When are consumers persuaded and are their attitudes changed? - Chapter 5

This chapter presents theories of persuasion, or any change in beliefs and attitudes that results from exposure to a communication.

What is the Yale Reinforcement Approach?

The Yale Reinforcement Approach assumes that exposure to a persuasive communication which successfully induces the individual to accept a new opinion forms a learning experience in which a new verbal habit is acquired. Receivers of a persuasive message will only accept the recommended attitudinal response if the incentives associated with this response are greater than those associated with their current position.

Lasswell suggested you must know who says what to whom with what effect in order to understand persuasion. According to Hovland et al. the impact of communicator credibility, communication features, individual differences in susceptibility to persuasion and the extent to which attitude change is maintained over time on attitudes could be mediated by three different processes: (1) attention to the communication content, (2) comprehension of the message, or (3) acceptance of the conclusions that are advocated by the communication. Hovland et al. tested their theoretical approach.

In their studies on source effect – the impact of the source of a communication on persuasion – showed that attribution of a communication to either a prestigious or a non-prestigious source influences the target’s evaluation of the communication. Their studies on the impact of fear-arousing communication on the acceptance of a recommendation that would reduce the threat showed that the weakest appeal was most effective in changing attitudes and behavior. They explained their findings using the term ‘defensive avoidance’ and argued that a strong fear appeal is so threatening that it is more effective for receivers to reduce fear by rejecting the appeal as alarmist rather than accepting the recommendation. However, later studies show that recipients’ willingness to accept a recommendation increases when the fear appeal increases in strength.

What does the information processing model of McGuire entail?

McGuire’s information processing model proposes that there are different stages involved in the processing of persuasive communications, and that determinants of persuasion can have different impacts at the next five different stages of persuasion: (1) attention, (2) comprehension, (3) acceptance, (4) retention, and (5) behavior.

The receiver must go through each of these stages for the communication to have an ultimate persuasive impact. Each stage depends on the occurrence of the previous one. It is assumed that a consumer has to go through every stage systematically in order to be persuaded. There are, however, many ways by which messages can have an influence, even without having been carefully processed. Processing becomes more important when the product becomes more complex and expensive. A stage model may therefore be more applicable in such situations.

McGuire also suggests that determinants of persuasion can have different effects at different stages of the persuasion process. He uses only the reception and the acceptance of the message as stages for this. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely it is that he understands the message. However, he is then also more likely to be critical and therefore less likely to accept everything he hears/reads.

What is the cognitive response model? 

The cognitive response model stresses the importance of the thoughts individuals generate (and rehearse and learn) in response to a persuasive communication (i.e. cognitive responses). The passive listener (McGuire model) is replaced by an active thinker who engages in a silent discussion with the communicator and argues for or against the arguments contained in a communication.

Listeners are active participants who relate the communication to their personal knowledge by elaborating the message arguments and considering information that is not contained in the communication to generate thoughts for or against the arguments presented. The cognitive responses to these arguments determine the impact of persuasive communication on attitudes.

There are two major contributions by the Ohio State Group that turned the cognitive response approach into a testable theory, the first one being the development of the thought-listening technique, which asks subjects to list all their thoughts or ideas while listening to the communication. Relevant thoughts are categorized into those who are favorable and those who are unfavorable to the communication. An index is used to assess the extent to which cognitive responses mediate the impact of the communication on attitudes. The second major contribution involves a theoretical one, namely the extension of the concept of cognitive responses to include positive cognitive responses.

If you think about a persuasive communication and scrutinize the arguments contained in the message, you will discover inconsistencies and therefore be reluctant to accept the recommendation. In case of strong and well-reasoned arguments, thinking about them might reduce our reluctance to change our minds. Therefore the concept op positive cognitive responses is included in the cognitive response approach. Thinking about strong and well-reasoned arguments is thought to produce favorable thoughts, which in turn enhance persuasion. Persuasion depends on both the extent to which recipients engage in message relevant thoughts, and the favorableness of those thoughts.

