Psychology of Presentational Rhetoric
Immortalist
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
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The Nature of the Communication
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(1) Logical vs Emotional Appeals
(2) Statistical Evidence vs 1 Personal Example
(3) One-Sided vs Two-Sided Arguments
(4) The Order of Presentation
(5) The Size of the Discrepancy Between Views
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(6) Characteristics of the Audience
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(A) - Self-Esteem
(B) - Prior Experience of the Audience
(C) - People tend to protect their sense of freedom
(D) - Reactance operates innumber of interesting ways
(E) - How Well Do the Principles Work?
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The Nature of the Communication
The manner in which a communication is stated plays an important role in
determining its effectiveness. There are several ways in which
communications can differ from one another.
* Is a communication more persuasive if it is designed to appeal to the
audience's reasoning ability, or is it more persuasive if it is aimed at
arousing the audience's emotions?
* Are people more swayed by a communication if it is tied to a vivid
personal experience or if it is bolstered by a great deal of clear and
unimpeachable statistical evidence?
* Should the communication present only one side of the argument, or should
it also include an attempt to refute the opposing view?
* If two sides are presented, as in a debate, does the order in which they
are presented affect the relative impact of either side?
* What is the relationship between the effectiveness of the communication
and the discrepancy between the audience's original opinion and the opinion
advocated by the communication?
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(1) Logical vs Emotional Appeals:
Several years ago, I was living in a community that was about to vote on
whether or not to fluoridate the water supply as a means of combating tooth
decay. An information campaign that seemed quite logical and reasonable was
launched by the proponents of fluoridation. It consisted largely of
statements by noted dentists describing the benefits of fluorides and
discussing the evidence on the reduction of tooth decay in areas with
fluoridated water, as well as statements by physicians and other health
authorities that fluoridation has no harmful effects. The opponents used a
much more emotional appeal. For example, one leaflet consisted of a picture
of a rather ugly rat, along with the statement "Don't let them put rat
poison in your drinking water." The referendum to fluoridate the water
supply was soundly defeated. Of course, this incident doesn't prove
conclusively that emotional appeals are superior, mainly because the
incident was not a scientifically controlled study. We have no idea how the
people would have voted on fluoridation if no publicity were circulated nor
do we know whether the antifluoridation circular reached more people,
whether it was easier to read than the proponents' literature, and so forth.
Although the actual research in this area is far from conclusive, there is
some evidence favoring an appeal that is primarily emotional. In one early
study, for example, George W. Hartmann tried to measure the extent to which
he could induce people to vote for a particular political candidate as a
function of what kind of appeal he used. He demonstrated that individuals
who received a primarily emotional message voted for the candidate endorsed
by the message more often than did people who received a primarily logical
message.
The word primarily is italicized for good reason; it defines the major
problem with research in this areaónamely, there are no foolproof, mutually
exclusive definitions of emotional and rational. In the fluoridation
illustration, for example, most people would probably agree the
antifluoridation pamphlet was designed to arouse fear; yet, it is not
entirely illogical because it is indeed true that the fluoride used in
minute concentrations to prevent tooth decay is also used in massive
concentrations as a rat poison. On the other side, to present the views of
professional people is not entirely free from emotional appeal; it may be
comforting (on an emotional level) to know that physicians and dentists
endorse the use of fluorides.
Because, in practice, operational distinctions between logical and emotional
are difficult to draw, some researchers have turned to an equally
interesting and far more researchable problem: the problem of the effect of
various levels of a specific emotion on opinion change. Suppose you wish to
arouse fear in the hearts of your audience as a way of inducing opinion
change. Would it be more effective to arouse just a little fear, or should
you try to scare the hell out of them? For example, if your goal is to
convince people to drive more carefully, would you be more effective if you
showed them gory Technicolor films of the broken and bloody bodies of the
victims of highway accidents, or would you be more effective if you
soft-pedaled your communicationóshowing crumpled fenders, discussing
increased insurance rates due to careless driving, and pointing out the
possibility that people who drive carelessly may have their driver's
licenses suspended? Common sense argues on both sides of this street. On the
one hand, it suggests that a good scare will motivate people to act; on the
other hand, it argues that too much fear can be debilitatingóthat is, it
might interfere with a person's ability to pay attention to the message, to
comprehend it, and to act upon it. We've all believed, at one time or
another, that "it only happens to the other guyóit can't happen to me."
Thus, people continue to drive at very high speeds and to insist on driving
after they've had a few drinks, even though they should know better. Perhaps
this is because the possible negative consequences of these actions are so
great that they try not to think about them. Thus, it has been argued that,
if a communication arouses a great deal of fear, we tend not to pay close
attention to it.
What does the evidence tell us? The overwhelming weight of experimental data
suggests that, all other things being equal, the more frightened a person is
by a communication, the more likely he or she is to take positive preventive
action. The most prolific researchers in this area have been Howard
Leventhal and his associates. In one experiment, they tried to induce people
to stop smoking and to take chest x-rays. Some subjects were exposed to a
low-fear treatment: They were simply presented with a recommendation to stop
smoking and get their chests x-rayed. Others were subjected to moderate
fear: They were shown a film depicting a young man whose chest x-rays
revealed he had lung cancer. The people subjected to the high-fear condition
saw the same film as those in the moderate-fear conditionóand, in addition,
they were treated to a rather gory color film of a lung-cancer operation.
The results showed that those people who were most frightened were also most
eager to stop smoking and most likely to get chest x-rays.
Is this true for all people? It is not. There is a reason why common sense
leads some people to believe that a great deal of fear leads to inaction: It
doesófor certain people, under certain conditions. What Leventhal and his
colleagues discovered is that people who had a reasonably good opinion of
themselves (high self-esteem) were those who were most likely to be moved by
high degrees of fear arousal. People with a low opinion of themselves were
least likely to take immediate action when confronted with a communication
arousing a great deal of fearóbut (and here is the interesting part) after a
delay, they behaved very much like the subjects with high self-esteem. That
is, if immediate action was not required but action could be taken later,
people with low self-esteem were more likely to take that action if they
were exposed to a communication arousing a great deal of fear. People who
have a low opinion of themselves may have a great deal of difficulty coping
with threats to themselves. A high-fear communication overwhelms them and
makes them feel like crawling into bed and pulling the covers up over their
heads. Low or moderate fear is something they can deal with more easily at
the moment they experience it. But, if given timeóthat is, if it's not
essential that they act immediatelyóthey will be more likely to act if the
message truly scares the hell out of them.
Subsequent research by Leventhal and his co-workers lends support to this
analysis. In one study, subjects were shown films of serious automobile
accidents. Some subjects watched the films on a large screen up close;
others watched them from far away on a much smaller screen. Among the
subjects with high or moderate self-esteem, those who saw the films on the
large screen were much more likely to take subsequent protective action than
were those who saw the films on the small screen. Subjects with low
self-esteem were more likely to take action when they saw the films on a
small screen; those who saw the films on a large screen reported a great
deal of fatigue and stated that they had great difficulty even thinking of
themselves as victims of automobile accidents. Thus, people with low
self-esteem are apparently too overwhelmed by fear to take action when an
immediate response is required.
