 This is part two of Lecture 7. So by now, you hopefully have a pretty good idea of what attitudes are and how you can measure them. But why should you want to measure them? Well, because they predict behavior, right? That makes a lot of sense. If we know how a person feels about something, we also know how they will behave, right? Well, not always. And researchers have known this for a long time. It's actually been known since 1934, which is one of the very first social psychology experiments which was conducted by Lapierre, was on this link between attitudes and behavior. And he conducted, I think, a very interesting study, also a very time-consuming study, and a very tasty study. Okay, let me tell you about it. In this study, he traveled through the United States with a young Chinese couple, and this maybe sounds, you know, pretty straightforward, but it was actually not a straightforward in that time, because in 1934, you have to go back in time, there was a lot of open discrimination and prejudice against Asians. So Asians were actually prohibited from visiting a lot of, for example, public establishments. And what Lapierre did was he visited restaurants. He went to several restaurants, actually 251 restaurants together with this Chinese couple. And his question was actually, would they serve us? Would they, you know, allow this young Chinese couple to enter this establishment, even though there's this open discrimination against Asians, and they can also refuse entrance. And to his, maybe to his surprise, and also his positive surprise, they were only refused at one establishment. So only one establishment said, no, you're not welcome to join this, to come into this restaurant with this Chinese couple. Interestingly, when he got home, there was a second part of the study. And in the second part of the study, Lapierre called all these restaurants. He didn't mention that they visited, that he visited the restaurant already with his Chinese couple. He just informs whether or not he would be welcome to visit that restaurant with a young Chinese couple. And then what happened was that 92% of these restaurants actually said that they would not allow him to enter. So they said that their attitude was negative. You are not allowed to enter this establishment with Chinese people because Chinese people are not allowed here. We discriminate against Chinese people. Well, he knew that actually they were welcome if he showed up at the doorstep. So what happens here? Why is there such a discrepancy between what restaurant owners apparently do and what their attitude is? So again, we see that there's a difference between an attitude and behavior. And how can we now predict what people actually do when we know this study? So we know that if you do something and you just show up at someone's doorstep, you won't be refused. Even though people beforehand say, yes, I will refuse you. So researchers have studied this for a long time and eventually came up with the following model, the theory of planned behavior. This is developed in 1985, so quite some years after the LaPierre experiment. And this theory is a theory in which we can understand how and when a certain behavior is executed. So here you see how we can actually predict behavior from attitudes. There's three different components here. You see them. First of all, you need to be aware of someone's attitudes towards the behavior. So and what is key here is that you have to measure attitudes towards specific behavior. So if you, for example, want to predict whether someone will order a hamburger at McDonald's, you don't simply ask them. So do you eat meat? That's not enough information. That's not specific enough. You have to specifically know if you would enter McDonald's, would you then order a hamburger? If you know then that attitude, that will predict the behavioral intention and that will in term predict behavior. But there's two more things. So there's two more things that we need to be aware of apart from attitudes. So specific attitude is one. The second is subjective norms. We need to know how the people that are in the close surroundings feel about showing a certain behavior. So only if people feel like their behavior will be endorsed by others around them, then they will show the behavior. If they feel like their behavior will be disapproved, then even though they might feel a certain way, they may not buy it. So for example, if you visit McDonald's and you love hamburgers and you have the intention to buy a hamburger, but you're visiting a restaurant with your vegan colleague and you know that this person feels really strongly about eating meat and meat consumption, you feel that there's this subjective norm not to order a hamburger at that moment. So you might still not order a hamburger even though your attitude is positive, okay? So the subjective norms around you should be in line with your own personal attitudes. And then finally, you should feel like you have control over the outcome. You have to perceive that you can easily show this behavior. So you have to feel like you are in charge. So for example, at the McDonald's restaurant, if you're there with your colleague and your boss is also there, maybe you feel like your boss should order your meal. I don't know which type of relationship you have with your boss, but maybe you feel like it would be maybe a bit rude to order your meal yourself. So you feel like I don't have control over my outcomes. I'll just see what happens. So these three components are all very important and equally important in predicting someone's behavioral intention and that in itself predicts our behavior. So here you see that it's complicated, right? So just knowing someone's attitudes is not enough to predict someone's behavior. So attitudes are actually maybe not so informative when it comes to understanding human behavior, right? And it's also important to know that attitudes, and you know this by now, they can change. They are not stable. People change their minds all the time. Of course, this is something we already talked a lot about in the previous lecture on cognitive business. We may have a certain attitudes, but then we show behavior that is in contrast with that attitude. So we start changing the attitude as a way of reducing dissonance. So reducing dissonance is one way in which our attitudes can change. But our attitudes can also change through persuasive communication. And persuasive communication basically means that you hear someone else posing a certain message about a particular side of an issue trying to change your mind. So for example, you are a meat eater, you love eating meat, and then you hear someone, maybe your vegan colleague giving you a lot of information about why you shouldn't eat meat. Using persuasive communication. Communication that is intended to persuade you to change your mind. And this is something that not only researchers but of course also marketeers are very interested in. And people have been