Increasing message-relevant thinking should increase persuasion for strongly argued messages that mainly elicit favorable thoughts. For weakly argued messages that elicit mainly unfavorable thoughts, increasing message relevant thinking should decrease persuasion or even result in (negative) change away from the advocated position (‘boomerang effect’):

This extended version of the cognitive response model can also explain research inconsistencies regarding distraction and attitude change. According to this model, distracting someone reduces the persuasive impact of a (well-argued) communication, even if comprehension isn’t impaired. Research findings have shown that increased distraction does increase attitude change for weakly argued messages but decreases change for strongly argued messages. Both the increase and decrease in persuasion can be mediated by thought disruption, in that disruption seems to impair someone’s ability to produce counterarguments for a weak message, but appears to reduce the number of favorable arguments for a strong message.

What are the dual process theories of persuasion?

Dual process theories of persuasion are an extension of the cognitive response model.

In contrast to the cognitive response model – which assumes that attitude change is always mediated by argument relevant thinking, even if the extent to which recipients think about arguments may be minimal – dual process models acknowledge that recipients may sometimes take short cuts and accept/reject the position recommended by the communicator without thinking about message arguments. These theories also specify the factors determining the intensity of message processing and thus the conditions under which attitude change will be mediated by message-relevant thinking.

There are two dual process theories of persuasion; the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), and the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), which will be integrated into one theoretical framework.

Dual process theories distinguish two routes to persuasion, which form the endpoints on a continuum of processing intensity: (1) the central route to persuasion, which is taken when recipients carefully and thoughtfully consider the arguments presented in support of a position (systematic processing), and (2) the peripheral route to persuasion, which reflects the fact that people often change their attitudes without thinking about the arguments contained in a communication but for example because of a recommendation or because the issue is not important to them.

The ELM subsumes the whole range of mechanisms which cause persuasion in the absence of argument scrutiny under the peripheral route, while the HSM only considers one low effort process, namely heuristic processing, which refers to the use of simple decision rules in deciding on whether to accept or reject a persuasive communication. The HSM position is adopted and heuristic processing is considered to be the low effort endpoint of the continuum of processing intensity.

Dual process theories distinguish between two types of qualitatively different information which recipients use when trying to decide whether to accept/reject the communication: (1) the arguments contained in the communication, and (2) heuristic cues. The intensity of processing is determined by recipients’ processing ability and motivation. When recipients are unmotivated/unable to engage in systematic processing, they use heuristic cues. When they are motivated and able, they will engage in argument scrutiny. Heuristic cues are easier to process, while message arguments provide more reliable information.

The most recent assumption (multiple-role assumption) is that both heuristic and systematic processing can co-occur in case systematic processing of arguments causes someone to be unable to arrive at a clear-cut conclusion (for example, because the given arguments are ambiguous). Persuasion can also be affected by variables in multiple ways, depending on the extent to which a message is processed systematically. For example, not only can mood influence someone’s attitudes as a heuristic cue (‘how do I feel about it’ heuristic), but also someone’s motivation to closely examine arguments and to think about the content of a message (multiple-role assumption).

Another example for the multiple-role assumption: depending on the level of processing motivation, the attributes of the endorser of a product can be used as a heuristic cue to influence attitudes towards a product, but they can also serve as an argument.

It is assumed that processing is guided by the wish to form an accurate view on a certain communicated issue (‘accuracy motive’). However, since people aren’t always unbiased listeners, the dual process framework has been extended to incorporate two other processing motives or goals, namely a defense motive and an impression motive. People have a defense motive in that they may have a strong preference for a particular position.

For example, we prefer to see ourselves as smart instead of dumb. The impression motivate refers to the desire to express attitudes that are socially acceptable. Both motives can be heuristic as well as systematic. Under defense motivation, people will use heuristics selectively to support their preferred position or, when processing systematically, attend more to arguments supporting their position than to opposing ones. Impression-motivated heuristic processing involves the use of simple rules to guide one’s selection of socially acceptable attitude positions. In systematic processing the same goal is reached through evaluating the available evidence in terms of their social acceptability.

How is the intensity of processing assessed?

The thought-listing technique can be used to assess the extent to which attitude change is based on systematic processing. If attitude change is due to systematic processing, then recipients should have generated some thoughts favorable to the position advocated by the communicator, and the relative (un)favorableness of these thoughts should be correlated with the amount of attitude change.

Also a favorableness index should act as a mediator of the impact of the manipulated variables on attitude change with systematic but not under heuristic processing.