It should be relatively easy to make people with high self-esteem behave
like people with low self-esteem. We can overwhelm them by making them feel
there is nothing they can do to prevent or ameliorate a threatening
situation. This will lead most people to bury their heads in the sandóeven
those who have high self-esteem. Conversely, suppose you wanted to reduce
the automobile accident rate or to help people give up smoking, and you are
faced with low self-esteem people. How would you proceed? If you construct a
message containing clear, specific, and optimistic instructions, it might
increase the feeling among the members of your audience that they could
confront their fears and cope with the danger. These speculations have been
confirmed; experiments by Howard Leventhal and his associates show that
fear-arousing messages containing specific instructions about how, when, and
where to take action are much more effective than recommendations not
including such instructions. For example, a campaign conducted on a college
campus urging students to take tetanus shots included specific instructions
about where and when they were available. The campaign materials included a
map showing the location of the student health service and a suggestion that
each student set aside a convenient time to stop by. The results showed
high-fear appeals to be more effective than low-fear appeals in producing
favorable attitudes toward tetanus shots among the students, and they also
increased the students' stated intentions to take the shots. The highly
specific instructions about how to get the shots did not in any way affect
these opinions and intentions, but the instructions did have a big effect on
the actual behavior: Of those subjects who were instructed about how to
proceed, 28 percent actually got the tetanus shots; but of those who
received no specific instructions, only 3 percent went down to get them. In
a control group exposed only to the action instructionsóno fear-arousing
messageóno shots were taken. Thus, specific instructions alone are not
enough to produce action. Fear is a necessary component for action in such
situations.
Very similar results were uncovered in Leventhal's cigarette experiment.
Leventhal found that a high-fear communication produced a much greater
intention to stop smoking. Unless it was accompanied by recommendations for
specific behavior, however, it produced little behavior change. Similarly,
specific instructions ("buy a magazine instead of a pack of cigarettes";
"drink plenty of water when you have the urge to smoke," and so on) without
a fear-arousing communication were relatively ineffective. The combination
of fear arousal and specific instructions produced the best results; the
students in this condition were smoking less 4 months after they were
subjected to the experimental procedure.
So, in some situations, fear-arousing appeals accompanied by specific
instructions for appropriate action can and do produce recommended
behaviors. But as Leventhal and his colleagues have indicated, the impact of
fear appeals is context-specific. There are some situations in which fear
appealsóeven when coupled with specific instructionsówill not produce the
desired effect. Let's consider the most serious public health problem of the
20th century: acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS has been
described by the mass media as "The Plague of the Century," and it appears
to be gaining momentum in the 1990s. According to recent statistics over 30
million people are now human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive; about
2.3 million people will die of AIDS this year. There are 16,000 new cases
per day. Although AIDS is most prevalent in the developing countries, even
in highly developed countries like the United States there are 1 million
cases, with 40,000 new cases every year. Public health officials have worked
hard to educate the public about the hazards of unsafe sexual practices and
intravenous drug use, and attempts have been made to teach sexually active
people about the causes of AIDS and to convince them that the threat to life
is real. Such information has been accompanied by specific recommendations
for preventive actionósuch as celibacy, monogamy, or the use of condoms.
Although celibacy and monogamy may be worthwhile goals, it has proved to be
unrealistic to expect the great majority of teenagers and young adults to
exercise these options. Even politically conservative experts like former
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop eventually came to believe that for most
sexually active young adults, the proper use of condoms may be the most
realistic mode of AIDS prevention.
Thus, the goal becomes to persuade sexually active people to use condoms. An
d what form have these persuasive appeals taken? They have typically
involved vivid descriptions of the dangers of unsafe sex and the ravages of
the disease. The implicit assumption of policymakers and educators seems to
be that arousing a great deal of fear will induce people to change their
sexual behavior. Condom manufacturers apparently share that assumption. For
example, in one advertisement for condoms, an attractive woman is shown
saying, "I love sex, but I'm not willing to die for it." That sounds catchy.
But there is some indication that, in the case of AIDS prevention, such an
approach may be ineffective at best and perhaps even counterproductive. Why?
Most individuals, when contemplating having sex, do not want to think about
death or disease. If the cognitive association between death and condoms is
too powerful, the thought of using condoms may be so noxious as to diminish
the pleasure associated with sex. Under these circumstances, many
individuals will block all thoughts of death, disease, and condoms out of
their minds, adopting a posture of denial. But they won't stop having sex.
Thus, they will convince themselves that "It can't happen to me," or "I'm
not attracted to the kind of person who would have AIDS," or "I can spot a
person with AIDS just by looking at him." Others will defend against a
fear-arousing message by refusing to believe the data presented in the
communication; Akiva Liberman and Shelly Chaiken have found that the more
relevant the fearful message was for the behavior of any member of the
audience (and hence the more threatening it was), the more these persons
convinced themselves that the dangers contained in the message were
overstated.
This analysis is supported by a host of recent findings in the AIDS
literature. For example, research by Russell Clark indicates that the AIDS
epidemic has had little effect upon the general willingness of young adults
to have casual sex; Katie Leishman found that "many people at high risk
nevertheless dispense with even minimal precautions"; research by Sunyna
Williams and her colleagues shows that college students justify their
continued engagement in unsafe sex by the false belief that, if they know
and like their partner, then he or she could not possibly be HIV positive.
Similarly, surveys on college campuses across the country indicate that the
majority of sexually active college students are not engaging in safe sex,
are not discussing sexually transmitted diseases with their partners, and
have never even purchased a condom.
If fear arousal is ineffective because it leads to denial, must we simply
sit back and brace ourselves for the onslaught of a major epidemic? Not
necessarily. There is no simple solution to this problem. But if we believe
that getting people to use condoms is the most realistic way to stem the
spread of AIDS, one possibility is to design the message to overcome
whatever it is that sexually active people find unattractive about condoms.
For example, in our survey of sexually active college students, we found
that the great majority see the putting on of condoms as a "turnoff," as "an
antiseptic procedure" that detracts from the romantic sequence of a sexual
encounter. Accordingly, one possible approach to this problem might be to
find a way to change people's mind-setóperhaps by convincing them that
putting on the condom could become a mutual event that can be used as an
erotic aspect of foreplayóa prelude to lovemaking rather than a burdensome
interference. Other strategies aimed at dealing with this important issue
will be described in Chapter 5.
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(2) Consensual Statistical Evidence vs a Single Personal Example:
Suppose you are in the market for a new car, and the two most important
things you are looking for are reliability and longevity. That is, you don't
care about looks, style, or mileage; what you do care about is the frequency
of repair. As a reasonable and sensible person, you consult Consumer Reports
and, let us say, you learn that the car with the best repair record is the
Volvo. Naturally, you decide to buy a Volvo. But suppose that, the night
before you are to make the purchase, you attend a dinner party and announce
your intention to one of your friends. He is incredulous: "You can't be
serious," he says. "My cousin bought a Volvo last year and has had nothing
but trouble ever since. First, the fuel injection system broke down; then
the transmission fell out; then strange, undiagnosable noises started to
come from the engine; finally, oil started to drip from some unknown place.
