITUDE IS SPECIFIC TO THE BEHAVIOR someone observing us—by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it
occurs..
• When the attitude is specific to the behavior.
• Example:
• Example:
o The rationalization that “ Lahat naman nandadaya sa klase kaya okay lang”
o When we are hungry
o Attitude towards hunger is?
o (Our attitudes toward hunger is to find food) FACIAL FEEDBACK EFFECT
o When we are stressed? • The tendency of facial expressions to trigger corresponding feelings such as fear, anger,
o Attitude towards Stressed? or happiness.
o (Our attitude towards stressed could be rest) • Example:
o An individual who is forced to smile during a social event will actually come to
Example
find the event more of an enjoyable experience.
• Stella is a studious person and a consistent honor, the midterm exam is coming, and
Stella plans to make her reviewer. Everyone in the class also started reading their notes
and also preparing for the coming exams. Stella believes that she could finish her reviewer
3 days before the exam.
A. Watch K-Dramas before the exam
B. Review for the exam
C. Have Drinking sprees for the next days
WHEN THE ATTITUDE IS SPECIFIC TO THE BEHAVIOR (continue~)
• “Theory of Planned Behavior”
• Icek Ajzen, working with Martin Fishbein, has shown that one’s:
a. attitudes,
b. perceived social norms, and
c. feelings of control
• together determine one’s intentions, which guide behavior.
• We can predict behaviors!
WHEN ATTITUDES ARE POTENT
• When our attitudes are strong.
• The attitudes that best predict behavior are accessible (easily brought to mind) as well
as stable (Glasman & Albarracin, 2006). And when attitudes are forged by experience.
POTENT ATTITUDES COMES WHEN WE ARE: OVER JUSTIFICATION EFFECT
1. Be Aware of yourself! (Self-conscious people usually are in touch with their • The result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their
attitudes.) actions as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing.
2. Let yourself experience (Experiential Learning) • Example:
o Working as a Guidance Counselor may intristically appealing because you are
helping people with low pay.
 SOCP311 - LECTURE

SELF-AFFIRMATION THEORY
• A theory that: WHAT PREDICTS CONFORMITY?
a. people often experience a self-image threat after engaging in an undesirable 1. Group Size
behavior; o The percentage of passersby who imitated a group looking upward increased as
b. they can compensate by affirming another aspect of the self. Threaten people’s group size increased to 5 persons.
self-concept in one domain, and they will compensate either by refocusing or by 2. Unanimity
doing good deeds in some other domain. o Conformity experiments teach the practical lesson that it is easier to stand up for
• Example: something if you can find someone else to stand up with you.
o “Robin hood Phenomena” 3. Cohesion
o A “we feeling”; the extent to which members of a group are bound together,
WEEK 8 – SOCIAL INFLUENCE (1) such as by attraction to one another.
4. Status
WHAT IS CONFORMITY? o higher-status people tend to have more impact
• Is it Good or Bad? When is it good? When is it bad? 5. Public Response
• Conformity: “A change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group o In experiments, people conform more when they must respond in front of others
pressure.” rather than writing their answers privately.
VARIETIES OF CONFORMITY 6. Prior Commitment
o Once they commit themselves to a position, people seldom yield to social
1. Compliance
o Conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with an implied or explicit pressure. Real umpires and referees rarely reverse their initial judgments.
request while privately disagreeing. WHY DO PEOPLE CONFORM?
2. Obedience 1. Normative influence (desire to be accepted)
o Acting in accord with a direct order or command. o Conformity based on a person’s desire to fulfill others’ expectations, often to
3. Acceptance gain acceptance.
o Conformity that involves both acting and believing in accord with social pressure. 2. Informational Influence (desire to be correct)
SHERIF’S STUDIES OF NORM FORMATION o Conformity occurring when people accept evidence about reality provided by
other people
• In 1936, Sherif studied on how norms develop in small groups.
