Attitudes and Persuasion
Lecture 1 A Psychological Approach to Persuasion
Tilburg education Profile→Intellectual independence, Critical mindset, Social responsibility, Scientific responsibility
1 Replication crisis and some foundations of psychology
Replication crisis
• Previous meta-analysis of 277 (for mortality salience effect) experiments showed effect was reliable and substantial
• But it could not be replicated (even things supported by hundreds of experiments are not reliable)
Key point: the implications of the replication crisis might be far-reaching. Even things that seem supported by hundreds of
experiments might be unreliable.
Article Many Labs 4: Failure to replicate mortality salience effect with and without original author involvement. Reasons:
• Decades of poor research methods and statistics
• Low bar for good explanations
• Flexible theories (can explain why the effect goes up but also why goes down, explain many things)
• Explanation just redescribes phenomenon (why is crime so low in a specific country, not really an explanation)
• Explanation with “general” principle that only applies to specific case (fundamental attribution error)
• One-word explanations
• Insufficient critical mindset
Knowledge is hard to acquire
If few studies in social psychology replicate, maybe we should just stop with the scientific enterprise? not in psychology
Or maybe we should just forget everything we think we know, start with an empty piece of paper, and just discuss the
newest studies. Let’s not be hasty. Let’s see if there are any foundations for studying human psychology and decision
making. Also: Maybe it is not surprising that many studies do not replicate. Maybe nature is not an open book that is easy
to read. Observation is limited.
Some foundations of psychology
Bounded rationality + Humans have goals + Evolution by natural selection
These three concepts/explanations apply to human decision makers. These are three cornerstones for critical analysis of
any psychological findings or theory. Be skeptical of any theory that involves/assumes unbounded rationality, humans
without agency, and/or psychological mechanisms that are unlikely to evolve by natural selection.
Bounded rationality (1)
• Thinking is not a mystery anymore
• Mind/brain is an information processor (physical symbol system hypothesis) mind kind of a computer
• Because of limits on computing speed, intelligent systems must use approximate methods to handle most tasks. Their
rationality is bounded. Mind has limits in how much and how fast it processes information, cannot take in account all kinds
of information and compute it in unlimited ways
• Scissors metaphor→Human rational behavior is like a scissors whose two blades are the structure of task environments
and the computational capabilities (psychological capacities) of the actor. If they fit with each other they can cut and work
well, capacities need to fit the structure you are in, fit between environment and person
Herbert Simon (1916-2001) Invariants of human behavior.
“The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis states that a system will be capable of intelligent behavior if and only if it is a
physical symbol system. A physical symbol system is a system capable of inputting, outputting, storing, and modifying
symbol structures, and of carrying out some of these actions in response to the symbols themselves. "Symbols" are any
kinds of patterns on which these operations can be performed, where some of the patterns denote actions (that is, serve
as commands or instructions). We are all familiar with the physical symbol systems called computers.”
Humans have goals (2)
• “Pursuit of ends and choice are the marks of Mind’s presence” (William James, Principles of Psychology, p. ix)
Kenrick et al. (2010). Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations.
Humans have agency
1. Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs→immediate physiological needs, safety, love (affection, belongingness), esteem
(respect), self actualization
2. Updated hierarchy→immediate physiological needs, self-protection, affiliation, status/esteem, mate acquisition, mate
retention, parenting
1
,Evolution by natural selection (3)
• “Evolution by natural selection is the only known causal process capable of producing complex physiological and
psychological mechanisms” (Buss, 1995) How do we get the fit between agent and environment? natural selection
Charles Darwin + Herbert Simon’s scissors
No: • Natural selection can explain everything (so it’s not very scientific→unfalsifiable)
• Psychology is independent from biology
• Don’t think about it.
Yes: • Natural selection does NOT explain everything (many things are not psychological mechanisms)
• Psychology must be consistent with natural selection (theories need to align with it, organs in our brain evolved)
• Consider if theory/explanation is consistent with natural selection
2 Psychological approach to persuasion
Advertising basics
• Advertising is any paid communication by an identified sponsor aimed to inform/persuade the target audience about
organization, product, service, or idea.