studying attitude change and persuasive communication for a long time. And this started approximately in the 1950s at Yale University, where a group of researchers that actually beforehand they worked for the United States during the Second World War to increase the morale of the United States soldiers during this war to make sure that they still felt motivated to continue fighting in this war. So these researchers already knew a lot about attitude change and how you can convince people to, for example, keep fighting the good fight. So these group of researchers, they made an approach about persuasive communication and because they are from Yale, this approach is called the Yale attitude change approach. And this is a study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes. And the approach is actually very straightforward. It is summarized in this one sentence, who said what to whom. And that means that there's three different components important when you use persuasive communication. First of all, who. That means characteristic of the source. Who is saying the message? Who is trying to convince you? So the sender. The aspects, the characteristics of the sender of the source are important. Secondly, the message itself, of course, the characteristics of the message matter in the extent to which it can be used for effective persuasion. And then finally, whom. And that means the receiver characteristics. It really matters a lot who you are talking to. And one person is more easily persuaded than another person. So now I'm going to talk about these three different components one by one and give some explanations of when they are more or less successful. So let's first look at the source. So when is a source successful? When can someone persuade you? If you think about it, if someone's trying to change your mind, what do you really, when is a person successful? Well, if they're an expert, right? And yes, that matters. So if you feel like a source is credible because this person has expertise, for example, I'm your social psychology teacher, I hope you experience me as being a credible source when it comes to social psychological knowledge, because I did the studies, I did the work, I've been studying it my whole life basically. So I'm a credible source when it comes to social psychology. And for a credible source, you also have this presumption that the information that you get from the source is reliable. So it's not fake news, it's real actual good, well-informed news. So credibility is one thing. The second thing that matters when it comes to characteristics of the source is attractiveness. If we like to look at a certain person, if we feel like this person is attractive, then we are also more likely to be convinced by this person, which is why all these beautiful people show up in commercials because, yeah, you know, marketees know this as well. In advertising, it's really a well-known fact that if you use beauty, your products sell better. Even though it's of course, you know, that's not a really good source, it's not, it doesn't matter whether someone is attractive while they're drinking coffee, yes or no, it doesn't matter. But still we know that we're more easily convinced if the source is attractive. Okay, so more about that in just a little bit. Then we move to the message. Characteristics of the message. What matters when it comes to hearing a certain message? First of all, of course, quality. If we hear arguments, we, if these arguments are of high quality, we're more likely to be convinced. Makes a lot of sense, right? But other things that really matters is whether this, this message elicits certain emotions. So if someone's trying to convince you and maybe saying all these numbers, like the many, how many cows a day are being killed for meat consumption and they just list all the numbers, then you're probably not, you know, gonna be affected so much. A message is more convincing when it's vivid, when really, we really feel it, you know, and if the message really gets across and elicits emotions in us. So for example, fear. Fear is also used, for example, on packages of cigarettes. The idea is if you buy the product and you see these nasty pictures, fear is elicited. You don't want to end up being, you know, in the hospital or having teeth like that look like this or having erectile dysfunction or, you know, damaging your kids' health. So fear is elicited and that can actually help to come to convey someone to change their minds. What is important to note though, with fear, fear eliciting messages, they work, but you have to also offer a solution. So for example, with the packages of cigarettes, they don't only have like these nasty pictures, these fear eliciting pictures, but they also have a number that you can dial if you want to get help quitting with smoking. So that seems to be very important as well. So offering a solution how you can change your behavior. So a second way of eliciting emotions is with an identifiable victim. So for example, if you want to convince people to donate money for a good cause, for example Parkinson's disease, what was really helpful for donations for Parkinson's disease was when a very famous actor, Michael J. Fox, was actually diagnosed with the disease because this was a very identifiable victim. A lot of people knew him. He was on television a lot and people felt like, wow, if he can get it, then I could also easily, you know, be affected by this disease. An identifiable victim works actually way better than just simply adding abstract numbers of how many people are affected yearly by Parkinson's disease. So here you see examples of how if a message elicits emotions, it's more successful. And finally, characteristics of the receiver. We are not all alike and we differ at how good we are in paying attention, for example. And one aspect that is something we discussed previously in lecture three is that our mood really matters. So in lecture three, we talked about that there's different ways of thinking, right? We have controlled thinking and we have automatic thinking. And if we are in a bad mood and we are a bit grumpy, then we're more likely to rely on controlled thinking. We process a certain message very thoroughly. We pay a lot of attention and we really want to make a good decision. Well, if we are in a good mood, we use automatic thinking and we just are more easily persuaded by, you know, cues that don't really matter at all. A second part of the receiver that matters is personality. Some people have a very high desire to think thoroughly. So these are people that are high in need for cognition. That means that people have a preference of processing information very deeply. So if you have a high need for cognition, you love like complicated puzzles and really solving things that are complex and studying and reading. And if you have a low need for cognition, you don't really like that. So you don't like it. It doesn't mean that there's a difference in intelligence. It's