Elaboration Likelihood Model

Link to the advertisement for this blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMU1OKFluQQ

As ridiculous as it might be, this Disney advertisement is one of my favorite ads ever. I love anything Disney whatsoever and this commercial is like every kid’s fairy tale. It makes me cry every time I watch it (pathetic I know!). Clearly, the commercial evokes some strong emotions in me and is very effective. It makes me want to drop everything and go to Disney World right that second! The powerful persuasion behind this can be explained by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

The ELM proposes that there are two paths to persuasion: the central and peripheral route (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The central route is when people think carefully through the contents of the message, so they are persuaded by the strength and quality of the information (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The peripheral route is when a person is not motivated to critically analyze the information; instead they focus on superficial cues (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The route that we take depends on our motivation (our involvement or personal relevance) and ability to process the information (cognitive load, knowledge, time) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Persuasive communication also comes from three factors: the source (who), the message (content), and the audience (to whom) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Specifically in this Disney advertisement, the message is the main factor of persuasion. The advertisement provokes strong positive emotions, which induce a change in attitude (Schwarz et al., 1991). Research shows that people are easier to persuade when they are in a good mood (Schwarz et al., 1991). A study by Janis et al. (1965) found that people are more likely to agree with a controversial argument when they are given snacks and drinks, putting them in a good mood. Another study by Mathur and Chattopadhyay (1991) discovered that people liked TV advertisements better when they were during a happy TV show than when they were during a sad TV show. When we are happy, we become more sociable, more optimistic in our outlook, and we make decisions more quickly and with little consideration (Isen, 1984). Therefore, positive feelings can activate the peripheral route to persuasion so that superficial cues have more influence (Isen, 1984). In the case of this Disney advertisement, the positive emotions put the audience in a better mood, so they are easily persuaded into wanting to visit Disney World. If only I could actually go!

References:

Isen, A. M. (1984). Toward understanding the role of affect in cognition. In R. S. Wyer & T. K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (Vol. 3, pp. 179-236). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Janis, I. L., Kaye, D., & Kirschner, P. (1965). Facilitating effects of “eating while reading” on responsiveness to persuasive communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 181-186.

Mathur, M., & Chattopadhyay, A. (1991). The impact of moods generated by TV programs on responses to advertising. Psychology and Marketing, 8, 59-77.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Schwarz, N., Bless, H., & Bohner, G. (1991). Mood and persuasion: Affective states influence the processing of persuasive communications. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 24, pp. 161-199). New York: Academic Press.

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Taking the IAT

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), first developed by Greenwald and others (1998), tests our subconscious prejudices against different groups of people. Sometimes we know our prejudices, sometimes its not so obvious to us. I took two different IAT tests: one for age and one for race. The IAT for race is a well known measure for implicit racism, which is racism that runs unconsciously and without our awareness of it (Eberhardt et al., 2006). It works by measuring how quickly participants pair African Americans with negative and positive words compared with how quickly they make the same associations with European Americans. I did not believe I would be high in prejudice towards the elderly or African Americans, but surprisingly, both tests showed I had a slight prejudice. The results were definitely inconsistent with what I believed they would be.

The entire experience of taking the IAT was eye-opening. Like most people, I like to think I don’t have any prejudices, but I guess they are really unavoidable. I definitely don’t consciously change my behavior towards the elderly or African Americans, the attitudes are subconscious. My attitudes most likely stem from my upbringing (raised in a conservative family) and all the cultural associations in the media that we see all the time. The IAT probably is fairly accurate and reflects my true attitudes, no matter how much I don’t want to believe it.

Completing the IAT made me realize how inescapable prejudice can be sometimes. Even when you consciously think you hold no prejudices and don’t want to be prejudiced, they still pop up. Since the attitudes are all subconscious, it makes me wonder if I have ever subconsciously treated these groups of people differently. Greenwald et al. (2009) found that white people with implicit racism tend to have more negative nonverbal behaviors in interracial interactions (physical distance or no eye contact). I would never consciously behave differently towards people just because they are older or African American, so I was astonished to get these results. Taking these IAT’s was extremely eye-opening and an interesting experience!

References:

Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdier-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17, 383-386.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.

Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta- Analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 17- 41.

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Optimism: A Key to Happiness

For my participant observer blog, I chose to change one trait about myself for a day. I decided to be overly optimistic and not complain at all. This past week has been a rough one for me. Last Wednesday night at volleyball practice, I broke my pinky finger. This may seem like a weeny injury (and yes it kind of is) but my pinky is completely at a 90° angle. It’s a spiral fracture, so it needs surgery to fix and I’m out for 6-8 weeks. This is the rest of my senior volleyball season. I was devastated and for the first couple days, I woke up every morning feeling depressed all over again. It was hard not to complain each day. Normally, I feel like I’m a pretty happy person and may complain occasionally, but overall I’m pretty positive. For this blog, I decided to challenge myself to be happy and cheerful despite the new circumstances.

For the past week it seems like anytime anyone sees me they get this shocked look on their face and immediately ask what happened and start apologizing. Especially other athletes who can really sympathize that my volleyball career is over. It was hard not to complain about having surgery, not being able to do my hair with one hand, how difficult it is to take a shower, more difficult to write/type, etc. Instead of complaining, on my “Positive Polly” day I talked about how supportive my team has been, how my family will be there for the surgery, and how I’ll come out of this stronger than before. At first, it was extremely difficult to remain positive, but throughout the day, it became easier and the responses came almost naturally.