• Advertising is ancient
• Advertising goals change over product life cycle (new products)
• Other forms of marketing and promotion are used, not only advertising (direct marketing, sponsorship)
• Different views on the functions of advertising (informing consumers, free services/media, funding public broadcasters,
creating jobs, etc.)
• Persuasion can be useful (make people recycle trash)
History: merchants/traders → newspapers → radio → tv → internet
Product life cycle = early on, need to create demand, awareness e.g., listerine, later on need to differentiate from
competitors, extend product range
Psychological approach to advertising
Identify effects of advertising at the individual level (what does the person feel)
• Relate specific advertising stimuli to specific and individual consumer responses
• Articulate the intrapersonal, interpersonal, or group-level psychological processes that are responsible for the relation
between advertising stimuli and consumer responses.
Psychological approach: causal mechanism of stimulus → response, deeper explanation.
Psychological approach includes attention, memory, emotions, attitudes, intentions and actual buying behavior.
(Group-level psychological processes? What are those? How would they exist? How would they evolve?)
Models of advertising
• Sales-response models → • Concave or S-shaped
How much you spend on advertising and how much you sell.
Sales response models only measure aggregate input-output with no mechanism. (not psychological approach)
Concave model—diminishing returns to additional spending; S-shaped low initial impact then saturation point (first you
spend more on advertising, then you start selling more, but still doesn’t tell you what happens in people’s minds).
Models of advertising
• Hierarchy-of-effects models
• AIDA: attention → interest → desire → action
Advertising grabs people’s attention, it awakes their interest and will want the product, once they want it you have to do
something to make them buy it. Limitation, doesn’t happen for everyone the same, many variations for different people:
• Variants: AIDCA, AIETA, A-K-L-P-C-P • DAGMAR
• Evaluation of the consumer plays key role in each model (evaluation of the product/message makes him buy it or want
it, there is always evaluation)
Hierarchy of effects models: pro: adds intermediate steps between message and consumer response
Cons: assume one order and high consumer involvement; didn’t predict very well
Steps: cognitive/attention → affective/attitude → behavior = “Think→Feel → Do”
2
,DAGMAR = defining advertising goals for measured advertising results
All these models assume sequence, passive consumer, underlying processes/interactions not specified.
Foote, Cone, and Belding grid
An example of a sequential model that acknowledges differences in involvement (differences between consumer
products, or perhaps differences between people who buy different products).
Some products eg. expensive things, you don’t have enough money to rebuy it if it breaks→a lot of thinking and sleep on
it, develop a feeling, then they actually buy it
Snacks/candies→first buy then eat it and develop a feeling then think if you’ll buy it again
=when people buy different products, they feel different things
Hierarchy-of-effects models
• “Grand theories”: describe everything, for everyone, everywhere
• Consumer behavior too complex for single model
• How to get from one stage to the next? How do we go from interest to desire
• Consumers seen as passive recipients of information
Cognitive response approach (1970s)
• Consumer is active processor of information
• Attitude change is explained by how person responds to message
• Supportive or counter-arguments, credibility of source, etc.
• Basis of dual process theories: add spectrum of involvement
Anthony Greenwald
Cognitive response: active consumer who uses elaboration to “debate” with the message.
Elaborative thinking linked to persuasion. Still seems to assume higher involvement, which is why dual process theories
are important.
Psychological approach to persuasion
• Persuasion happens not only in advertising, • Persuasion happens but is not well understood
• Example 1: nudges and vaccination • Example 2: campaign ads and voting
• Conclusion: We need better psychological science of persuasion!
Studies:
1. During flu time, pick up vaccination from the pharmacy, instead of saying go pick it up, sent a message to make them
pick them up more→think about the risk of getting the flu, avoid getting sick→more people picked it up
Key point: yes, nudges help, but effects are small. (eg.20% of people picked it up instead of 13%)
2. Asked scientists who wrote these messages to predict which one was more effective
Key point: Scientists were not good at predicting which nudges worked. Lay people were better, but still not great. It’s still
an intuition, they could not explain why that specific message worked better
3. Political context, election campaigns, which advertisement would work best→some videos not really about politics and
some videos advertising the politician→sometimes it works, sometimes not but we don’t know why
Key sentence in abstract: “...common theories about what makes advertising persuasive have limited and
context-dependent power to predict persuasiveness.”