• Imagine yourself a participant in one of Sherif’s experiments. You find yourself WHO CONFORMS?
seated in a dark room. Fifteen feet in front of you a pinpoint of light appears. At first, • Personality
nothing happens. Then for a few seconds it moves erratically and finally disappears. Now o Personality scores were poor predictors of individuals’ behavior.
you must guess how far it moved. The dark room gives you no way to judge distance, o If you wanted to know how conforming or aggressive or helpful someone was
so you offer an uncertain “six inches.” The experimenter repeats the procedure. going to be, it seemed you were better off knowing about the situation rather
• This time you say, “Ten inches.” With further repetitions, your estimates continue than the person’s psychological test scores.
to average about eight inches • Culture
• Three individuals converge as they give repeated estimates of the apparent o Conformity and obedience are universal phenomena, yet they vary across
movement of a point of light. cultures and eras.
o The light never moves! o James Whittaker and Robert Meade (1967) repeated Asch’s conformity
• Autokinetic phenomenon experiment in several countries and found similar conformity rates in most 31
o The apparent movement of a stationary point of light in the dark. percent in Lebanon, 32 percent in Hong Kong, 34 percent in Brazil but 51 percent
CONTAGIOUS YAWNING among the Bantu of Zimbabwe, a tribe with strong sanctions against non
• Robert Provine conformity.
• When do we yawn? • Social Roles ( What is expected?)
- We yawn when we are bored or tense. o Social roles allow some freedom of interpretation to those who act them out, but
- We yawn when we are sleepy. some aspects of any role must be performed.
- We yawn when others yawn (55 percent of viewers yawned) DO YOU WANT YOUR OWN IDENTITY?
THE CHAMELEON EFFECT • Reactance
• Refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and o A motive to protect or restore one’s sense of freedom. Reactance arises when
other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and someone threatens our freedom of action.
unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. • The theory of psychological reactance —that people act to protect their sense of
• Example: freedom—is supported by experiments showing that attempts to restrict a person’s
o Smiling, Kuyakoy, and Etc. freedom often produce an anticonformity “boomerang effect” (Brehm & Brehm, 1981;
o Reflects Priming again! Nail & others, 2000)
• Reactance may contribute to underage drinking. A survey of 18- to 24-year-olds by the
MASS DELUSIONS
Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (1997) revealed that 69 percent of those over the
• Suggestibility on a mass scale appears as collective delusions spontaneous spreading of legal drinking age (21) had been drunk in the last year, as had 77 percent of those under
false beliefs. 21.
• “Appears as “Mass Hysteria” • In the United States, a survey of students on 56 campuses revealed a 25 percent rate of
o The spread of bodily complaints within a school or work place with no organic alcohol abstinence among students of legal drinking age (21) but only a 19 percent
basis for the symptoms. abstinence rate among students under 21 (Engs & Hanson, 1989)
• Example: “Sanib”
ASSERTING UNIQUENESS
ASCH’S STUDIES OF GROUP PRESSURE
• We are not comfortable being greatly different from a group, but neither do we want to
appear the same as everyone else.
Reflect how conformity affects your everyday lives.

WEEK 8 – SOCIAL INFLUENCE (2)

• Those in a control condition who answered alone were correct more than 99 percent of
the time.
• Although some people never conformed, three-quarters did so at least once. All told, 37
percent of the responses were conforming (or should we say “ trusting of others”). Of
course, that means 63 percent of the time people did not conform.
MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENTS
• Percentage of participants complying despite the learner’s cries of protest and failure to
respond.
REFLECTIONS ON THE CLASSIC STUDIES
• “I was only following orders” defenses of Adolf Eichmann, in Nazi Germany
• [Lieutenant Calley] told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four
clips into the group. . . . They were begging and saying, “No, no.” And the mothers were
hugging their children and. . . . Well, we kept right on firing. They was waving their arms
and begging. (Wallace, 1969)
• They did more than teach an academic lesson; they sensitized us to moral conflicts in
our own lives. – (Myers,2013)
NATURE OR NURTURE?
• “PSYCHOLOGY WILL BE BASED ON A NEW FOUNDATION.” —CHARLES DARWIN, ON THE
ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 1859
NATURAL SELECTION
• The evolutionary process by which heritable traits that best enable organisms to survive
and reproduce in particular environments and are passed to ensuing generations.
• Natural selection implies that certain genes those that predisposed traits that increased
the odds of surviving long enough to reproduce and nurture descendants became more
abundant.
