5.Perscomm.intro

8/22/2019 5.Perscomm.intro

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Psych 586: Psychology of Persuasion

Historical Perspective

Professor: Icek Aizen

Office: Tobin 625Email: [email protected]

Tel: 545.0509


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Political Commercials

Sample TV commercials from 1960, 1980, 1984, and

2004 presidential elections.

Election Ads.wpl


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The Hovland Paradigm(After Hovland & Janis, 1959)

ATTENTION

COMPREHENSION

ACCEPTANCE

Opinion change

Perception change

Affect change

Action achange

SOURCE FACTORS

Expertise

Trustworthiness

Likability

Status/Power/Sex

MESSAGE FACTORS

Order of arguments

One- vs.two-sided

High vs. low fear

Rational vs. emotional

AUDIENCE FACTORS

Need for approval

Intelligence

Sex/Age

Self-esteem


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Elements of a Persuasive Communication

Conclusion

or

Recommended

Action

Stop Smoking

ARGUMENTS

Support for

conclusion or

recommended

action

Smoking causes

-- accelerated aging

-- lung cancer

-- heart disease-- emphysema

-- birth defects

EVIDENCE

"Factual"

information

to bolster the

major arguments

Among smokers,

cell division stops

32% earlier thanamong non-smokers


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Example of Persuasive Communication (Eagly,

1974): Introduction and Preview of Conclusion

Introduction of Communicator

The lecture that you will read is about sleep research. It was delivered by a physiologicalpsychologist who agreed to participate in this study. He is a faculty member in the PsychologyDepartment who has been doing research on sleep for the past five years. He has published a number ofjournal articles on sleep and is currently completing a book on the subject.

Persuasive Message

In recent years, there has been a considerable amount of research on the nature and function ofsleep. Recently there have been some important discoveries about sleep and I want to tell you aboutthem. You may find many of the things that I'll tell you quite novel because they go against conventionalideas--even against some of the classic psychological theories about sleep.

Let me present this research to you by first telling you my overall conclusion. This is that you areprobably sleeping too much. It is not necessary for the average person to sleep the eight hours each nightthat we have all been taught to believe is best. In fact, psychological research demonstrates the overallsuperiority of only about three hours for the average personprovided that these hours are of a veryspecial type. As I will explain, there is really no danger in cutting down sleep to three hours (if you do itin a certain way), and there certainly are some advantages.

I would like to review for you the evidence that leads me to this conclusion. I will make six mainpoints.


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): First Argument

My first pointabout the cultural nature of how much we sleepisa background fact that you should understand. The amount we sleep isactually arbitrary. People believe that 8 hours are necessary mainly

because they have been told this is so and have been 'taught to sleep alot when they were children. A University of California anthropologist

pointed out that in some cultures, the norm is markedly less sleep than8 hours; while in other cultures, people are expected to sleep evenmore than in our society. Also anthropologists point out that theamount of sleep people get varies with the season, especially for

primitive and peasant peoples who live close to the land--they sleepwhen it is dark, so sleep more in the winter. Northern peoplelikeLaplanders and Eskimossleep, according to one study, 1.8 timesmore in the winter than in the summer. In industrialized civilizations,we are not so affected by these rhythms of naturesleep patterns

become more purely cultural.


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): Second Argument

My second point is very important: studies show that how rested a person feels when hewakes up depends on how much REM sleep he gets rather than his total amount ofsleep. This REM sleep gets its name from the words Rapid Eye Movement since duringthis type of sleep, persons move their eyes back and forth rapidly. We also know thatmost dreaming takes place during REM sleep--though not all of REM sleep coincideswith dreaming.

For reasons we don't understand completely, dreaming and REM sleep make us feelrested. Sleep without these Rapid Eye Movements occupies much of the night, but itdoesnt do nearly as much good as REM sleep and can largely be dispensed with.Experiments were done that involved awakening people after differing amounts of REMand non-REM sleep and interviewing them on how they felt (and also putting themthrough certain laboratory performance tasks). These experiments (which have so farinvolved 347 subjects from all walks of life) show that REM sleep brings 2 times as

much reduction of fatigue as does non-REM sleep. This is a new and importantdiscovery about sleep. Thus, one hour of REM sleep is as effective as 2 hours of non-REM sleep. Simply stated"It's REMs that rest us."