4. Hundreds of studies asking how much they liked a specific candidate
Key point: the unifying theme of the results is inconsistency. 1 out of 39 times only was statistically significant/consistent
eg. focusing on the issues worked in 2018 but not in 2019, focusing on emotion the opposite
3
, Key point: the ads work but only sometimes. General conclusion: Persuasion happens but it is not well understood.
The ABC model of attitudes
What are attitudes? (from Y1 Social Psych.)
• Attitude is an evaluation of an attitude object (like or not like bananas)
• Attitude has 3 components: affective, behavioral, cognitive components.
• Attitudes are influenced by • Genetics (cf. personality traits) • Social learning (e.g., socialization) • Derive from own
behavior (self-perception theory) • Experiences (e.g., classical & operant conditioning) • Mere exposure
Evaluation based on information
Sources of information (genetics, social learning, self- perception, mere exposure, conditioning, etc.) →
Components (Affect, Behavior, Cognition) →Attitude (evaluation)
The steps from left to right (or right to left) are not obvious. How does it work? Let’s try to make sense of this by asking
two simple questions: What is an attitude? And, How do people form attitudes?
What is an attitude?
• Attitudes are (1) evaluative responses, (2) directed toward some attitude object, (3) based on three classes of
information (“ABC”).
• No consensus on more specific definition because different theories of what attitudes are
• Attitudes are (stable) predisposition: Psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favor or disfavor. (see also file-drawer models)
• Attitudes are (context-dependent) evaluative responses: The categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative
dimension. (see also attitudes-as-constructions models) you make this up as you go
Attitudes are predispositions (1)
• Contra responses: If attitudes are defined as response (to an attitude object), how can attitudes explain behavior? If it’s
a response attitude is already behavior and can’t be used to explain behavior
• People often explain human behavior by reference to stable underlying dispositions.
• Personality psychology: traits explain behavior • Social psychology: attitudes explain behavior Differences:
Traits→Not necessarily evaluative, Response tendency in a situation, Relatively stable
Attitudes→Evaluative, Response tendency toward an object, Can change rapidly based on new information
We can work with both, they align
Attitudes are evaluative responses (2)
• Contra predispositions: Attitudes can change quickly (and for this reason they don’t align with traits).
Can we solve this debate? How could predispositions and evaluations explain/influence behavior?
Input (sensations, perceptions) ⇒ Mechanism (dispositions) ⇒ Output (evaluation) ⇒Behavior
Mechanisms that process the input and produce an output that produces a certain behavior→there need something
happening to saying i like burgers and buying a burger, there are some mechanisms of evaluation underneath
Key point: Defining attitudes as evaluative responses and using attitudes to explain behavior implies that the attitude
(evaluative response) must be some kind of a psychological response (not overt behavior) that influences some
downstream behavior. If the attitude (evaluative response) is some overt behavior, then it is no longer useful in explaining
behavior. Also, in this minimal model, it is easy to explain that attitudes (evaluations) can change quickly: the dispositions
remain the same, but the input changes. →attitudes and evaluations can change
Different models of the mechanisms
File-drawer model
• Attitude is a (learnt) structure in long-term memory that is activated when perceiving attitude object
• Attitudes are files with evaluative information in mental database (i know i like bananas so i choose banana milkshake)
• Implies stability
Attitudes-as-constructions model
• Attitudes depend on what people think about at a given moment
• Evaluation is made online, based on salient or accessible information at the time we’re making the decision/choosing
In both models, attitudes must be formed in some way. Also: it almost never makes sense to ignore what you already
know, or to ignore your current situation or circumstances. So probably people do both.
How do people form attitudes?
Attitude (evaluation) →Affect + Behavior + Cognition (ABC model)
On the previous slides, the starting point was the question: “What is an attitude?”