• As mobile gene machines, we carry not only the physical legacy but also the
psychological legacy of our ancestors’ adaptive preferences. We long for whatever helped
them survive, reproduce, and nurture their offspring to survive and reproduce. Even
negative emotions—anxiety, loneliness, depression, anger—are nature’s way of
motivating us to cope with survival challenges.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
• The study of the evolution of cognition and behavior, using principles of natural
selection.
• The evolutionary perspective highlights our universal human nature!
• Whom should I trust? Whom should I help? When, and with whom, should I mate? Who
may dominate me, and whom may I control?
• Evolutionary psychologists contend that our emotional and behavioral answers to those
questions are the same answers that worked for our ancestors.
 SOCP311 - LECTURE
CULTURE AND BEHAVIOR
• Culture – is the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large
group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
• “Evolution made us for culture.”
• Evolutionary psychology incorporates environmental influences!
• It recognizes that nature and nurture interact in forming us.
• One study of New Zealand young adults revealed a gene variation that put people at risk
for depression, but only if they had also experienced major life stresses such as a marital
breakup (Caspi & others, 2003). Neither the stress nor the gene alone produced
depression, but the two interacting did.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
• The diversity of our languages, customs, and expressive behaviors confirms that much of
our behavior is socially programmed, not hardwired. The genetic leash is long..
NORMS
• Standards for accepted and expected behavior. Norms prescribe “proper” behavior. (In
a different sense of the word, norms also describe what most others do—what is normal.)
- FATIMA
- Starbucks?
- Japan?
• As etiquette rules illustrate, all cultures have their accepted ideas about appropriate
behavior.
• We often view these social expectations, or norms, as a negative force that imprisons
people in a blind effort to perpetuate tradition.
• Norms do restrain and control us so successfully and so subtly that we hardly sense their
existence.
VARYING CULTURAL NORMS
• Example:
1. EXPRESSIVENESS - To someone from a relatively formal northern European
culture, a person whose roots are in an expressive Mediterranean culture may
seem “warm, charming, inefficient, and time-wasting.”
2. PUNCTUALITY - Latin American business executives who arrive late for a dinner
engagement may be mystified by how obsessed their North American
counterparts are with punctuality. North American tourists in Japan may wonder
about the lack of eye contact from passing pedestrians.
3. RULE-BREAKING - When people see social norms being violated, such as banned
graffiti on a wall, they become more likely to follow the rule-breaking norm by
violating other rules, such as littering
4. PERSONAL SPACE -The buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies. Its size
depends on our familiarity with whoever is near us.
UNIVERSAL CULTURAL NORMS
• UNIVERSAL FRIENDSHIP NORMS
- What do you think?
• UNIVERSAL TRAIT DIMENSIONS (Big Five)
• UNIVERSAL STATUS NORMS (Status in Life)
- Using Opo and Po.
• THE INCEST TABOO
• NORMS OF WAR
- If you can’t kill them before they surrender, you should feed them thereafter.
DESCRIBE HOW MALES AND FEMALES ARE ALIKE, AND HOW THEY DIFFER?
SEX & GENDER
• “Sex” refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and
women.
• “Gender” refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes
that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.
• Thus, while sex is permanent and universal, gender construction varies from one society
to another.
• To put it in another way, “Male” and “Female” are sex categories, while “masculine” and
“feminine” are gender categories.
INDEPENDENCE VERSUS CONNECTEDNESS
• Who is more independent? Who is more connected?
• Male or Female?
PLAY
• Compared with boys, girls talk more intimately and play less aggressively, noted Eleanor
Maccoby
FRIENDSHIP
• As adults, women in individualist cultures describe themselves in more relational terms,
welcome more help, experience more relationship linked emotions, and are more attuned
to others’ relationships.
VOCATIONS
• In general, report Felicia Pratto and her colleagues (1997),
• Men gravitate disproportionately to jobs that enhance inequalities (prosecuting
attorney, corporate advertising)
• Women gravitate to jobs that reduce inequalities (public defender, advertising work for
a charity).
FAMILY RELATIONS
• Women’s connections as mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers bind families
(Rossi & Rossi, 1990).