An even more powerful tool for assessing the extent of systematic processing is provided by the manipulation of argument quality. The combination of an argument quality manipulation and thought-listening is expected to provide a valid tool for diagnosing the extent to which people engage in systematic processing of the arguments a communication contains.

Processing ability, processing intensity and attitude change

Unless a person has knowledge of the product class in which he/she wants to buy something, being intelligent or having a classic education will be of little use.

The impact of working knowledge on processing ability

The amount of working knowledge an individual possesses in a certain area is the most important personal factor influencing processing ability. People without a lot of knowledge will be less able to critically evaluate the incoming information from an advertisement than more knowledgeable people. A low processing intensity message length acts as heuristic cue with longer messages considered more valid than shorter ones.

The most knowledgeable people are influenced by the arguments contained in a message, while the least knowledgeable are influenced by the heuristic cue of the message length. If arguments do not allow to draw clear conclusions, people will rely on heuristic cues even under high processing intensity.

The impact of distraction on processing ability

Distraction is probably the most powerful environmental factor that can influence an individual’s ability to process information. The impact of distraction on the extent to which people are influenced by a persuasive communication depends on the quality of the arguments presented. Distraction increases attitude change with weak arguments and decreases vice versa.

The impact of message repetition on processing ability

Repetition of arguments provides recipients with opportunity to think about and elaborate the message. With strong arguments, greater elaboration results in an increase of favorable thoughts and a decrease of counterarguments, leading to increased acceptance of the message. When message repetition further increases, people get bored, which motivates them to attack the argumentation.

If the positive impact of a small number of repetitions is due to the fact that repetitions provide increased opportunity to favorably elaborate the strong arguments, then repetition results in an immediate decrease of attitude with weak arguments. A lowering of processing motivation results in a decrease in recipients’ willingness to elaborate message arguments. Then boredom sets in earlier at a smaller number of repetitions. Marketers and advertisers therefore vary their advertisements to try to avoid this tedium. This variation can be cosmetic or substantial. In case of cosmetic variation non-substantive features of an advertisement that are not essential in evaluating the product are altered in order to avoid/delay boredom.

Substantive variation involves a change in message content, e.g. in the type of arguments made in order to avoid/delay boredom.

Once processing intensity increases, cosmetic variation will be ineffective and only substantive variation will reduce boredom/tedium.

The previous mentioned assumptions and predictions are based on the assumption that even under low product relevance some semantic processing of message arguments occurs. However, people often look at ads without really processing the text message. Research on the effect of repetition and shallow and deep processing on attitudes has shown that with deep processing, attitude change followed the familiar curvilinear pattern (increase of favorable thoughts after the first few repetitions, but then a decrease in favorable thoughts after 10 repetitions). However, in case of shallow processing there doesn’t seem to be a downturn. A possible explanation for this is that the frequency of exposure to advertisements is likely to increase perceptual fluency, which results in greater liking.

Processing motivation, processing intensity and attitude change

Personal relevance refers to the importance of an outcome for the individual, and is considered to be the major variable that affects processing motivation. Most people are, for example, not interested in refrigerator ads, until they need one. So the need to make a purchase decision is one factor influencing processing motivation in the area of consumer behavior. Other factors are effort and time investment. When motivation to process information about products is low (for example, when buying a toothbrush), people often rely on repetitive, routine or habitual choices. Since these purchase decisions don’t involve a lot of risk (i.e. minimal financial costs of making a poor decision and having to replace a poor product by a better one), they are of low personal relevance. People put more effort in their decision making process by gathering and carefully processing a great deal of information if goods are infrequently bought and expensive. These purchases are of high personal relevance and involve a great deal of risk.

Some refuse to gain knowledge about the product because of lack of time or incapability of understanding the information and just buy the product recommended in the store. Others critically read advertisements and test reports, and based on those, develop favorable attitudes towards a product or brand. Only when recipients of information are motivated, does argument quality influence the amount of attitude change.

Source expertise seems to influence attitudes only under low involvement conditions, with more attitude change when arguments are attributed to a high status source.

