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Psychology of Communication: persuasion
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Psychology of Communication: persuasion
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By definition, intra-personal factors such as the receiver's attitude to the subject matter and the extent of her personal involvement may well be largely unknown to the communicator. Sherif and Hovland attempted to summarize the effect of these two factors by saying that the person's position on an attitude scale provides her with an anchor from which she evaluates other positions on the attitude scale and that evaluation will be the firmer and more difficult to shift the greater the degree of ego-involvement. They concluded that if the positions of the communicator and of the receiver are so far apart that the communicator's position falls within the receiver's latitude of rejection, then the only way that the communicator can have an effect is by adopting a step-by-step approach, starting from messages which fall within the receiver's latitude of acceptance and gradually working outward from there.
Age is an important variable. People reach maximum persuasability around the age of nine. Hence the Hitler Youth, East Germany's Young Pioneers and, for that matter, the Cubs and Brownies.
Sex appears to be of some limited significance, women apparently being more easily persuadable than men. However, this research was conducted a long time ago when women saw themselves and their rôle differently, so this may well have changed.
Personality variables such as self-esteem, anxiety and depression have an influence on persuadability. Janis's research suggests that people with low self-esteem are likely to be relatively easily persuaded - which may partly explain the success of Hitler's propaganda and the success of right-wing parties today in another era of mass unemployment. See especially the section on the authoritarian personality. Group norms
The norms of a group apparently serve to protect members from outside influence. The more important group members consider their membership of the group to be, the less likely they are to be persuaded by messages which undermine the group norms.
The pattern of the receiver's beliefs will in part determine whether the message is given serious attention in the first place. (For further information, see the sections on Selective attention, Consistency theory and Attitudes.)
The persuasive impact of a message can be increased if it is anchored in the system of beliefs and values of the receiver.
This seems to be evident in the close parallels between Nazi symbolism and ceremony on the one hand and Christian rituals on the other. The swastika replaced the cross on Christmas trees and in public squares and on fountains at Christmas time just as the Christian cross had been before. Hitler was also careful to ensure that his rhetoric echoed the values of the 'old guard'. In a not dissimilar way, Mrs Thatcher, whose programme was entirely revolutionary in its impact, was careful to refer back to Churchill, the British Empire, Victorian values and family values. Note also how all politicians use the purr words of 'democracy', 'freedom' 'freedom of choice', 'free speech', 'empowerment' and so on.
In broader terms, you might wish to consider individuals' schemata (see under Perception of other people), those cognitive frameworks which enable people to organize, interpret and recall social information. An intriguing experiment was conducted by Cacciopo, Petty and Sidera (1982, quoted in Baron and Byrne (1984)), who had receivers for a persuasive message divided into groups of people either with a religious self-schema or a legalistic self-schema. They were asked to listen to arguments, supposedly delivered by a congressional representative, relating to either a ban on government assistance for abortions or the reinstatement of capital punishment. Half of the subjects with a religious self-schema heard a message based on religious arguments (e.g. 'There is a sacramental quality to the nature of life that demands that we show the utmost reverence for it') and half heard legalistic arguments (e.g. 'The right to life is one that is constitutionally safeguarded'). Similarly, those
with a legalistic self-schema were divided into two groups and presented with religious or legalistic arguments. The results are shown in the graph on the right.
Of course, it would not be easy for a communicator outside the laboratory to separate receivers into groups according to their self-schemata. However, that is what advertisers, spin-doctors and so on are attempting to do when they find out the geographical area a person lives in, her age, sex, hobbies, income and so on.
Katz and Lazarsfeld's Two-Step Flow Model makes it clear that, whether we receive media messages in isolation or not, their effect will be mediated by the social groups we belong to. The pattern of our social relationships will determine how we ultimately interpret the messages we have received.
If the Communicator has some way of influencing those groups, notably the opinion leaders within the, then she will increase her chances of success. Education programmes based on the media, such as those aimed at farmers in third world countries, are often coupled with group meetings. In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, propaganda messages were often broadcast into factories or public squares where people would gather together to listen to them.
A public commitment before a group to a particular belief or point of view is also more likely to be durable than a private commitment - see for example Alcoholics Anonymous or various religious groups.
Janis and King demonstrated that people who participate actively in disseminating a message are more likely to be persuaded by it. Resistance
The notion of cognitive responses suggests that it should be possible to inoculate people against a message. For example, when you give people your arguments, you should also give the counterarguments to your position and at the same time provide refutations of those counterarguments. You will thus be providing your audience with cognitive responses which can be generated when they hear those counterarguments. It doesn't matter much whether they remember your refutations or not. The important thing is that they should remember their reactions, namely 'Oh, yes, I remember that that argument's rubbish.'
Psychologist William McGuire tested this idea further. He selected a number of generally accepted truths such as 'It's a good idea to brush your teeth after every meal if possible' - the sort of thing which few people would disagree with. He demonstrates that attacking such a belief with strong arguments did actually weaken it - for example quoting evidence form the American Dental Association that it was misguided. Having confirmed that such beliefs could be weakened by strong attacks, he went on to see if people could be inoculated. He demonstrated that people who were first subjected to a mild form of attack and then read or wrote an essay refuting it were later able to resist the strong attacks better. (in Atkinson et al., (1990)).
Even forewarning an audience that they are about to receive a message they will disagree with will tend to 'protect' them against it.
Inoculation has been used in a school programme in the USA to help pupils resist peer pressure to smoke. High-school students conducted group sessions in which they taught younger pupils how to construct counter-arguments. For example, if they were called 'chicken' for refusing a cigarette, they were taught to answer, 'I'd be a real chicken if I smoked just to impress you.' They were taught to respond to ads suggesting that women smokers were liberated with 'She's not really liberated if she's hooked on tobacco.' It seems simple, but it worked. These schoolchildren proved to be half as likely as their peers to smoke.
Finally it may be worth mentioning the boomerang effect, where, despite the best intentions of the communicator the message is rejected. I have chosen to list it under 'receiver' since it is clearly the receiver who rejects the message, though the boomerang effect is not solely due to characteristics of the receiver herself. Merton (1949) suggested the following as possible causes of the effect:
Hovland: introduction
Hovland: the Communicator
Hovland: the Message
Hovland: the Channel
Consistency theory
Attitudes
Cognitive dissonance
The hypodermic needle model
Empiricist tradition
Cultural effects
Recent developments
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