• Following their child’s birth, parents (women especially) become more traditional in
their gender related attitudes and behaviors (Ferriman & others, 2009; Katz-Wise, 2010)
SMILING
• Yet across more than 400 studies, women’s greater connectedness has been expressed
in their generally higher rate of smiling (LaFrance & others, 2003).
EMPATHY
• When surveyed, women are far more likely to describe themselves as having empathy
, or being able to feel what another feels—to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep
with those who weep.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE
• From Asia to Africa and Europe to Australia, people rate men as more dominant, driven,
and aggressive. Moreover, studies of nearly 80,000 people across 70 countries show that
men more than women rate power and achievement as important (Schwartz & Rubel,
2005).
AGGRESSION
• Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone. In laboratory experiments, this
might mean delivering electric shocks or saying something likely to hurt another’s
feelings.
SEXUALITY
• There is also a gender gap in sexual attitudes and assertiveness (Petersen & Hyde, 2010).
• Men or Female?
GENDER AND MATING PREFERENCES
• In Relationship preference which do you prefer?
• Mabait pero Mahirap O Mayaman pero Pangit?
• Bata (20-30’s) Or Matanda 40’s-50’s
• David Buss and 50 collaborators surveyed more than 10,000 people from all races,
religions, and political systems on six continents and five islands. Everywhere, men
preferred attractive physical features suggesting youth and health and reproductive
fitness. Everywhere, women preferred men with resources and status.
GENDER AND HORMONES
• Are we all Homosexuals? Are half men/Half female?
• Testosterone (Male hormones) - influences masculine appearance. Aggression and
tomboyish play behavior on females.
• Androgynous - From andro (man) gyn (woman)—thus mixing both masculine and
feminine characteristics.
GENDER ROLES
• A gender role is a set of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered
appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship.
SOCIALIZATION
• Gender roles determine how males and females should think, speak, dress and interact
within the context of society.
• They define what is masculine and feminine.
• Parents, teachers, peers, films, television and religion teach and reinforce gender roles.
• Examples:
- Some examples of gender characteristics:
- Women are expected to take care of family or domestic duties and remain close
to home
- All men are expected to work and earn money for the family
- Boys are better in mathematics than girls
- Boys never cry
- Girls are very emotional
- Women usually do more housework than men
HOUSEWORK
• Mostly, it is women who do the housework .... Cooking, cleaning, washing etc which is
repetitive and boring.
• Women have entire responsibility for child rearing.
• Women have to look after older or sick people.
• All this is unpaid labour / work. It has no economic value.
• But it contributes a lot to the overall wealth of the nation.
• Hence, housework done by women should be made a part of GDP.
GENDER ROLES VARY WITH CULTURE
• A 2003 Pew Global Attitudes survey asked 38,000 people whether life was more
satisfying when both spouses work and share child care, or when women stay home and
care for the children while the husband provides. In 41 of 44 countries, most chose the
first answer.
• The changing male female roles cross many cultures, as illustrated by women’s gradually
increasing representation in the parliaments of most nations (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005;
IPU, 2011). Such changes, cross cultures and over a remarkably short time, signal that
evolution and biology do not fix gender roles: Time also bends the genders.
How the situation affects you?
• “Walwalan Night with barkada”
• “MIDTERM EXAM WEEK”
• “Who’s in control? You or the Environment?
• Social control (the power of the situation)
• Personal (the power of the person)
The interaction occurs in at least three ways (Snyder & Ickes, 1985).
• A given social situation often affects different people differently.
• People often choose their situations
• People often create their situations.
• Thus, power resides both in persons and in situations. We create and are created by our
cultural worlds.
 SOCP311 - LECTURE

WEEK 9 – PERSUASION REASON VERSUS EMOTION?

• The answer:
PERSUASION o It depends on the audience. Well-educated or analytical people are responsive to
• Persuasion rational appeals (Cacioppo & others, 1983, 1996; Hovland & others, 1949).
o The process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or Thoughtful, involved audiences often travel the central route; they are more
behaviors. responsive to reasoned arguments.
• Q: When and where are we being persuaded? o Uninterested audiences more often travel the peripheral route; they are more
• Whether it be education or propaganda, is everywhere at the heart of politics, affected by their liking of the communicator ( Chaiken, 1980; Petty & others,
marketing, courtship, parenting, negotiation, evangelism, and courtroom decision making. 1981)
• Q: How do you persuade other people? • THE EFFECT OF GOOD FEELINGS
o Messages that be effective by evoking Positive emotions.