My poor cousin is literally afraid to drive the car for fear of what will
happen next."
Let's suppose the ranking made by Consumer Reports was based on a sample of
1,000 Volvo owners. Your friend's cousin's unfortunate experience has
increased the size of the sample to 1,001. It has added one negative case to
your statistical bank. Logically, this should not affect your decision. But
a large body of research by Richard Nisbett and his associates (from whose
work this example was borrowed) indicates that such occurrences, because of
their vividness, assume far more importance than their logical statistical
status would imply. Indeed, such occurrences are frequently decisive. Thus,
with the example of the plight of your friend's cousin firmly fixed in your
mind, it would be very difficult for you to rush out and purchase a Volvo.
In addition, the more vivid the examples are, the greater their persuasive
power. A real-life demonstration of this comes from the area of energy
conservation. Several years ago, my students and I set out to persuade
homeowners to make the improvements necessary to have an energy-efficient
house. We worked with home auditors from local utility companies and taught
them to use vivid examples when recommending home improvements. For example,
most auditors, when left to their own devices, simply point to cracks around
doors and recommend that the homeowner install weatherstripping. Instead, we
trained several auditors to tell homeowners that if all the cracks around
all the doors were added up, they would equal a hole the size of a
basketball in their living room wall. "And if you had a hole that size in
your wall, wouldn't you want to patch it up? That's what weatherstripping
does." The results were striking. Auditors trained to use this kind of vivid
language increased their effectiveness fourfold; whereas previously only 15
percent of the homeowners had the recommended work done, after the auditors
began to use more vivid communication, this increased to 61 percent. Most
people are more deeply influenced by one clear, vivid, personal example than
by an abundance of statistical data. Thus, your friend's Volvo story or the
thought of a basketball-sized hole in your living room will probably be
extraordinarily powerful.
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(3) One-Sided vs Two-Sided Arguments:
Suppose you are about to make a speech attempting to persuade your audience
that capital punishment is necessary. Would you persuade more people if you
simply stated your view and ignored the arguments against capital
punishment, or would you be more persuasive if you discussed the opposing
arguments and attempted to refute them? Before trying to answer this
question, let us try to understand what is involved. If a communicator
mentions the opposition's arguments, it might indicate that he or she is an
objective, fair-minded person; this could enhance the speaker's
trustworthiness and thus increase his or her effectiveness. On the other
hand, if a communicator so much as mentions the arguments on the other side
of the issue, it might suggest to the audience that the issue is
controversial; this could confuse members of the audience, make them
vacillate, and ultimately reduce the persuasiveness of the communication.
With these possibilities in mind, it should not come as a surprise to the
reader that there is no simple relation between one-sided arguments and the
effectiveness of the communication. It depends to some extent upon how well
informed the audience is: The more well informed the members of the audience
are, the less likely they are to be persuaded by a one-sided argument and
the more likely they are to be persuaded by an argument that brings out the
important opposing arguments and then proceeds to refute them. This makes
sense: A well-informed person is more likely to know some of the
counterarguments. When the communicator avoids mentioning these, the
knowledgeable members of the audience are likely to conclude that the
communicator is either unfair or unable to refute such arguments. On the
other hand, an uninformed person is less apt to know of the existence of
opposing arguments. If the counterargument is ignored, the less-informed
members of the audience are persuaded; if the counterargument is presented,
they may get confused.
Another factor playing a vital role is the initial position of the audience.
As we might expect, if a member of the audience is already predisposed to
believe the communicator's argument, a onesided presentation has a greater
impact on his or her opinion than a two-sided presentation. If, however, a
member of the audience is leaning in the opposite direction, then a
two-sided refutational argument is more persuasive. Most politicians seem to
be well aware of this phenomenon; they tend to present vastly different
kinds of speeches, depending upon who constitutes the audience. When talking
to the party faithful, they almost invariably deliver a hell-raising set of
arguments favoring their own party platform and candidacy. If they do
mention the opposition, it is in a derisive, mocking tone. On the other
hand, when appearing on network television or when speaking to any audience
of mixed loyalties, they tend to take a more diplomatic position, giving the
opposing view a reasonably accurate airing before proceeding to demolish it.
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(4) The Order of Presentation:
Imagine you are running for the city council. You and your opponent are
invited to address a large audience in the civic auditorium. It is a close
electionómany members of the audience are still undecidedóand the outcome
may hinge on your speech. You have worked hard on writing and rehearsing it.
As you take your seat on the stage, the master of ceremonies asks you
whether you would prefer to Jead off or speak last. You ponder this for a
moment. You think, Speaking first may have an advantage because first
impressions are crucial; if I can get the audience on my side early, then my
opponent will not only have to sell himself, he'll also have to unsell the
audience on meóhe'll be bucking a trend. On the other hand, if I speak last,
I may have an advantage because when the people leave the auditorium, they
may remember the last thing they heard. The early statements made by my
opponent, no matter how powerful, will be buried by my rhetoric simply
because my speech will be more memorable. You stammer: "I'd like to speak
first . . . no, last . . . no, first . . . no, wait a minute." In confusion,
you race off the stage, find a telephone booth, and call your friend the
social psychologist. Surely, she must know which order has the advantage.
I'm afraid that if you expect a one-word answer, you are in for a
disappointment. Moreover, if you wait to hear all of the social
psychologist's elaborations and qualifying remarks, you might miss the
opportunity of ever delivering your speech at all. Indeed, you might miss
the election itself.
Needless to say, the issue is a complex one involving both learning and
retention. I'll try to state it as simply as possible. The issues are
similar to the commonsense issues that you, as our hypothetical politician,
pondered alone. It is true that, all other things being equal, the
audience's memory should be better for the speech made last, simply because
it is closer in time to the election. On the other hand, the actual learning
of the second material will not be as thorough as the learning of the first
material, simply because the very existence of the first material disrupts
and inhibits the learning process. Thus, from our knowledge of the phenomena
of learning, it would appear that, all other things being equal, the first
argument will be more effective; we'll call this the primacy effect. But
from our knowledge of the phenomena of retention, on the other hand, it
would appear that, all other things being equal, the last argument will be
more effective; we'll call this the recency effect.
The fact that these two approaches seemingly involve opposite predictions
does not mean that it doesn't matter which argument comes first; nor does it
mean that it is hopeless to attempt to make a definitive prediction. What it
does mean is that, by knowing something about the way both inhibition and
retention work, we can predict the conditions under which either the primacy
effect or the recency effect will prevail. The crucial variable is timeóthat
is, the amount of time separating the events in the situation: (1) the
amount of time between the first communication and the second communication
and (2) the amount of time between the end of the second communication and
the moment when the members of the audience must finally make up their
minds. Here are the crucial points: (1) Inhibition (interference) is
greatest if very little time elapses between the two communications; here,
the first communication produces maximum interference with the learning of
the second communication, and a primacy effect will occuróthe first speaker
will have the advantage. (2) Retention is greatest, and recency effects will
therefore prevail, when the audience must make up its mind immediately after
hearing the second communication.