In case there is a celebrity endorser in an ad, low involved consumers use the status of this endorser as a heuristic cue, while highly involved consumers still focus on argument quality. Physical attractiveness of the endorser is assumed to work for both low involved consumers (heuristic cue) and highly involved consumers (as visual evidence for the effectiveness; an argument) of the product.

This assumption was theoretically elaborated by the concept of source congruity;, which reflects the match between cognitively accessible endorser associations and attributes associated with the brand. This becomes important under high processing intensity. Source congruity not only applies to physical attractiveness, but also to other attributes of a source, such as sturdiness.

Advertisements for products like hygiene products and medication often point out that they protect consumers from unpleasant health impairment. First they warn them of some threat, then they recommended how consumers can protect themselves against it (i.e. by buying the advertised product). This is based on the assumption that the more you scare people about possible harm, the more they will be willing to buy something that prevents it.

Research on fear-arousing communication was initially guided by the drive-reduction model of the Yale program. This model assumed that higher fear should result in more persuasion, but only if the recommended action is perceived as effective in averting danger.

Since some of the empirical evidence was inconsistent with the drive-reduction model of fear appeals, Leventhal developed a parallel response model, in which he stated that a threat is cognitively evaluated and this appraisal can give rise to two parallel/independent responses: danger control and fear control. Danger control refers to the decision to act as well as actions taken to reduce the danger. Fear control involves actions taken to control emotional responses, and strategies to reduce fear. If a recommendation seems effective in averting a threat, individuals will engage in danger control. If it appears ineffective, they will mainly focus on fear control.
There are two problems with the previous mentioned models: (1) there is no empirical evidence for the predicted interaction between threat and response efficacy, and (2) they make no predictions about how cognitive appraisal mediates information processing. In response to these shortcomings, the stage model of processing of fear-arousing communication was developed. This model assumes that the important determinants of the intensity of processing are the perceived severity of a health threat and personal vulnerability. If both are low, individuals will rely on heuristic processing. If the threat is severe, they will systematically process information about the threat, even if they do not feel vulnerable. When both the threat is severe and the individual feels vulnerable, he/she will be motivated to engage in (defensive) systematic processing. The defense motivation will lead to a positive bias in the processing of the recommended action and will heighten the motivation to engage in the protective action regardless of the quality of the argumentation.

Individual differences in processing motivation

The extent to which people think about message arguments is also affected by individual differences. People seem to vary in their Need for Cognition, or the extent to which individuals engage and enjoy effort-full cognitive activity. Argument quality has a higher impact on attitudes of people who are high rather than low in need for cognition. Another individual difference variable that seems to influence the way in which someone processes information, is his/her need for cognitive closure, which refers to the desire for a definite answer on some topic, any answer as opposed to confusion and ambiguity. This need is thought to reflect both a stable individual difference, as well as a state that can be induced by the situational context, like time pressure.

If heuristic cues are available, people with a high need for closure will form their attitudes based on those. People low on need for closure will rely more on arguments.

Attitude change caused by systematic processing is more persistent than change caused by heuristic processing. High levels of issue-relevant cognitive activity are likely to require frequent accessing of one’s attitude towards the issue targeted by the persuasive attempt. This is supposed to have two effects: (1) it results in better recall of one’s cognitive responses to the message, and (2) it increases the number of linkages between an attitude and the structure of beliefs in which it is embedded, making the structure internally more consistent and more resistant to counterarguments.

Substantive variation in ad repetition does not only contribute to avoiding boredom, but also increases the resistance of individuals against the negative impact of counterarguments.

What is meant by the unimodel?

The unimodel suggests that arguments and heuristic cues are functionally equivalent in constituting two separate content categories of evidence for drawing conclusions from persuasive communications.

Persuasion can be characterized as a singular process of drawing conclusions from available evidence. It doesn’t matter if this evidence if contained in an argument or comes from a heuristic cue. Heuristic cues are as valid as arguments.

How can attention to advertising be attracted?

Consumers often try to avoid advertisements, and even if they are exposed, their awareness of persuasive intent might increase their resistance and decrease the message’s impact. Persuasion knowledge refers to the theories consumers have developed about the motives, strategies and tactics of marketers as well their beliefs in their ability to resist these tactics. The focus will be on the impact of the attribution of intention to persuade. The perception of a communicator’s intention to persuade increases resistance in recipients of a message.