4
Lecture 1 A Psychological Approach to Persuasion
Tilburg education Profile→Intellectual independence, Critical mindset, Social responsibility, Scientific responsibility
1 Replication crisis and some foundations of psychology
Replication crisis
• Previous meta-analysis of 277 (for mortality salience effect) experiments showed effect was reliable and substantial
• But it could not be replicated (even things supported by hundreds of experiments are not reliable)
Key point: the implications of the replication crisis might be far-reaching. Even things that seem supported by hundreds of
experiments might be unreliable.
Article Many Labs 4: Failure to replicate mortality salience effect with and without original author involvement. Reasons:
• Decades of poor research methods and statistics
• Low bar for good explanations
• Flexible theories (can explain why the effect goes up but also why goes down, explain many things)
• Explanation just redescribes phenomenon (why is crime so low in a specific country, not really an explanation)
• Explanation with “general” principle that only applies to specific case (fundamental attribution error)
• One-word explanations
• Insufficient critical mindset
Knowledge is hard to acquire
If few studies in social psychology replicate, maybe we should just stop with the scientific enterprise? not in psychology
Or maybe we should just forget everything we think we know, start with an empty piece of paper, and just discuss the
newest studies. Let’s not be hasty. Let’s see if there are any foundations for studying human psychology and decision
making. Also: Maybe it is not surprising that many studies do not replicate. Maybe nature is not an open book that is easy
to read. Observation is limited.
Some foundations of psychology
Bounded rationality + Humans have goals + Evolution by natural selection
These three concepts/explanations apply to human decision makers. These are three cornerstones for critical analysis of
any psychological findings or theory. Be skeptical of any theory that involves/assumes unbounded rationality, humans
without agency, and/or psychological mechanisms that are unlikely to evolve by natural selection.
Bounded rationality (1)
• Thinking is not a mystery anymore
• Mind/brain is an information processor (physical symbol system hypothesis) mind kind of a computer
• Because of limits on computing speed, intelligent systems must use approximate methods to handle most tasks. Their
rationality is bounded. Mind has limits in how much and how fast it processes information, cannot take in account all kinds
of information and compute it in unlimited ways
• Scissors metaphor→Human rational behavior is like a scissors whose two blades are the structure of task environments
and the computational capabilities (psychological capacities) of the actor. If they fit with each other they can cut and work
well, capacities need to fit the structure you are in, fit between environment and person
Herbert Simon (1916-2001) Invariants of human behavior.
“The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis states that a system will be capable of intelligent behavior if and only if it is a
physical symbol system. A physical symbol system is a system capable of inputting, outputting, storing, and modifying
symbol structures, and of carrying out some of these actions in response to the symbols themselves. "Symbols" are any
kinds of patterns on which these operations can be performed, where some of the patterns denote actions (that is, serve
as commands or instructions). We are all familiar with the physical symbol systems called computers.”
Humans have goals (2)
• “Pursuit of ends and choice are the marks of Mind’s presence” (William James, Principles of Psychology, p. ix)
Kenrick et al. (2010). Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations.
Humans have agency
1. Maslow’s classic hierarchy of needs→immediate physiological needs, safety, love (affection, belongingness), esteem
(respect), self actualization
2. Updated hierarchy→immediate physiological needs, self-protection, affiliation, status/esteem, mate acquisition, mate
retention, parenting
1
,Evolution by natural selection (3)
• “Evolution by natural selection is the only known causal process capable of producing complex physiological and
psychological mechanisms” (Buss, 1995) How do we get the fit between agent and environment? natural selection
Charles Darwin + Herbert Simon’s scissors
No: • Natural selection can explain everything (so it’s not very scientific→unfalsifiable)
• Psychology is independent from biology
• Don’t think about it.
Yes: • Natural selection does NOT explain everything (many things are not psychological mechanisms)
• Psychology must be consistent with natural selection (theories need to align with it, organs in our brain evolved)
• Consider if theory/explanation is consistent with natural selection
2 Psychological approach to persuasion
Advertising basics
• Advertising is any paid communication by an identified sponsor aimed to inform/persuade the target audience about
organization, product, service, or idea.