Okay. Are you still on the phone? Here's the plan: If you and your opponent
are to present your arguments back to back, and if the election is still
several days away, you should speak first. The primacy of your speech will
interfere with the audience's ability to learn your opponent's arguments;
with the election several days away, differential effects due to memory are
negligible. But if the election is going to be held immediately after the
second speech, and there is to be a prolonged coffee break between the two
speeches, you would do well to speak last. Because of the coffee break
between speeches, the interference of the first speech with the learning of
the second speech will be minimal; because the audience must make up its
mind right after the second speech, as the second speaker you would have
retention working for you. Therefore the recency effect would be dominant:
All other things being equal, the last speech will be the more persuasive.
These speculations were confirmed in an experiment by Norman Miller and
Donald Campbell. In this experiment, a simulated jury trial was arranged, in
which subjects were presented with a condensed version of the transcript of
an actual jury trial of a suit for damages brought against the manufacturers
of an allegedly defective vaporizer. The pro side of the argument consisted
of the testimony of witnesses for the plaintiff, cross-examination of
defense witnesses by the plaintiff's lawyer, and the opening and closing
speeches of the plaintiff's lawyer. The con side of the argument consisted
of the testimony of witnesses for the defense, the defense lawyer's
cross-examinations, and his opening and closing speeches. The condensed
version of this transcript was arranged so that all of the pro arguments
were placed in one block and all of the con arguments were placed in another
block. The investigators varied the interval between the reading of the two
arguments and between the reading of the last argument and the announcement
of the verdict. A recency effect was obtained when there was a large
interval between the first and second arguments and a small interval between
the second argument and the verdict. A primacy effect was obtained when
there was a small interval between the first and second arguments and a
large interval between the second argument and the verdict. The topic of
this experiment (a jury trial) serves to underscore the immense practical
significance these two phenomena may have. Most jurisdictions allow the
prosecution to go first (opening statement and presentation of evidence) and
last (closing arguments), thus giving the state the advantage of both
primacy and recency effects. Because the order of presentation may
influcence a jury's verdict of guilt or innocence, I would recommend that
our trial procedures be modified to prevent any possible miscarriages of
justice due to primacy or recency effects.
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(5) The Size of the Discrepancy:
Suppose you are talking to an audience that strongly disagrees with your
point of view. Will you be more effective if you present your position in
its most extreme form or if you modulate your position by presenting it in
such a way that it does not seem terribly different from the audience's
position? For example, suppose you believe people should exercise vigorously
every day to stay healthy; any physical activity would be helpful, but at
least an hour's worth would be preferable. Your audience consists of college
professors who seem to believe turning the pages of a book is sufficient
exercise for the average person. Would you change their opinion to a greater
extent by arguing that people should begin a rigorous daily program of
running, swimming, and calisthenics or by suggesting a briefer, less-taxing
regimen? In short, what is the most effective level of discrepancy between
the opinion of the audience and the recommendation of the communicator? This
is a vital issue for any propagandist or educator.
Let us look at this situation from the audience's point of view. As I
mentioned in Chapter 2, most of us have a strong desire to be correctóto
have the "right" opinions and to perform reasonable actions. When someone
comes along and disagrees with us, it makes us feel uncomfortable because it
suggests our opinions or actions may be wrong or based on misinformation.
The greater the disagreement, the greater our discomfort. How can we reduce
this discomfort? Simply by changing our opinions or actions. The greater the
disagreement, the greater our opinion change will be. This line of
reasoning, then, would suggest that the communicator should argue for the
daily program of rigorous exercise; the greater the discrepancy, the more
the opinion change. Indeed, several investigators have found that this
linear relation holds true. A good example of this relation was provided by
an experiment by Philip Zim-bardo. Each of the college women recruited as
subjects for the experiment was asked to bring a close friend with her to
the laboratory. Each pair of friends was presented with a case study of
juvenile delinquency, and then each of the subjects was asked, separately
and in private, to indicate her recommendations on the matter. Each subject
was led to believe her close friend disagreed with heróeither by a small
margin or by an extremely large margin. Zimbardo found that the greater the
apparent discrepancy, the more the subjects changed their opinions toward
what they supposed were the opinions of their friends.
However, a careful look at the research literature also turns up several
experiments disconfirming the line of reasoning presented above. For
example, James Whittaker found a curvilinear relation between discrepancy
and opinion change. By curvilinear, I mean that, as a small discrepancy
increased somewhat, so did the degree of opinion change; but as the
discrepancy continued to increase, opinion change began to slacken; and
finally, as the discrepancy became large, the amount of opinion change
became very small. When the discrepancy was very large, almost no opinion
change was observed.
Building on Whittaker's finding, Carl Hovland, O. J. Harvey, and Muzafer
Sherif argued that, if a particular communication differs considerably from
a person's own position, it is, in effect, outside of one's latitude of
acceptance, and the individual will not be much influenced by it. In the
experiment by Hovland and his colleagues, the communication was based on a
red-hot issueóone the subjects felt strongly about: whether their state
should remain "dry" or "go wet"óthat is, whether or not to change the law
prohibiting the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. The voters of
the state were virtually equally divided on this issue, and the subjects
were a representative sample: Some of the subjects felt strongly that the
state should remain dry, others felt strongly that it should go wet, and the
rest took a moderate position. The subjects were divided into groups of
people reflecting all three positions. The members of each group were
presented with communications supporting one of the three opinions, so that,
in each group, there were subjects who found the communication close to
their own position, some who found it moderately discrepant from their own
position, and some who found it extremely discrepant from their own
position. Specifically, some groups were presented with a "wet" message,
which argued for the unlimited and unrestricted sale of liquor; some groups
were presented with a "dry" message, which argued for complete prohibition;
and some groups were presented with a moderately "wet" message, which argued
to allow some drinking but with certain controls and restrictions. The
greatest opinion changes occurred when there was a moderate discrepancy
between the actual message and the opinions of individual members of the
groups.
For a scientist, this is an exciting state of affairs. When a substantial
number of research findings point in one direction and a similarly
substantial number of research findings point in a different direction, it
doesn't necessarily mean someone has to be wrong; rather, it suggests there
is a significant factor that hasn't been accounted foróand this is indeed
exciting, for it gives the scientist an opportunity to play detective. I beg
the reader's indulgence here, for I would like to dwell on this issueónot
only for its substantive value, but also because it provides us with an
opportunity to analyze one of the more adventurous aspects of social
psychology as a science. Basically, there are two ways of proceeding with
this game of detective. We can begin by assembling all the experiments that
show one result and all those that show the other result and (imaginary
magnifying glass in hand) painstakingly scrutinize them, looking for the one
factor common to the experiments in group A and lacking in group B; then we
can try to determine, conceptually, why this factor should make a
difference. Or, conversely, we can begin by speculating conceptually about
what factor or factors might make a difference; then we can glance through
the existing literature, with this conceptual lantern in hand, to see if
those in group A differ from those in group B on this dimension.