When consumers expect to be exposed to counter attitudinal arguments, they will be motivated to access the reasons that support their own position and use these arguments to counter the persuasive communication. When consumers are only warned about persuasive intent without providing information about the direction of the arguments, they are immediately resistant. Hass and Grady gave an explanation for this effect by suggesting that warning someone that he/she will be exposed to a communication aimed at changing his/her attitude produces psychological reactivity, which is a motivational state that can be triggered by the perceived threat to one’s attitudinal freedom implied by a social influence attempt. This motivates individuals to re-establish their freedom, for example by resisting the influence attempt. So when individuals perceive the intention to persuade, they might get motivated to engage in biased processing of the communication or to simply ignore the message or to disregard it as invalid.

Still, research on the sleeper effect – the phenomenon that the impact of a message increases over time, because after some delay recipients of an otherwise influential message might recall the message but not longer remember the source – has demonstrated there is a chance that once this reactivity subsides, individuals might still remember the arguments and will eventually be persuaded. However, the conditions under which sleeper effect occurs are rarely realized in advertising contexts.

Humor in advertising

People’s tendency to avoid exposure to advertisements can be partly overcome by adding humor, so that people enjoy looking at it. However, just looking is not enough. What is more important to know, is whether humorous advertisements are also effective in persuading consumers. The evidence is mixed. One study even reported a zero correlation for the effect of humor on purchasing behavior. A likely explanation for this lack of effect is that humorous ads distract consumers, which has been demonstrated in several studies. People do seem to remember humorous ads better than non-humorous ads, but remember the type of product advertised with humor less than products advertised non-humorously. Humorous ads seem to impair mainly explicit brand memory, but don’t affect implicit brand memory. There still seems to be an evaluative conditioning effect even when there are no signs of explicit memory for the brand or product. So in this way, adding humor to advertisements might still influence purchasing behavior under certain conditions, namely when the purchase is made without much deliberation (low cognitive control).

All in all, humorous advertisements seem to have three effects: (1) they attract consumer attention; (2) they distract from the part of the message that isn’t related to the humor and impair explicit brand memory; and (3) they evoke positive affect which becomes associated with the brand through evaluative conditioning. As with all research findings, there are several limitations. First, the humor that was used in most of the studies was unrelated to the advertising message. In that way these results only tell us something about the impact humor has on brand memory, but not on recall of an advertising slogan. Second, the impact of humor on explicit attitudes hasn’t been assessed. Even though individuals don’t remember having seen an advertisement (explicit memory), doesn’t necessarily mean that humorous ads don’t improve explicit attitudes towards a brand or product. Third, research on the impact of humorous advertising on consumer behavior has nearly exclusively used brands that were unfamiliar to participants. So it is uncertain whether humor affects attitudes towards established and well known brands. Humorous ads possibly can affect product choice even for familiar brands, but only for consumers who have no strong preference for either brand and are unable or unmotivated to think much about their choice. The final limitation is that almost all of the research studied the effect of humor in the advertising of low cost items. Since consumers won’t be very motivated to put a lot of thought into making choices between low cost items, humorous ads should be rather effective in influencing the purchase of such items.

Sex in advertising

Sex sells. Or does it? Before going into this discussion, let’s first give a better picture of what is meant by sex in advertising. This has been defined as mediated messages that contain sexual imagery with the persuasive purpose of selling branded products. However, what is meant with sexual imagery is elusive. Reichert et al. use two criteria: the extent to which models are undressed and the type of physical contact between the models. Such categorizations are sensitive to cultural historic change.

Why is sex supposed to sell? Sexual imagery might influence the impact of advertisements at two stages: (1) attracting attention, and (2) attending to the message.

There is more evidence available for the assumption that sexual imagery distracts from processing the message content, than that it attends to the message content. Research findings have shown that the presence of sexual imagery not only impairs the recall of the arguments contained in advertisements, but also reduces the amount of message-related and product-related thinking engaged by participants. Although it doesn’t seem to affect brand memory, it does seem to have a positive effect on attitudes towards the ad as well as on purchasing intention. There is also evidence that brand name recall is especially worse when the sexual content of an ad is unrelated to a product.

