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It is now Wednesday and you’re at the 3R the Bottle! club meeting. There are about 15 other students there, as well as pizza and soda (in aluminum cans, not plastic bottles). The group discusses plastic pollution, why it is an issue, and potential remedies to the problem. The club officers hand out member applications to everyone present and ask them to complete the application before leaving the meeting. You look around and see that everyone in the room is filling out the application and turning it in to the club officers. You decide to do the same, even though you wonder if membership to this club would be a good use of your time.

After looking at the two cards, the group was instructed to announce, one at a time going around the table, which of the three lines was closest in length to the standard line. In the first two rounds, everybody agreed about which line matched the standard. In the third round, however, the first five people (all confederates) offered what was clearly the wrong answer. In about 37% of these trials, participants went along with the group and provided the incorrect answer. Additionally, 76% of participants conformed and gave the wrong answer at least once. This study has been replicated in various cultures, yielding similar results.

photo by William Vandivert/Solomon E. Asch, Opinions and Social Pressure, Scientific American, Nov 1955, Vol 193, No.5, 31-35

You have been an active member of 3R the Bottle! for about three months now. You’ve been asked to prepare a poster for a demonstration the club has planned. The plan is to march across campus, holding signs while chanting “3R the Bottle!” The club hopes to make others on campus aware of plastic bottle pollution and teach them how to recycle old plastic bottles.

You need to decide how you want your poster for the demonstration to look. Is it possible to take advantage of both routes of persuasion simultaneously? For each item listed below, identify if it would go with the central or peripheral route of persuasion.

If you take the peripheral route to persuasion when making your poster, the end result would be similar to this.

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If you take the central route to persuasion when making your poster, the end result would be similar to this.

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You, along with other club members, have made arrangements to speak in various classrooms across campus to bring awareness to the cause and educate students and faculty. Essentially, your goal is to persuade students to use reusable water bottles rather than plastic bottles.

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It is now the end of the academic year and you have been busy! You completed your freshman classes and became involved on campus. You joined the 3R the Bottle! club and participated in their meetings, activities, and events. You even recruited about ten new members yourself! Now you are an avid proponent of recycling. You recycle everything and encourage your friends and family to do the same. This is somewhat different than your passive attitude at the beginning of the academic year, when you had not given much thought to plastic pollution.

The attitudes you hold are strongly influenced by nurture. They develop through experiences, interactions with others, and exposure to social media, television, and other communication outlets. We adopt attitudes through learning processes such as classical conditioning and observational learning.