As a scientist, my personal preference is for the second mode. Accordingly,
with two of my studentsóJudith Turner and Merrill CarlsmithóI began to
speculate about what factor or factors might make such a difference. We
began by accepting the notion discussed above: The greater the discrepancy,
the greater the discomfort for the members of the audience. But we reasoned
that this does not necessarily mean the members of an audience will change
their opinion. There are at least four ways in which the members of an
audience can reduce their discomfort: (1) they can change their opinion; (2)
they can induce the communicator to change his or her opinion; (3) they can
seek support for their original opinion by finding other people who share
their views, in spite of what the communicator says; or (4) they can
derogate the communicatoró convince themselves the communicator is stupid or
immoralóand thereby invalidate that person's opinion.
In many communication situations, including those in these experiments, the
message is delivered either as a written statement (as a newspaper or
magazine article, for example) or by a communicator who is not approachable
by the audience (as on television, on the lecture platform, and so on).
Also, the subject is often alone or part of an audience whose members have
no opportunity to interact with each other. Thus, under these circumstances,
it is virtually impossible for the recipients of the communication either to
have immediate impact on the communicator's opinion or to seek immediate
social support. This leaves the recipients two major ways of reducing this
discomfort: They can change their opinion, or they can derogate the
communicator.
Under what circumstances would an individual find it easy or difficult to
derogate the communicator? It would be very difficult to derogate a liked
and respected personal friend; it would also be difficult to derogate
someone who is a highly trustworthy expert on the issue under discussion.
But if the communicator's credibility were questionable, it would be
difficult not to derogate him or her. Following this line of reasoning, we
suggested that, if a communicator's credibility were high, the greater the
discrepancy between the communicator's opinions and the audience's opinions,
the greater the influence exerted on the opinions of the audience. However,
if the communicator's credibility were not very high, he or she would be, by
definition, subject to derogation. This is not to say that the communicator
couldn't influence the opinions of the audience. The communicator would
probably be able to influence people to change their opinions if his or her
opinions were not too different from theirs. But the more discrepant such a
communicator's position is from those of the audience, the more the audience
might begin to question his or her wisdom, intelligence, and sanity. The
more they question his or her wisdom, intelligence, and sanity, the less
likely they are to be influenced.
Let's return to our example involving physical exercise: Imagine a
73-year-old man, with the body of a man half his age, who had just won the
Boston Marathon. If he told me that a good way to stay in condition and live
a long, healthy life was to exercise vigorously for at least 2 hours every
day, I would believe him. Boy, would I believe him! He would get much more
exercise out of me than if he suggested I should exercise for only 10
minutes a day. But suppose a person somewhat less credible, such as a
high-school track coach, were delivering the communication. If he suggested
I exercise 10 minutes a day, his suggestion would be within my own latitude
of acceptance, and he might influence my opinion and behavior. But if he
advised me to embark on a program of vigorous exercise requiring 2 hours
every day, I would be inclined to write him off as a quack, a health freak,
a monomaniacóand I could comfortably continue being indolent. Thus, I would
agree with Hovland, Harvey, and Sherif: People will consider an extremely
discrepant communication to be outside their latitude of acceptanceóbut only
if the communicator is not highly credible.
Armed with these speculations, my students and I scrutinized the existing
experiments on this issue, paying special attention to the ways in which the
communicator was described. Lo and behold, we discovered that each of the
experiments showing a direct linear relation between discrepancy and opinion
change happened to describe the source of the communication as more credible
than did those whose results showed a curvilinear relation. This confirmed
our speculations about the role of credibility. But we didn't stop there: We
constructed an experiment in which we systematically investigated the size
of the discrepancy and the credibility of the communicator in one research
design. In this experiment, college women were asked to read several stanzas
from obscure modern poetry and to rank them in terms of how good they were.
Then each woman was given an essay to read purporting to be a criticism of
modern poetry that specifically mentioned a stanza she had rated as poor.
For some subjects, the essayist described this particular stanza in glowing
terms; this created a large discrepancy between the opinion of the
communicator and the opinion voiced by the students in this experimental
condition. For some subjects, the essayist was only mildly favorable in the
way he described the stanza; this set up a moderate discrepancy between the
essayist and the students in this condition. In a third condition, the
essayist was mildly scornful in his treatment of the stanzaówhich placed the
recipients of this communication in a mild-discrepancy situation. Finally,
to one-half of the women in the experiment, the writer of the essay was
identified as the poet T. S. Eliot, a highly credible poetry critic; to the
rest of the subjects, the essay writer was identified as a college student.
The subjects were subsequently allowed to rank the stanzas once again. When
T. S. Eliot was ostensibly the communicator, the essay had the most
influence on the students when its evaluation of the stanza was most
discrepant from theirs; when a fellow student of medium credibility was
identified as the essayist, the essay produced a little opinion change when
it was slightly discrepant from the opinion of the students, a great deal of
change when it was moderately discrepant, and only a little opinion change
when it was extremely discrepant.
To sum up this section, the conflicting results are accounted for: When a
communicator has high credibility, the greater the discrepancy between the
view he or she advocates and the view of the audience, the more the audience
will be persuaded; on the other hand, when a communicator's credibility is
doubtful or slim, he or she will produce maximum opinion change with
moderate discrepancy.
######################################
(6) Characteristics of the Audience
######################################
All listeners, readers, or viewers are not alike. Some people are more
difficult to persuade. In addition, as we have seen, the kind of
communication that appeals to one person may not appeal to another. For
example, recall that the level of knowledge audience members possess and
their prior opinions will play major roles in determining whether a
two-sided communication will be more effective than a one-sided
communication.
-----------------------------------------
(A) Self-Esteem.
What effect does an individual's personality have on his or her
persuasibility? The one personality variable most consistently related to
persuasibility is self-esteem. Individuals who feel inadequate are more
easily influenced by a persuasive communication than individuals who think
highly of themselves. This seems reasonable enough; after all, if people
don't like themselves, then it follows that they don't place a very high
premium on their own ideas. Consequently, if their ideas are challenged,
they may be willing to give them up. Recall that people want to be right. If
Sam, who has high self-esteem, listens to a communication at variance with
his own opinion, he must make up his mind whether he stands a better chance
of being right if he changes his opinion or if he stands pat. A person with
high self-esteem may experience some conflict when he finds himself in
disagreement with a highly credible communicator. He might resolve this
conflict by changing his opinion, or he might remain firm. But if Sam had
low self-esteem, there would be little or no conflict. Because he doesn't
think very highly of himself, he probably believes he stands a better chance
of being right if he goes along with the communicator.
-----------------------------------------
(B) Prior Experience of the Audience.
Another audience-related factor of considerable importance is the frame of
mind the audience is in just prior to the communication. An audience can be
made receptive to a communication if it has been well fed and is relaxed and
happy. Indeed, as Irving Janis and his associates have discovered, people
who have been allowed to eat desirable food while reading a persuasive
communication are more influenced by what they read than are people in a
control (noneating) group. Similarly, research by Richard Petty and his
colleagues suggests that being in a good mood can make people more
vulnerable to persuasion.
Conversely, there are ways in which members of an audience can be made less
receptive and less persuadable. As I noted, people predict they will be able
to resist persuasive communications such as television commercials.
Accordingly, one way of decreasing their persuasibility is by forewarning
them that an attempt is going to be made to persuade them. This is
especially true if the content of the message differs from their own
beliefs. I would argue that the phrase "And now, a message from our sponsor"
renders that message less persuasive than it would have been if the
communicator had simply glided into it without prologue. The forewarning
seems to say, "Watch out, I'm going to try to persuade you," and people tend
to respond by marshaling defenses against the message. This phenomenon was
demonstrated in an experiment by Jonathan Freedman and David Sears.