In a review of the role of sex in advertising research, Reichert concluded that sexual information has a relative advantage of drawing attention to the advertisement. He also concluded that individuals are more likely to encode and ultimately remember sexual images in the advertisement, but that ads that contain sexual content inhibit the encoding of brand names. He further proposed that these effects are moderated by the extent to which the sexual imagery is relevant for the advertised product; individuals are more likely to remember product information when the sexual images are relevant to the product.

But why and how does the use of sexual imagery in ads possibly influence attitudes towards and advertisement and the advertised product? Again, this is explained on the basis of the two routes to persuasion: the central route – where persuasion is based on systematic processing – and the peripheral route – where persuasion is based on other aspects of the message (heuristic cues). The effects of evaluative conditioning are presumed to be under the peripheral route. So it is important to make a distinction between two ways in which sexual imagery can influence attitudes towards an advertised product, namely through sexual images serving as persuasive arguments or through evaluative conditioning. The main requirement for sexual imagery is that it should make the advertised product look attractive and elicit the expectation in viewers that using the product would make them look (or be) equally attractive. These persuasive argument effects are assumed to only work if the sexual imagery is functional or relevant for the advertised product and if the product has a self-expressive or identity-related function. But according to the dual process theories of persuasion, also with goods that serve a purely utilitarian function sexual imagery could influence brand attitudes through evaluative conditioning. The evaluative conditioning effect ought to be independent of the relevance of the sexual imagery for the advertised product. The main requirement here for positive evaluative conditioning to occur is that the stimulus associated with the product’s sexual imagery evokes a positive affective response in viewers. These evoked feelings are significantly related to brand attitudes.

One problem with the use of sexual imagery is that the conditions under which it evokes positive affective responses are complex. Imagery that is mildly sexual usually elicits positive affect, while gratuitous sexual imagery can elicit negative affect. In addition, individuals differ in their attitudes towards sex and sexuality. This moderates attitudes toward an advertisement containing sexual imagery.

Overall, research findings suggest that the use of sexual imagery in advertising helps to draw people’s attention towards an ad. However, at the same time it can impair recall for the product information and the brand name. This distraction effect seems to be stronger if there is no relationship between the sexual content of the ad and the product being advertised. Besides relevance, the findings further suggest that the effect of sex in advertising is moderated by many other factors, such as the gender of the models and viewers, the sexual liberalism of the viewers, the degree of undress and the viewer’s level of involvement in the product.

Two-sided advertisements

Two-sided advertisements mention both positive and negative features of a product. They appear as more honest, and stand out from other advertisements. In the optimal case, only the negative attributes which are trivial or of which the consumer is already aware are mentioned. Hereby serious product deficiencies must be avoided, while admitting utterly trivial deficiencies may be too obvious.

Product placement

Product placement refers to the paid inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers through audio and/or visual means, within mass media programming. For example, James Bond driving a BMW in the movies. Product placement can be categorized according to two dimensions: (1) modality – that is, whether the brand name is only seen or also mentioned – and (2) centrality – the relevance of the product use to the plot. Centrality has been characterized by three levels:

• Background: when the product is shown/mentioned in a scene but not used by any of the main characters;

• More central: the situation where the product is used by one of the main characters but in a way that has no particular relevance to the story;

• Most central: the situation where the product plays a role in the story.

Centrality influences explicit memory, that is products placed prominently in a movie have a larger impact on recall and recognition than products that are placed subtly in the background. Implicit measures are not affected by the level of placement, although centrality does have a significant impact. Attitudes towards the brand used by the main character are more positive than when the brand is only shown in the background. Disliked characters and product placement that is too obvious, lead to negative results.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is a technique by which a commercial organization financially supports an entity (event, team, person, cause, etc.) in order to associate the organization’s name with this entity in the media and to use it for advertising purposes. In case of program sponsorship the advertiser assumes the total financial responsibility for the production of the program and provides the commercials that are shown. When a company contributes to the costs of an event in order to be allowed to link its brand name to it, we speak of even sponsorship. Advantages can be increased brand awareness, positive feelings and familiarity. When the event is liked, positive associations are transferred to the brand. Congruent sponsorships (e.g. a sports brand sponsoring a soccer event) are better remembered than incongruent ones (e.g. a brewery sponsoring a soccer event).