important to keep in mind. It's just a difference in preference. So if you like reading books, if you like to study, yes or no. And people that do like it, so that have a high need for cognition, they need more, you know, good information and high-quality persuasion in order to change their minds. So here we already see that it really matters a lot the way in which we are thinking. And this is, again, something we talked about in lecture three, but it's also really important here. And in order to know what type of persuasion we should use, we need to estimate how thoroughly the information will be processed by the receiver. So this is also captured in the following model, the elaboration likelihood model. And according to this model, it's really a lot like the different ways of thinking that we described in lecture three. So we have either the central roots of processing information or the peripheral roots of processing information. And if we use the central roots, then we really thoroughly process information. If we use the peripheral roots, we are, you know, more using our gut feelings. So the central root is really comparable to control thinking. And the peripheral root is really comparable to automatic thinking. So keep that in mind. So I'll give you some examples. So when will we be using the central roots of persuasion? We do this under the following conditions. First of all, we need to feel like we know enough about this. So we should have sufficient knowledge to make a judgment. It should also be something that is really relevant for us. We should really care about it. And we also should feel personally responsible to make a good decision. So in summary, we should both have the motivation and the ability to make a good decision and change our minds. This happens rarely. So we are not often, you know, very motivated and very able to change our minds. So this central root of persuasion is not used a lot. What we more often use is the peripheral roots. And with a peripheral root, we use this when, for example, a certain message is really complicated or incomplete. We feel like we don't have enough about this to really make, you know, a thorough decision. If we are just don't really care, it's personally irrelevant. Or if we are distracted or really tired, then we also don't use the central root. We rely on the peripheral roots. So if we either lack the motivation and or the ability, then we rely on the peripheral roots. And as we saw in lecture three, we do this a lot. So this automatic thinking, relying on peripheral roots is something that human beings actually do quite often. And, you know, we will see how that also affects us when we are making decisions and changing our attitudes. So I will illustrate this difference of which route you take. It can really make a huge difference in whether or not you will be persuaded. And that's very nicely, I think, illustrated in the following study. In this study, participants listen to a speech in which, and these participants were all students, they listened to a speech arguing that all senior college, senior students, should be required to pass a comprehensive exam before they can graduate. So they hear the speech and they can, afterwards, they can vote whether or not they think this new law is a good idea. So the law is, do you think it's a good idea for all master students to complete a very comprehensive exam before they can graduate? Is that a good idea? Yes or no? And there are several conditions. So for one group of the participants, they were instructed and told that if this law would be approved, it would become effective immediately, making it very personally relevant for these students. These were all students. So if they vote yes and this law is actually executed, it would mean that they personally have to make this comprehensive exam as well. In the second group, the participants were told, so maybe this law will be applied, but only in 10 years. So it's not relevant for this group of students. So that's a crucial difference. Then there were more differences. The quality of the arguments differed. So some arguments were of high quality and other arguments were of low quality. And then finally, the characteristics of the source differed. So for some students, some group of students, they listened to a very credible source. This was a really eminent professor at the university that really displayed a lot of status and also a lot of knowledge on this certain topic. And for the other group of students, there was a low prestige of the speaker. This was actually a high school student giving them the information, so low credibility. So complicated design, right? Okay, let's look at the results. And then you will see, I think, whether or not something is personally relevant and what a huge difference this makes. So here you see the graphs. Let's first look at the graph for the high personal relevance. Are the students convinced yes or no? So the red line is the line for strong arguments. So these students for which it was personally relevant, so the law would become effective immediately, they were more convinced by strong arguments. If it was weak arguments, they were not convinced. And you also see that there's a difference in source, low expertise source or high expertise source. That didn't really matter because this is peripheral Q. It doesn't, in the end, it doesn't really matter if it's an eminent professor saying this or a high school student. You should think it's a good, you know, good argumentation. And here you see very clearly, if you're paying attention, you're using the central route to processing information, you are convinced by good argumentation. The source peripheral Qs don't really matter that much. Then we turn to the low personal relevance. So these are the students that were told this law might become effective in 10 years. Immediately you see a huge difference there. They stopped really paying attention a lot. So you see that there's still a difference between strong arguments and weak arguments, meaning that the red line is still higher than the blue line. But the difference is way less pronounced than the first graph. And also, all of a sudden, the high expertise source is way more convincing for them than the low expertise source. Because this source, the credibility of the source, is a peripheral Q. If you see a professor arguing something, you just say, oh, probably a good idea. If it's a high school student, you're like, okay, I'm not convinced. So here you really nicely see what a big difference it makes to know your audience, know who you are trying to convince. So if you want to change someone's mind, start by estimating which routes to persuasion they will use. Will they be using the central routes or the peripheral routes? So in the last part of the lecture, we'll be talking more about this. And we'll see the different influencing strategies that are used on us to change our minds by smart, marked tears. That's it for now.