Teenagers were told they would be hearing a talk entitled "Why Teenagers
Should Not Be Allowed to Drive." Ten minutes later, the speaker presented
them with a prepared communication. In a control condition, the same talk
was given without the 10-minute forewarning. The subjects in the control
condition were more thoroughly convinced by the communication than were
those who had been forewarned.
-----------------------------------------
(C) People tend to protect their sense of freedom.
According to Jack Brehm's theory of reactance, when our sense of freedom is
threatened, we attempt to restore it. For example, I like to receive
birthday presents. But if a borderline student (in danger of flunking my
course) presented me with an expensive birthday present just as I was about
to read term papers, I would feel uncomfortable. My sense of freedom or
autonomy would be challenged. Similarly, persuasive communications, if
blatant or coercive, can be perceived as intruding upon one's freedom of
choice, activating one's defenses to resist the messages. For example, if an
aggressive salesperson tells me I must buy something, my first reaction is
to reassert my independence by leaving the store.
In an experiment by Lillian Bensley and Rui Wu, college students watched one
of two messages opposed to the drinking of alcoholic beverages. One was a
heavy-handed, dogmatic message stating that there was no safe amount of
alcohol and that all people should abstain all the time. The second message
was a milder one that stressed the importance of controlling one's drinking.
The second message was far more effective in getting people to reduce their
consumption of alcohol. This was especially true for heavy drinkersówho
almost certainly experienced the most reactance when confronted with the
heavy-handed message.
-----------------------------------------
(D) Reactance can operate in a number of interesting ways.
Suppose that, as I walk down the street, I am gently asked to sign a
petition. I don't know much about the issue, and as it is being explained to
me, another person accosts us and begins to pressure me not to sign.
Reactance theory predicts that, to counteract this pressure and reassert my
freedom of choice, I would be more likely to sign. This scenario was
actually staged by Madeline Heilman, and the results confirmed her
prediction that, under most circumstances, the more intense the attempts to
prevent subjects from signing the petition, the more likely they were to
sign. Of course, as we have seen in this chapter and the preceding one,
people can be and are influenced and do comply with implicit social
pressures, as in the Asch experiment. But when those pressures are so
blatant that they threaten people's feeling of freedom, they not only resist
them but tend to react in the opposite direction.
There is still another aspect of this need for freedom and autonomy that
should be mentioned. All other things being equal, when faced with
information that runs counter to important beliefs, people have a tendency,
whenever feasible, to invent counter-arguments on the spot. In this way,
they are able to prevent their opinions from being unduly influenced and
protect their sense of autonomy. But it is possible to overcome some of this
resistance. Leon Festinger and Nathan Maccoby conducted an experiment in
which they attempted to prevent members of their audience from inventing
arguments to refute the message being presented to them. This was
accomplished by simply distracting the audience somewhat while the
communication was being presented. Two groups of students who belonged to a
college fraternity were required to listen to a tape-recorded argument about
the evils of college fraternities. The argument was erudite, powerful, and,
as you might imagine, widely discrepant from their beliefs. During the
presentation of the communication, one of the groups was distracted.
Specifically, they were shown a highly entertaining silent film. Festinger
and Maccoby reasoned that, because this group was engaged in two tasks
simultaneouslyólistening to the tape-recorded argument against fraternities
and watching an entertaining filmótheir minds would be so occupied they
would have little or no opportunity to think up arguments to refute the
tape-recorded message. The members of the control group, on the other hand,
were not distracted by a film; therefore, they would be better able to
devote some of their thoughts to resisting the communication by thinking up
counterarguments. The results of the experiment confirmed this reasoning.
The students who were distracted by watching the film underwent
substantially more opinion change against fraternities than did those who
were not distracted.
Let us take a closer look at the other side of the issue. How can we help
people to resist attempts to influence them? An elaborate method for
inducing such resistance has been developed by William McGuire and his
associates. This method has been appropriately dubbed the inoculation
effect. We have already seen that a two-sided (refutational) presentation is
more effective for convincing most audiences than a one-sided presentation.
Expanding on this phenomenon, McGuire suggested that, if people receive
prior exposure to a brief communication that they are then able to refute,
they tend to be "immunized" against a subsequent full-blown presentation of
the same argument, in much the same way that a small amount of an attenuated
virus immunizes people against a full-blown attack by that virus. In an
experiment by William McGuire and Dimitri Papa-georgis, a group of people
stated their opinions; these opinions were then subjected to a mild
attackóand the attack was refuted. These people were subsequently subjected
to a powerful argument against their initial opinions. Members of this group
showed a much smaller tendency to change their opinions than did the members
of a control group whose opinions had not been previously subjected to the
mild attack. In effect, they had been inoculated against opinion change and
made relatively immune. Thus, not only is it often more effective as a
propaganda technique to use a two-sided refutational presentation, but if it
is used skillfully, such a presentation tends to increase the audience's
resistance to subsequent counterpropaganda.
In an interesting field experiment, Alfred McAlister and his colleagues
inoculated seventh-grade students against existing peer pressure to smoke
cigarettes. For example, the students were shown advertisements (popular at
the time) implying that truly liberated women are smokersó"You've come a
long way, baby!" They were then inoculated by being taught that a woman
couldn't possibly be liberated if she were hooked on nicotine. Similarly,
because many teenagers begin smoking, in part, because it seems "cool" or
"tough" (like the Marlboro man), peer pressure took the form of being called
"chicken" if one didn't smoke. Accordingly, McAlister set up a situation to
counteract that process; the seventh graders role-played a situation in
which they practiced countering that argument by saying something like "I'd
be a real chicken if I smoked just to impress you." This inoculation against
peer pressure proved to be very effective. By the time the students were in
the ninth grade, they were half as likely to smoke as those in a control
group from a similar junior high school.
Research has found that, in producing resistance, inoculation is most
effective when the belief under attack is a cultural truism. A cultural
truism is a belief accepted as unquestionably true by most members of a
society, like "The United States is the most wonderful country in the world"
or "If people are willing to work hard, they can succeed." Cultural truisms
are rarely called into question; consequently, it is relatively easy for us
to lose sight of why we hold those beliefs. Thus, if subjected to a severe
attack, these beliefs may crumble. To motivate us to bolster our beliefs, we
must be made aware of their vulnerability, and the best way to do this is to
be forced to a mild attack on those beliefs. Prior exposure, in the form of
a watered-down attack on our beliefs, produces resistance to later
persuasion because (1) we become motivated to defend our beliefs and (2) we
gain some practice in defending these beliefs by being forced to examine why
we hold them. We are then better equipped to resist a more serious attack.