Also, studies show that if persons are allowed to sleep as much as they want but areawakened when they enter REM sleep, they remain tired and experience adverse effectssuch as hallucinations and other perceptual maladjustments and distortions. People evenverge on a state not unlike schizophrenia after several days of sleep without the REM

phase.)


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): Third Argument

My third point comes from some training studies that were done at the University of Oregon. Theytook volunteers and retrained them to sleep less time per day. Now, there are two things that aperson must do if he is to sleep fewer hours per day: he must divide his sleep into at least three napsrather than one 8-hour period and he must know how to go into REM sleep quickly. Naps areimportant because people go into REM sleep early in the night--the last four hours of the 8-hour nightdon't provide much REM sleep. Thus, the shorter naps provide more REM sleep since they are likethe first part of the usual nighttime sleep.

It takes the average person who is untrained at least 45 minutes to get into REM sleep. They knewthat this period had to be cut, and through trying different methods, they finally hit on a method thatworks fairly well. This is the procedure: a person lies down, relaxes his muscles very thoroughly,and thinks about a single image of what is called a "bland" object. 11 bland object might be a blankwall or a cloudless sky. It is important to concentrate on just one object and not to let one's thoughtswander. One must not think of activities or problems, and not try to think logically. Just a single"bland" object. It's a sort of meditation technique. Using the bland object technique, most peoplecan go into REM sleep within 10 minutes of falling asleep. There are really no special talents

involved in being able to do this--anyone can do it. By the way, you might be interested to know thatwith alcohol or drugs a person tends to miss REM sleep and go right into deeper non-REM sleep.This is one reason why people don't feel as rested after alcohol or drug-induced sleep.

The program, then, involved training in REM-inducing concentration and learning to take three orfour evenly spaced naps of equal duration. Most subjects cut down their sleep a great deal and stillcarried out their daily work at what they felt was their usual level of efficiency. Still, the programdidn't work for a few subjects, but these people evidently didn't do a very good job of spacing out thenaps and were trying to do most all of their sleeping at night.


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): Fourth Argument

A fourth line of evidence comes from studies of the physical effects of longer

periods of sleepthese were done primarily by a psychobiologist at Princeton

University. Subjects were put into quiet rooms and encouraged to sleep for long

periods--given the right conditions, most subjects could sleep between 10 and 16 hours.

Measurements showed that reaction time was impaired, as was the ability to solve

complex logical syllogisms. Many people have personal experience with this--they haveknown the sluggish feeling and dull headache that follow long periods of sleep. Also,

sleeping for long periods is bad for a person physically because his body is in such a

lowered state of arousal during a long period of sleep-his heart rate is slow, his muscles

are completely relaxed. His heart and internal organs tend to lose muscle tone. If a

person puts his body under strain after a long period of sleep, he is more apt to be

injured--or, in the extreme, to suffer a heart attack. While long sleep weakens a person,

the body is not so severely affected by shorter periods of sleep. Also, a study relating

length of life to number of hours of sleep showed a slight, but statistically significant,

relationship between the hours a person sleeps and the length of life. This means that

persons who live longer tend to sleep less than average while those who die younger

sleep more than average. Of course, other factors affect length of life, but sleep is

involved here.


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): Fifth Argument

As a fifth point, let me explain that sleep can be defensive. People often

sleep to escape from their problems: It's a socially acceptable mode of escape

while other forms of escape seem odd or even a little crazy to people: This

idea about sleep being an escape has some empirical support in a study by a

Swedish psychologist Lindstrom. He related the number of hours a personsleeps to tests of psychoneurotic symptoms (projective tests) and found that

people who sleep a lot have more neurotic symptoms. Therapists often realize

that excessive sleeping is a habit that must be broken in getting a patient to

face reality. I guess that many people are only mildly affected by this

psychoneurotic sleep syndrome--but excessive sleeping can become

pronounced during periods of special stress.