People responded so positively to me after I had a positive outlook on everything! They were even more encouraging than before (if that is at all possible). It put me in such a better mood and then I really started to feel better about the entire situation. It was crazy how just one day of focusing on being optimistic really changed my outlook and made me so much happier. According to Myers and Diener (1997), optimism is one of the key characteristics of happy people, along with high self-esteem, a feeling of control over one’s life, and extroversion. Therefore, forcing myself to be more optimistic for a day made me feel better and led me to accept the situation. Although some people are more optimistic than others, optimism can be increased or decreased in specific situations (Armor & Taylor, 1998). Optimism can be flexible in some cases and I was able to increase my optimism, which led to a corresponding increase in happiness.

Taylor’s self-enhancement position states that we want a positive self-esteem because it feels good and its adaptive (Taylor, 1989). One area of evidence of this theory is self-serving beliefs, which is when we reinforce good outcomes with good characteristics about ourselves and we blame bad outcomes on situational factors (Shepperd, 1993). For me, this meant I blamed my injury and subsequent end of season on my injury (situational) instead of on personal factors (less talented, weak). In addition, Seligman (1991) states that optimists blame failure on external and temporary factors. I was able to avoid blows to my self-esteem because I could attribute my failure to a temporary injury that wasn’t my fault. Another way we protect our self-esteem is with downward social comparisons, which are comparisons with people who are worse off than you (Wills, 1981). I have done this so many times in the past week it is slightly ridiculous. Before I even knew for sure my finger was broken at the ER, I was waiting with the SU athletic trainer and I asked her what the worst injury she’d ever seen was. I was subconsciously making myself feel better by knowing that she’d seen worse injuries than mine. After it was confirmed my finger was freakishly broken and needed surgery, I kept thinking at least I don’t have a torn labrum or a torn ACL. My sophomore year, one of the seniors tore her labrum in the last couple weeks of season and couldn’t play, so surely my situation could be worse right? Throughout my entire day of optimism, I kept saying, “Its just a pinky finger, it could be worse!” We want self-enhancement when the situation is important and when our self-esteem feels threatened (Taylor, 1989). I can tell you my self-esteem definitely felt threatened this entire week, so some positive self-enhancement is definitely what I needed! My day of optimism gave me some boosts to my self-esteem and has helped me accept the situation I’ve been thrown into.

From now on, I want to continue to try to be optimistic every day and take a positive spin on everything. Thompson (1999) said that one possible reason for eternal optimism in some people is the feeling of control and the overestimation of the influence we have on personal outcomes that are not within our power to control. In other words, people who are optimistic can foresee positive outcomes in their lives even when the circumstances are out of their hands (Thompson, 1999). If I can continue to be optimistic, I will be able to envision good things happening and I’ll feel as if I have more control over my life. It’s definitely worth a try! Especially during this rough time of my life, optimism is key to my happiness!

References:

Armor, D. A., & Taylor, S. E. (1998). Situated optimism: Specific outcome expectancies and self-regulation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 309-379.

Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1997). The Science of Happiness. The Futurist, 1-7.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1991). Learned optimism. New York: Knopf.

Shepperd, J. A. 1993. Student derogation of the Scholastic Aptitude Test: Biases in perceptions and presentations of college board scores. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 14, 455-473.

Taylor, S. E. 1989. Positive Illusions: Creative self-deceptions and the healthy mind. New York: Basic Books.

Thompson, S. C. 1999. Illusions of control: How we overestimate our personal influence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 187-190.

Wills, T. A. 1981. Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 245-271.

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Fundamental Attribution Error

The fundamental attribution error is when observers tend to overemphasize personal traits and underemphasize situational factors when explaining behavior (Ross, 1977). In class, we talked about the example of how actors are commonly type-casted for a certain role (Meg Ryan is sweet) and people think they are actually like that in real life. Even though people understand that they are paid millions of dollars to act that way, they are still convinced of their traits and personality.

I see the fundamental attribution error in sports all the time, especially in team rivalries (sorry to use volleyball again, its always the first thing that comes to mind!). In volleyball, our biggest rival is Trinity. Six of the last eight times we’ve played them, the match has gone to 5 sets (you have to win 3 out of 5 sets). As college athletes, we are all extremely competitive and may not be quite as friendly to our opponents as we would be under different circumstances. The fundamental attribution error comes into play when we think every single one of those Trinity girls are bitches. Even though we know they’re competitive and rude specifically under these intense situations, we still interpret their behavior as personal attributes and believe their behavior applies to all situations.

There are 3 reasons we make the fundamental attribution error. First, the behavior is salient and sticks out more than the situation. When we’re playing them and noticing some attitude, we’re not going to be like “Oh its ok… they’re just under stressful game situations.” Instead we automatically attribute the behavior to their personal traits. The second reason we make this error is due to anchoring and adjustment. We anchor onto a trait inference (bitchiness) to give us a basis and adjust for the situation. The trait inference is easy and automatic, but the situational adjustment takes effort, so if we’re cognitively busy (like during an intense game), we don’t adjust for the situation. The third reason for the error is cultural. Westerners have an independent identity, so they are more likely to make personal attributions, whereas non-Westerners have an interdependent identity and tend to make more situational attributions.

I’m sure that in reality they are nice people, I’m just not sure I will ever overcome the fundamental attribution error!

References:

Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 174-221). New York: Academic Press.

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