This is an important point that was frequently ignored or misunderstood by
policymakers during the height of the Cold War. For example, in the
aftermath of the Korean War, when there was a great deal of fear about the
possibility that our prisoners of war had been systematically "brainwashed"
by the Chinese Communists, a Senate committee recommended that, in order to
build resistance among our young people to brainwashing and other forms of
Communist propaganda, courses on "patriotism and Americanism" should be
instituted in our public school system. But my reading of the research on
inoculation led me to an entirely different conclusion. Specifically, I
asserted that the best way to help people resist antidemocratic propaganda
would be to challenge their belief in democracy, and the best way to build
resistance to one-sided Communist propaganda would be to teach fair,
even-handed courses on Communism in high schools. At the height of the Cold
War, such a suggestion was undoubtedly considered subversive by those
politicians who were terrified at the prospect of our young people learning
anything positive about Communism. The fear was that this would make them
more vulnerable to propaganda. But historical events have supported the
social psychological research, showing that, if one wants to mitigate
against simplistic propaganda, there is no substitute for free inquiry into
ideas of all kinds. The person who is easiest to brainwash is the person
whose beliefs are based on slogans that have never been seriously
challenged.
---------------------------------------------------
(E) How Well Do the Principles Work?
Suppose you inherited controlling interest in a television network. Here is
a golden opportunity to influence people's opinions on important issues.
Let's say you are an enthusiastic proponent of national health insurance,
and you would like to persuade others to agree with you. Having just
finished reading this chapter, you know how to do it, and you are in control
of a very powerful medium of communication. How do you set about doing it?
That's simple: You choose a time slot following a highly intellectual
program (in order to be certain that well-informed people are watching), and
accordingly, you present a two-sided argument (because two-sided arguments
work best on well-informed people). You arrange your arguments in such a
manner that the argument in favor of national health insurance is stronger
and appears first (in order to take advantage of the primacy effect). You
describe the plight of the poor, how they get sick and die for lack of
affordable medical care. You use vivid personal examples of people you know.
You discuss these events in a manner that inspires a great deal of fear; at
the same time, you offer a specific plan of action because this combination
produces the most opinion change and the most action in the most people. You
present some of the arguments against your position and offer strong
refutation of these arguments. You arrange for the speaker to be expert,
trustworthy, and extremely likable. You make your argument as strongly as
you can in order to maximize the discrepancy between the argument presented
and the initial attitude of the audience. And then you sit back, relax, and
wait for those opinions to start changing.
It's not that simple. Imagine a typical viewer: Let's say she is a
45-year-old middle-class real estate broker who believes the government
interferes too much in the private lives of individuals. She feels any form
of social legislation undermines the spirit of individuality that is the
essence of democracy. She comes across your program while looking for an
evening's entertainment. She begins to hear your arguments in favor of
national health insurance. As she listens, she becomes slightly less
confident in her original convictions. She is not quite as certain as she
had been that the government shouldn't intervene in matters of health. What
does she do? If she is anything like the subjects in Lance Canon's
experiment, she would most likely reach for her remote control "zapper" and
switch channels to "Wheel of Fortune." Canon found that, as one's confidence
is weakened, a person becomes less prone to listen to arguments against his
or her beliefs. Thus, the very people you most want to convince, and whose
opinions might be the most susceptible to change, are the ones least likely
to continue to expose themselves to a communication designed for that
purpose.
Must you resign yourself to broadcasting your message to an audience
composed of viewers who already support national health insurance? That
maybe soóif you insist on airing a serious documentary devoted to the issue.
After considering your alternatives, however, you might decide to take
another approach. You call a meeting of your network executives. The
programming director is instructed to commission a couple of scripts
dramatizing the plight of families facing financial ruin due to the costs
associated with serious illness. You order the news department to
investigate the success of national health insurance in other countries.
Finally, you provide the late-night talk show host with a couple of jokes he
might tell about his inept but affluent doctor. While none of these
communications would match the documentary in terms of the information
provided, their cumulative impact could be more significant. Embedded in
dramas or news segments, they would not necessarily be labeled as arguments
supporting national health insurance; they seem innocuous, but their message
is clear. Not appearing to be explicit attempts at persuasion, they should
arouse little resistance, avoiding an inoculation effect and inhibiting the
formation of counterarguments by distracting the audience. Most important,
people will probably see them; they would not switch channels.
I do not mean to imply that television executives conspire to disguise
persuasive communications within other contexts, but as I stated near the
beginning of this chapter, television plays a major role in shaping how we
perceive the world. The sheer volume of television Americans see is
staggering. The typical household's television set is turned on for over 7
hours a day, and the average American watches 30 hours of television a
weekóthat's a little over 1,500 hours a year. At that rate, if you are an
average viewer, you will see about 37,800 commercials a year, or more than
100 a day. The average high-school graduate has spent much less time in the
classroom than in front of the television.
The medium has impact, and the view of reality it transmits seldom remains
value-free. George Gerbner and his associates have conducted the most
extensive analysis of television yet. Since the late 1960s, these
researchers have been videotaping and carefully analyzing thousands of
prime-time television programs and characters. Their findings, taken as a
whole, suggest that television's representation of reality is grossly
inaccurate and misleading. In prime-time programming, males outnumber
females by almost 3 to 1, and women are depicted as younger and less
experienced than the men they encounter on television. Nonwhites (especially
Latinos and Asian Americans) and the elderly are underrepre-sented, and
members of minority groups are disproportionately cast in minor roles.
Moreover, most prime-time characters are portrayed as professional and
managerial workers: Although 67 percent of the workforce in the United
States is employed in a blue-collar or service job, only 25 percent of
television characters hold such jobs. Finally, crime on television is at
least 10 times as prevalent as in real life. Over half of television's
characters are involved in a violent confrontation each week; in reality,
less than 1 percent of Americans are victims of criminal violence in any
given year, according to FBI statistics. During the past several years,
according to FBI statistics, the rate of violent crime has actually been
decreasing in this countryóbut on TV, violent crime is on the increase.
David Rintels, a television writer and former president of the Writers Guild
of America, summed it up best when he said, "From 8 to 11 o'clock each
night, television is one long lie."
Gerbner and his associates have also compared the attitudes and beliefs of
heavy viewers (those who watch more than 4 hours a day) and light viewers
(those who watch less than 2 hours a day). They found that heavy viewers (1)
express more racially prejudiced attitudes; (2) overestimate the number of
people employed as physicians, lawyers, and athletes; (3) perceive women as
having more limited abilities and interests than men; (4) hold exaggerated
views about the prevalence of violence in society; and (5) believe old
people are fewer in number and less healthy today than they were 20 years
ago, even though, in actuality, the opposite is true. What's more, heavy
viewers tend to see the world as a more sinister place than light viewers;
they are likely to agree that most people are just looking out for
themselves and would take advantage of you if they had a chance. Gerbner
concludes that these attitudes and beliefs reflect the inaccurate portrayals
of American life provided to us by television.*
*It should be noted that Gerbner's research is correlational, not
experimental. It is therefore impossible to determine whether heavy viewing
actually causes prejudiced attitudes and inaccurate beliefs or whether
people already holding such attitudes and beliefs simply tend to watch more
television. To bolster their conclusions, Gerbner and his associates sampled
viewers from all age, education, income, and ethnic groups. After taking
such viewer characteristics into account, they found that the relationship
between heavy viewing and inaccurate beliefs still occurred in every
category.