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Example of Persuasive Communication(Eagly, 1974): Sixth Argument and Recommendation

As my sixth point I want to comment on how sleep relates to achievement.Many successful people sleep considerably less than 8 hours. Some notableexamples of persons known for their tendency to sleep much less than averageare Charles Percy, Robert McNamara, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. Onelikely reason for the success of these men is the fact that they were able to usethe day effectively and to devote rather little time to sleep. After all, the extratime gained from sleeping less is a tremendous advantage since the averageperson works 8 hours, sleeps 8 hours, and then spends (according to one study)about 4h hours in routine tasks such as commuting, eating, and such. Thisleaves less than 4 hours for important things like reading, entertainment,leisure, working to develop talents and interests, and doing special workconnected with one's job or schooling. It is clear that cutting down sleepwould give a person more time for his own personal development.

To summarizemost people are sleeping their lives away. Myrecommendation to the average person is that he or she make the effort to learnmore about how sleep really works. Then he could benefit considerably if hedeveloped a living and napping pattern that involves only about three hours ofsleep during each 24.


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Message Opposed to Fraternities: Attitudes of

Fraternity Members (Festinger & Maccoby, 1974)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Speaker Irrelevant/Amusing

Visual Content of Film

A

ttitudetowardfra

ternities


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Cognitive Response Model of Persuasion(Brock, Greenwald, Petty, Cacioppo, 1970s)

Pro-arguments/

Con-arguments

PERSUASIONMESSAGE

Major arguments

Factual evidence

COGNITVE

RESPONSESAttitude change

Change in

behavior

PERSUASION

CONTEXT

Source factors

Message factors

Channel factors

Receiver factors


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Counter-Arguments and Attitude Toward Tuition

Increase (Osterhouse & Brock, 1970)

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

None Moderate High

Degree of Distraction

Counter-argum

ents

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Attitude

Attitude

Counter-

arguments

Distraction:

Ps call out which of

4 lights come on.

12/min vs. 24/min.


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The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

Persuasivecommuniction

Personal relevance

Motivated to

process?Need for cognition

Distraction

Ability to process?Message repetition

Nature of Cognitive Processing:(initial attitude, argument quality)

Favorablethoughts

predominate

Neither or

neutralthoughts

predominate

Unfavorablethoughts

predominate

yes

yes

Cognitive Structure Change

Centralpositive

attitude change

Centralnegative

attitude change

New positive

beliefs becomeaccessible

New negative

beliefs becomeaccessible

New attitude is enduring,resistant, and predictive of

behavior

Credible source

Peripheral cuepresent?

Number of arguments

no

Retain original attitude

no

no

Nature of Peripheral Cue

Positive(high credibility)

Negative(low credibility)

yes

Peripheralpositive attitude

change

Peripheralnegative

attitude change

New attitude is temporary,susceptible, and unpredictive of

behavior

Centr

alMode PeripheralMode


16/19

Comprehensive Exam: Strong Argument(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

The National Scholarship Achievement Board recentlyrevealed the results of a five-year study conducted on theeffectiveness of comprehensive exams at Duke University.The results of the study showed that since the

comprehensive exam has been introduced at Duke, thegrade point average of undergraduates has increased by31%. At comparable schools without the exams, gradesincreased by only 8% over the same period. The prospectof a comprehensive exam clearly seems to be effective inchallenging students to work harder and faculty to teachmore effectively. It is likely that the benefits observed atDuke University could also be observed at otheruniversities that adopt the exam policy.


17/19

Comprehensive Exam: Weak Argument(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

The National Scholarship Achievement Board recently

revealed the results of a five-year study conducted on the

effectiveness of comprehensive exams at Duke University.

One major finding was that student anxiety had increasedby 31%. At comparable schools without the exam, anxiety

increased by only 8%. The Board reasoned that anxiety

over the exams, or fear or failure, would motivate students

to study more in their courses while they were taking them.

It is likely that this increase in anxiety observed at Duke

University would also be observed, and be of benefit, at

other universities that adopt the exam policy.


18/19

Postmessage Attitudes Toward 20% Tuition

Increase (Petty, Well, & Brock, 1976)

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

No Low Med High

Distraction

Attitude

Strong arguments

Weak arguments


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Postmessage Attitudes Toward Comprehensive

Exam (Petty & Cacioppo, 1979)

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Low High

Personal Relevance

Attitude

Strong arguments

Weak arguments

5.Perscomm.intro

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