• Advertising is ancient
• Advertising goals change over product life cycle (new products)
• Other forms of marketing and promotion are used, not only advertising (direct marketing, sponsorship)
• Different views on the functions of advertising (informing consumers, free services/media, funding public broadcasters,
creating jobs, etc.)
• Persuasion can be useful (make people recycle trash)
History: merchants/traders → newspapers → radio → tv → internet
Product life cycle = early on, need to create demand, awareness e.g., listerine, later on need to differentiate from
competitors, extend product range
Psychological approach to advertising
Identify effects of advertising at the individual level (what does the person feel)
• Relate specific advertising stimuli to specific and individual consumer responses
• Articulate the intrapersonal, interpersonal, or group-level psychological processes that are responsible for the relation
between advertising stimuli and consumer responses.
Psychological approach: causal mechanism of stimulus → response, deeper explanation.
Psychological approach includes attention, memory, emotions, attitudes, intentions and actual buying behavior.
(Group-level psychological processes? What are those? How would they exist? How would they evolve?)
Models of advertising
• Sales-response models → • Concave or S-shaped
How much you spend on advertising and how much you sell.
Sales response models only measure aggregate input-output with no mechanism. (not psychological approach)
Concave model—diminishing returns to additional spending; S-shaped low initial impact then saturation point (first you
spend more on advertising, then you start selling more, but still doesn’t tell you what happens in people’s minds).
Models of advertising
• Hierarchy-of-effects models
• AIDA: attention → interest → desire → action
Advertising grabs people’s attention, it awakes their interest and will want the product, once they want it you have to do
something to make them buy it. Limitation, doesn’t happen for everyone the same, many variations for different people:
• Variants: AIDCA, AIETA, A-K-L-P-C-P • DAGMAR
• Evaluation of the consumer plays key role in each model (evaluation of the product/message makes him buy it or want
it, there is always evaluation)
Hierarchy of effects models: pro: adds intermediate steps between message and consumer response
Cons: assume one order and high consumer involvement; didn’t predict very well
Steps: cognitive/attention → affective/attitude → behavior = “Think→Feel → Do”
2
,DAGMAR = defining advertising goals for measured advertising results
All these models assume sequence, passive consumer, underlying processes/interactions not specified.
Foote, Cone, and Belding grid
An example of a sequential model that acknowledges differences in involvement (differences between consumer
products, or perhaps differences between people who buy different products).
Some products eg. expensive things, you don’t have enough money to rebuy it if it breaks→a lot of thinking and sleep on
it, develop a feeling, then they actually buy it
Snacks/candies→first buy then eat it and develop a feeling then think if you’ll buy it again
=when people buy different products, they feel different things
Hierarchy-of-effects models
• “Grand theories”: describe everything, for everyone, everywhere
• Consumer behavior too complex for single model
• How to get from one stage to the next? How do we go from interest to desire
• Consumers seen as passive recipients of information
Cognitive response approach (1970s)
• Consumer is active processor of information
• Attitude change is explained by how person responds to message
• Supportive or counter-arguments, credibility of source, etc.
• Basis of dual process theories: add spectrum of involvement
Anthony Greenwald
Cognitive response: active consumer who uses elaboration to “debate” with the message.
Elaborative thinking linked to persuasion. Still seems to assume higher involvement, which is why dual process theories
are important.
Psychological approach to persuasion
• Persuasion happens not only in advertising, • Persuasion happens but is not well understood
• Example 1: nudges and vaccination • Example 2: campaign ads and voting
• Conclusion: We need better psychological science of persuasion!
Studies:
1. During flu time, pick up vaccination from the pharmacy, instead of saying go pick it up, sent a message to make them
pick them up more→think about the risk of getting the flu, avoid getting sick→more people picked it up
Key point: yes, nudges help, but effects are small. (eg.20% of people picked it up instead of 13%)
2. Asked scientists who wrote these messages to predict which one was more effective
Key point: Scientists were not good at predicting which nudges worked. Lay people were better, but still not great. It’s still
an intuition, they could not explain why that specific message worked better
3. Political context, election campaigns, which advertisement would work best→some videos not really about politics and
some videos advertising the politician→sometimes it works, sometimes not but we don’t know why
Key sentence in abstract: “...common theories about what makes advertising persuasive have limited and
context-dependent power to predict persuasiveness.”