Of course, each of us has had extensive personal contact with many people in
myriad social contexts; the media are just one source of our knowledge about
the sexes and about different ethnic or occupational groups. The information
and impressions we receive through the media are probably less influential
when we can also rely on firsthand experience. Thus, those of us who have
been in close contact with several women in jobs outside of the home are
probably less susceptible to the stereotypes of women portrayed on
television. On the other hand, while each of us has formed conceptions about
crime and violence, it is unlikely that many of those opinions developed
from our personal experience. For most of us, television is virtually our
only vivid source of information about crime. A major portion of television
programming consists of crime showsóthe average 15-year-old has viewed over
13,000 television killings. Moreover, several studies have shown that crime
dramas (like "NYPD Blue," "Law & Order," "Homicide") dispense remarkably
consistent images of both the police and criminals. For example, on TV,
police officers are amazingly effective, solving almost every crime, and are
infallible in one regard: The wrong person is almost never in jail at the
end of a show. Television fosters an illusion of certainty in crime
fighting. Television criminals generally turn to crime because of
psychopathology or insatiable (and unnecessary) greed. Television emphasizes
criminals' personal responsibility for their actions and largely ignores
situational pressures correlated with crime, such as poverty and
unemployment. This portrayal has important social consequences. People who
watch a lot of television come to adopt this belief system, which affects
their expectations and can cause them to take a hard-line stance when
serving on juries. Heavy viewers are likely to reverse the presumption of
innocence, believing that defendants must be guilty of something; otherwise,
they wouldn't have been brought to trial.
It has also been shown that the incidence of larceny (theft) increases when
television is introduced into an area. Why should this be the case? The most
reasonable explanation is that television promotes the consumption of goods
through advertisements; it also depicts upper-class and middle-class
lifestyles as the norm. This illusion of widespread wealth and consumption
may frustrate and anger deprived viewers who compare their lifestyles with
those portrayed on television, thereby motivating them to "share in the
American dream" any way they can.
It is nearly impossible to specify the precise extent to which exposure to
the media influences public opinion and behavior. Too many other factors are
involved. Because the research described above is not experimental, it is
difficult to separate the effects of mass communications from the impact of
personal experiences and contact with family and friends. But experiments
can be done. For example, let's suppose that, as the network executive, you
went ahead with your original plan to televise the documentary on national
health care. In this instance, it would be relatively easy for you to
determine whether your message was persuasive. At the most basic level, both
before and after the telecast, you could poll cross sections of viewers
about their opinions concerning national health insurance. If they changed
in a favorable direction, you might conclude your program was effective. If
you were interested in maximizing its effectiveness, you might tape several
versions of the documentary to test different speakers, arguments, and
styles of presentation. If you presented these versions to various test
audiences, you could compare the effects of different combinations of
factors. Indeed, this scenario approximates the way most of the research
described earlier in this chapter was carried out. Communications about a
variety of topics were prepared. Certain aspects of the presentation were
systematically variedóthe credibility of the speakers, for example, or the
order of the argumentsóand the resulting versions of the message were
presented to audiences. When audience opinion is polled, the effects of the
variables can be measured. This procedure allows great control over the
message and is well suited for testing large numbers of subjects. This
method is so efficient, in fact, that it has been adapted to a
computer-controlled procedure for varying certain factors surrounding the
messages and presenting them to people seated at computer consoles. With the
advent of cable television networks that have the technological capability
for home viewers to communicate back to the station, such as the QUBE-TV
system, it is now possible to instantaneously sample the responses of
thousands of viewers to actual presentations.
Suppose that, instead of deciding to televise the documentary, you opted to
broadcast the series of more subtle messages disguised within the regular
programs and presented repeatedly. It would be much more difficult to
measure and assess the impact of this approach, but it probably is more
common. Rarely are we presented with explicit persuasive messages in favor
of a given position immediately prior to deciding on an issue, except
perhaps during political campaigns. Most of our beliefs develop more
gradually, through repeated contacts with people and information over an
extended period of time. In general, it is difficult to change important
beliefs through direct communication. There appears to be a basic difference
between an issue like national health insurance, on the one hand, and issues
like the feasibility of atomic-powered submarines, whether antihistamines
should be sold without a prescription, and the practical importance of
arithmetic, on the other. What is the difference? One possible difference is
that the medical-care issue feels more important. But what is the criterion
for judging whether an issue is important or trivial?
To provide an answer to this question, we must first examine what we mean by
the term opinion, which has been used throughout this chapter. On the
simplest level, an opinion is what a person believes to be factually true.
Thus, it is my opinion that there are fewer than 15,000 students enrolled at
the University of California at Santa Cruz, that wearing seat belts reduces
traffic fatalities, and that New York City is hot in the summer. Such
opinions are primarily cognitiveóthat is, they take place in the head rather
than in the gut. They are also transientóthat is, they can be changed by
good, clear evidence to the contrary. Thus, if the consumer advocate Ralph
Nader (whom I regard as a highly credible source on the traffic issue)
presented me with data indicating that seat belts, as they are currently
constructed, do not reduce fatalities significantly, I would change my
opinion on that issue.
On the other hand, suppose a person holds the opinion that Jews engage in
"sharp" business practices, or that Asians are sneaky, or that people under
25 have special wisdom, or that the United States of America is the greatest
(or most awful) country in the history of the world, or that New York City
is a jungle. How do these opinions differ from the ones stated in the
preceding paragraph? They tend to be both emotional and evaluativeóthat is,
they imply likes or dislikes. Believing Asians are sneaky implies that the
person doesn't like Asians. The opinion that New York City is a jungle is
different from the opinion that New York City is hot in the summer. The
opinion that New York City is a jungle is not simply cognitive; it carries
with it a negative evaluation and some degree of fear or anxiety. An opinion
that includes an evaluative and an emo- ; tional component is called an
attitude. Compared to opinions, attitudes are extremely difficult to change.
Suppose Sam is an ardent and careful consumer who is deeply concerned about
matters of health. Over the years, he has come to trust Ralph Nader's
research on many issues, including unsafe cars, cholesterol in hot dogs,
hazardous electrical appliances, air pollution, and so on. But, further,
suppose that Sam happens to be a white supremacist who believes that the
white race is intellectually superior to all other races. What if Ralph
Nader conducted an exhaustive study indicating that, when given culture-free
intelligence tests, racial minorities score as high as whites? Would this
information be likely to change Sam's attitude? Probably not. How come?
Doesn't Sam regard Nader as a careful researcher? It is my guess that,
because the issue is rooted in emotion, Nader's findings about intelligence
testing would not influence Sam as easily or as thoroughly as Nader's
findings about cars, cholesterol, or pollution. Attitudes are harder to
change than simple opinions.
Human thinking is not always logical. Although we humans are capable of
accurate and subtle thinking, we are equally capable of distortions and
great sloppiness in our thought processes. In order to understand how to
change attitudes, first it is essential to understand the complexities of
human thinking as well as the motives that lead people to resist change.
These are interesting and important issues that I will explore in the next
two chapters. Chapter 4 is an attempt to understand how people construe and
misconstrue social events; chapter 5 is a description of the major motives
underlying construal and misconstrual.
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The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/