Message Learning Approach

(Hovland and associates)

• Key influencers
Source!Message!Channel!Receiver
• Internal mechanism
Attention ! Comprehension!Yielding !Retention
• Key outcomes
- Belief change
- Attitude change
- Behavior change
 Communicator Factors:
Demographic Factors
• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity and culture
• Intelligence
 Communicator Factors:
Psychological Trait and State Factors
• Self-esteem
• Anxiety
• Self-monitoring
• Ego involvement
• Dogmatism and Authoritarianism
• Cognitive Compliexity
• Aggression vs. Argumentation
 Age and Persuasion

Persuading
Being persuaded
 Gender and Persuasion

Men are more persuasive, and why?

Reinforcement Expectancy Theory – Klingle

-positive vs. negative persuasive strategies

Persuadability and gender

 Ethnicity, Culture and Persuasion
• Collectivism vs. Individualism
• Interdependents vs. Independents
− Preference for indirectness
− Other-orientedness,
− Face preservation
• Ma & Chung study, 2001
– Hinting
– Setting an example by one’s own action
– Feeding people what they relish
• Matching communication appeals
Intelligence and Persuasion

Persuading
Being persuaded
Self-esteem and Persuasion

A Curvilinear relationship!

Receiving vs. Yielding

Anxiety and Persuasion

Again receiving vs. yielding

Need to include reassurances

 Self-Monitoring Scale - High
1. I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no
information.
2. I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people.
3. When I am uncertain how to act in a social situation, I look to the behavior of
others for cues.
4. I would probably make a good actor.
5. I sometimes appear to others to be experiencing deeper emotions than I
actually am.
6. I laugh more when I watch a comedy with others than when alone.
7. In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different
persons.
8. Even if I am not enjoying myself, I often pretend to be having a good time.
9. I'm not always the person I appear to be.
10. I have considered being an entertainer.
11. In order to get along and be liked, I tend to be what people expect me to be
rather than anything else.
12. I can look anyone in the eye and tell a lie with a straight face (if for a right end).
13. I may deceive people by being friendly when I really dislike them.
 Self-Monitoring Scale - Low
1. I find it hard to imitate the behavior of other people.
2. My behavior is usually an expression of my true inner feelings,
attitudes, and beliefs.
3. At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things
that others will like.
4. I can only argue for ideas which I already believe.
5. I rarely seek the advice of my friends to choose movies, books, or
music.
6. In groups of people, I am rarely the center of attention.
7. I am not particularly good at making other people like me.
8. I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to
please someone else or win their favor.
9. I have never been good at games like charades or improvisational
acting.
10. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and
different situations.
11. At a party, I let others keep the jokes and stories going.
12. I feel a bit awkward in company and do not show up quite as well as I
should.
Self-Monitoring and Persuasion

Needs different appeal types

Ego Involvement and Persuasion
• Social Judgment Theory
– Latitude of Acceptance
– Latitude of Rejection
– Latitude of Noncommitment
– Contrast effect
– Assimilation effect
– Role of Ego Involvement
• Value-relevant involvement
• Outcome-relevant involvement (issue involvement)
Dogmatism, Authoritarianism
and Persuasion

Source type

Appeal type (Threat vs. Reward)

Cognitive Complexity, Need for
Cognition and Persuasion

Persuading
Being persuaded
- different processing preference
 Need for Cognition and Persuasion
1. I would prefer complex to simple problems.
2. I like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking.
3. Thinking is not my idea of fun.*
4. I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my
thinking abilities.*
5. I try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is likely a chance I will have to think in depth about
something.*
6. I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.
7. I only think as hard as I have to.*
8. I prefer to think about small, daily projects to long-term ones.*
9. I like tasks that require little thought once I’ve learned them.*
10. The idea of relying on thought to make my way to the top appeals to me.
11. I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems.
12. Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me very much.*
13. I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles that I must solve.
14. The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me.
15. I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important to one that is somewhat important but
does not require much thought.
16. I feel relief rather than satisfaction after completing a task that required a lot of mental effort.*
17. It’s enough for me that something gets the job done; I don’t care how or why it works.*
18. I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they do not affect me personally.
Note. Uses 9 point scale. Items with * will be reverse coded.
Importance of Understanding Audience

• Market-driven, audience-centered, and

listener-oriented approaches work better
• Pay attention to the situation
• Pay attention to the audience
demographics, and psychological traits and
states
• Pay attention to the audience’s attitudes and
beliefs.