• THE EFFECT OF AROUSING FEAR
o Messages can also be effective by evoking negative emotions.
THE CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION
• The way the message is delivered whether face-to-face, in writing, on film and etc.
• MEDIA INFLUENCE: THE TWO-STEP FLOW
o Media – >“Influentials” – > People

• Persuasion entails clearing several hurdles. Any factors that help people clear the
persuasion hurdles will increase persuasion.
1. Central Route Persuasion
o Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with
favorable thoughts.
2. Peripheral Route Persuasion
o Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues.

ELEMENTS OF PERSUASION
1. The Communicator
2. The Message
3. How the message is communicated
4. The audience
CREDIBILITY
• Believability. A credible communicator is perceived as both expert and trustworthy.
SLEEPERS 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.
• Example: Low credibility may be caused by a discounting cue, such as when a prediction
of improving economic conditions is given by a government spokesperson (who is
presumed to be biased). However, when the message eventually gets separated from its
source (by dissociation), the message may gain more credibility.
PERCEIVED EXPERTISE
• It also helps to be seen as knowledgeable on the topic.
• message about toothbrushing from “Dr. James Rundle of the Canadian Dental
Association” is more convincing than the same message from “Jim Rundle, a local high
school student who did a project with some of his classmates on dental hygiene” (Olson &
Cal, 1984)
PERCEIVED TRUSTWORTHINESS
• Speech style affects a speaker’s apparent trustworthiness. Gordon Hemsley and
Anthony Doob (1978) found that if videotaped witnesses looked their questioner straight
in the eye instead of gazing downward, they impressed people as more believable.
• When we know in advance that a source is credible, we think more favorable thoughts
in response to the message. If we learn the source after a message generates favorable
thoughts, high credibility strengthens our confidence in our thinking, which also
strengthens the persuasive impact of the message (Brinõl & others, 2002, 2004; Tormala
& others, 2006).
ATTRACTIVENESS
• Having qualities that appeal to an audience. An appealing communicator (often
someone similar to the audience) is most persuasive on matters of subjective preference.
The Message
• In Filipinos, Ano ang mas may appeal.
• Drama or Facts?
• It matters not only who says something but also what that person says. If you were to
help organize an appeal to get people to vote for school taxes or to stop smoking or to
give money to world hunger relief, you might wonder how best to promote central route
persuasion.
THE AUDIENCE
• People with moderate self-esteem are the easiest to influence.
• The age of the audience makes difference; young people’s attitudes are more subject to
change.
• A life cycle explanation: Attitudes change (for example, become more conservative) as
people grow older.
• A generational explanation: Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto the
attitudes they adopted when they were young. Because these attitudes are different from
those being adopted by young people today, a generation gap develops
• What are they thinking?
• Our minds are not sponges that soak up whatever pours over them.
• If a message summons favorable thoughts, it persuades us.
• If it provokes us to think of contrary arguments, we remain unpersuaded.
• FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED—IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO COUNTERARGUE
• What circumstances breed counterargument?
• One is knowing that someone is going to try to persuade you.
• If you had to tell your family that you wanted to drop out of school, you would
likely anticipate their pleading with you to stay. So you might develop a list of
arguments to counter every conceivable argument they might make.
• What are they thinking?
• DISTRACTION DISARMS COUNTERARGUING
• Persuasion is also enhanced by a distraction that inhibits counterarguing (Festinger &
Maccoby, 1964; Keating & Brock, 1974; Osterhouse & Brock, 1970).
• What are they thinking?
• UNINVOLVED AUDIENCES USE PERIPHERAL CUES
• Recall the two routes to persuasion—the central route of systematic thinking and the
peripheral route of heuristic cues. Like a road that winds through a small town, the central
route has starts and stops as the mind analyzes arguments and formulates responses. Like
the freeway that bypasses the town, the peripheral route speeds people to their
destination.
EXTREME PERSUASION: HOW DO CULTS INDOCTRINATE?