4. Hundreds of studies asking how much they liked a specific candidate
Key point: the unifying theme of the results is inconsistency. 1 out of 39 times only was statistically significant/consistent
eg. focusing on the issues worked in 2018 but not in 2019, focusing on emotion the opposite
3
, Key point: the ads work but only sometimes. General conclusion: Persuasion happens but it is not well understood.
The ABC model of attitudes
What are attitudes? (from Y1 Social Psych.)
• Attitude is an evaluation of an attitude object (like or not like bananas)
• Attitude has 3 components: affective, behavioral, cognitive components.
• Attitudes are influenced by • Genetics (cf. personality traits) • Social learning (e.g., socialization) • Derive from own
behavior (self-perception theory) • Experiences (e.g., classical & operant conditioning) • Mere exposure
Evaluation based on information
Sources of information (genetics, social learning, self- perception, mere exposure, conditioning, etc.) →
Components (Affect, Behavior, Cognition) →Attitude (evaluation)
The steps from left to right (or right to left) are not obvious. How does it work? Let’s try to make sense of this by asking
two simple questions: What is an attitude? And, How do people form attitudes?
What is an attitude?
• Attitudes are (1) evaluative responses, (2) directed toward some attitude object, (3) based on three classes of
information (“ABC”).
• No consensus on more specific definition because different theories of what attitudes are
• Attitudes are (stable) predisposition: Psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favor or disfavor. (see also file-drawer models)
• Attitudes are (context-dependent) evaluative responses: The categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative
dimension. (see also attitudes-as-constructions models) you make this up as you go
Attitudes are predispositions (1)
• Contra responses: If attitudes are defined as response (to an attitude object), how can attitudes explain behavior? If it’s
a response attitude is already behavior and can’t be used to explain behavior
• People often explain human behavior by reference to stable underlying dispositions.
• Personality psychology: traits explain behavior • Social psychology: attitudes explain behavior Differences:
Traits→Not necessarily evaluative, Response tendency in a situation, Relatively stable
Attitudes→Evaluative, Response tendency toward an object, Can change rapidly based on new information
We can work with both, they align
Attitudes are evaluative responses (2)
• Contra predispositions: Attitudes can change quickly (and for this reason they don’t align with traits).
Can we solve this debate? How could predispositions and evaluations explain/influence behavior?
Input (sensations, perceptions) ⇒ Mechanism (dispositions) ⇒ Output (evaluation) ⇒Behavior
Mechanisms that process the input and produce an output that produces a certain behavior→there need something
happening to saying i like burgers and buying a burger, there are some mechanisms of evaluation underneath
Key point: Defining attitudes as evaluative responses and using attitudes to explain behavior implies that the attitude
(evaluative response) must be some kind of a psychological response (not overt behavior) that influences some
downstream behavior. If the attitude (evaluative response) is some overt behavior, then it is no longer useful in explaining
behavior. Also, in this minimal model, it is easy to explain that attitudes (evaluations) can change quickly: the dispositions
remain the same, but the input changes. →attitudes and evaluations can change
Different models of the mechanisms
File-drawer model
• Attitude is a (learnt) structure in long-term memory that is activated when perceiving attitude object
• Attitudes are files with evaluative information in mental database (i know i like bananas so i choose banana milkshake)
• Implies stability
Attitudes-as-constructions model
• Attitudes depend on what people think about at a given moment
• Evaluation is made online, based on salient or accessible information at the time we’re making the decision/choosing
In both models, attitudes must be formed in some way. Also: it almost never makes sense to ignore what you already
know, or to ignore your current situation or circumstances. So probably people do both.
How do people form attitudes?
Attitude (evaluation) →Affect + Behavior + Cognition (ABC model)
On the previous slides, the starting point was the question: “What is an attitude?”
4
