Critical Learning Exercises - Persuasion, Attitudes, and Behavior

Instructions

Now that you have read the chapter, let's consider the theories and findings more closely. Read each of the questions below and type your response into the corresponding text box. After you submit your response you will be shown model feedback. You will receive full credit on submission, but your grade may change once your instructor reviews your response. Be sure to check the grade book for your final grade.

Question 1.

Imagine that your TV show goes to commercial, showing a driver deliberately sliding on leather gloves and then excitedly gripping the steering wheel. She revs the engine, and a powerful roar complements the dramatic music playing in the background. She then puts the car into gear and races around twisting mountain roads with a confident and satisfied expression. As the commercial winds down, a narrator discusses the car’s performance ratings, gas mileage, and dependability, comparing it to other cars in its class. Which elements of this message are targeting the central route to persuasion, and which are targeting the peripheral route? What elements of the commercial do you find most compelling? How does this fit with what we know about when people follow the central route or the peripheral route?

Students should correctly identify that the focus on the car’s performance ratings, gas mileage, and dependability, comparing it to other cars in its class, is targeting the central route of persuasion, which focuses on facts and carefully thinking about the message’s argument. Meanwhile, the actor’s emotions and expressions, the driving gloves, the revving sound of the engine, and the scenery and dramatic music are targeting the peripheral route, which focuses on irrelevant aspects due to an unwillingness or inability to think carefully about the message’s argument. Students will vary regarding which elements of the commercial they find most compelling but should support how they view the argument—as something to think carefully about (central route) or not (peripheral route).

Question 2.

Today the political climates of many nations are characterized by strong and intolerant attitudes among people from both sides of the aisle (e.g., liberals and conservatives). Do you think this is a problem in the national government of the country where you live? If you were a politician now, how would you approach this problem? How would you address the particular concern that people tend to visit social media and news sites that reinforce their political views? How would you get people to change their minds?

Students’ answers will vary depending on their opinion of the polarization of the political climate in their country. Suggestions for how students think this problem should be approached, especially in regard to getting people information that doesn’t reinforce their political views, may include recognizing reactance theory, which explains that people resist being persuaded when it infringes on their freedom; inoculation, which is when people have built up resistance by defending themselves against weaker arguments first; using statistics in persuasive messages; having people associate a position with positive feelings; mere exposure effect, where increasing exposure to a position will increase liking for it; balance theory, which relies on linking messages to things the person already likes; or delivering messages when people are already in a good mood.

Question 3.

Imagine that you graduate from college and take a job with an advertising company. Your first assignment is to come up with a commercial for a new basketball sneaker. Considering the different elements of persuasion, who would you want to appear in your commercial, what would you want the message to be, and who would you be targeting as the audience? What different aspects of persuasion would you incorporate into your commercial?

Students’ recommendations for who should be in the commercial will likely be based on someone they think their audience already likes, such as a popular basketball player. The proposed message may have a promotion-focus, and the selected age group may be 18- to 25-year-olds. The recommendations should be supported by the chapter’s discussion of the most influential or persuasive factors in relation to the basketball sneaker commercial: 18- to 25-year-olds; people with low self-esteem; people with normal or low intelligence; using one-sided argument; focusing on those motivated to make a good impression by using peripheral route cues (appearance, celebrity spokesperson, etc.); and using a promotion focus that highlights positive outcomes.

Question 4.

Imagine that you are a parent with a teenager who is just starting to go to high school parties. You want to teach your kid how to resist peers’ attempts to persuade him to engage in risky behavior. You also want to make sure the attitudes you’ve taught about responsibility actually predict behavior in these party situations. What kind of things might you tell your kid in this situation?

Students’ suggestions will vary but may focus on increasing the child’s positive attitude toward responsible behavior, making responsible behaviors seem important to others (positive norm perception), increasing the child’s confidence that they can actually be responsible and avoid risky behaviors (a strong sense of personal control), and increasing the child’s willingness to model responsible behavior to avoid impulsive reactions in the moment.