• Cult (also called new religious movement)
o A group typically characterized by (1) distinctive rituals and beliefs related to its
devotion to a god or a person,
o (2) isolation from the surrounding “evil” culture, and
o (3) a charismatic leader. (A sect, by contrast, is a spinoff from a major religion.)
ATTITUDES FOLLOW BEHAVIOR
 People usually internalize commitments made voluntarily, publicly, and repeatedly.
Cult leaders seem to know this.
• COMPLIANCE BREEDS ACCEPTANCE
o New converts soon learn that membership is no trivial matter. They are quickly
made active members of the team. Behavioral rituals, public recruitment, and
fundraising strengthen the initiates’ identities as members. Those in social
psychological experiments come to believe in what they bear witness to (Aronson
& Mills, 1959; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966), and cult initiates likewise become
committed advocates. The greater the personal commitment, the more the need
to justify it.
 SOCP311 - LECTURE

 People usually internalize commitments made voluntarily, publicly, and repeatedly.

Cult leaders seem to know this.
• THE FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR PHENOMENON
o Hi. I’m a Moonie. Care to join us?” Rather, the recruitment strategy exploits the
foot-in-the-door principle. Unification Church recruiters, for example, would invite
people to a dinner and then to a weekend of warm fellowship and discussions of
philosophies of life. At the weekend retreat, they would encourage the attenders
to join them in songs, activities, and discussion. Potential converts were then
urged to sign up for longer training retreats. The pattern in cults is for the
activities to become gradually more arduous, culminating in having recruits solicit
contributions and attempt to convert others.
PERSUASIVE ELEMENTS
• THE COMMUNICATOR
o Successful cults typically have a charismatic leader—someone who attracts and
directs the members. As in experiments on persuasion, a credible communicator is
someone the audience perceives as expert and trustworthy.
o Jim Jones used “psychic readings” to establish his credibility. Newcomers were
asked to identify themselves as they entered the church before services.
• Then one of his aides would quickly call the person’s home and say, “Hi. We’re doing a
survey, and we’d like to ask you some questions.”
• During the service, one ex-member recalled, Jones would call out the person’s name and
say Have you ever seen me before? Well, you live in such and such a place, your phone
number is such and such, and in your living room you’ve got this, that, and the other, and
on your sofa you’ve got such and such a pillow. . . . Now do you remember me ever being
in your house?
• THE MESSAGE
o The vivid, emotional messages and the warmth and acceptance with which the
group showers lonely or depressed people can be strikingly appealing: Trust the
master, join the family; we have the answer, the “one way.” The message echoes
through channels as varied as lectures, small-group discussions, and direct social
pressure. . . . Now do you remember me ever being in your house?
• THE AUDIENCE
o Recruits are often young people under 25 years old, still at that comparatively
open age before attitudes and values stabilize.
• Some, such as the followers of Jim Jones, are less educated people who like the
message’s simplicity and find it difficult to counterargue. But most are educated, middle-
class people who, taken by the ideals, overlook the contradictions in those who profess
selflessness and practice greed, who pretend concern and behave callously.
• Potential converts are often at turning points in their lives, facing personal crises, or
vacationing or living away from home. They have needs; the cult offers them an answer
(Lofland & Stark, 1965; Singer, 1979).
HOW CAN PERSUASION BE RESISTED?
• Strengthening Personal Commitment
1. CHALLENGING BELIEFS
o How might we stimulate people to commit themselves? Charles Kiesler (1971)
offered one possible way: Mildly attack their position. Kiesler found that when
committed people were attacked strongly enough to cause them to react, but not
so strongly as to overwhelm them, they became even more committed.
o Kiesler explained: “When you attack committed people and your attack is of
inadequate strength, you drive them to even more extreme behaviors in defense
of their previous commitment”
2. DEVELOPING COUNTERARGUMENTS
o There is a second reason a mild attack might build resistance. Like inoculations
against disease, even weak arguments will prompt counterarguments, which are
then available for a stronger attack. William McGuire (1964) documented this in
some famous experiments.
ATTITUDE INOCULATION
• Exposing people to weak attacks upon their attitudes so that when stronger attacks
come, they will have refutations available.
• Example: Don’t talk to strangers would inoculate someone to Budol Budol.