I’m sure there have been many advertisements where you’ve simply brushed off the message due to you not believing what they are saying, or thinking that the message isn’t worth your time. I’m sure there have also been some times when you’ve been decently convinced by an advertisement. Changing people’s attitudes is something everyone has tried to do at some point. Whether it’s through advertisement, or arguing with a friend about what the best fast food restaurant is, many people try to change another’s attitude and everyone has probably changed their attitude about something. What this article will cover is what factors influence a person’s likelihood to change attitude towards any topic.
Credibility
One factor is how credible the person delivering the message is. The credibility of the person delivering the message tends to have an effect on how easily the person is to believe, and to change their mind. Almost leading back to the idea of infromative confromity, if people believe someone has more information than them, they are likely to follow that belief. It’s the same when trying to change people’s attitudes. People will tend to be more convinced by a person with experience in whatever the field of conversation is on. For example, someone would be more convinced of a health recommendation from a doctor than someone else. This is because a doctor has credibility in that department, whereas another person may have simply read it in a magazine somewhere. One of them is just simply more convincing, even if they say the same thing!
A piece of research was conducted on how credibility impacts attitude change. The study looked at how the credibility of a message impacted a person’s reaction to the message, directly after it, and after a few weeks. The researchers found that people’s initial reactions were much keener to the message with a credible person delivering it than someone who did not seem credible. Despite these initial reactions however, the researchers found that over time, there was no difference in how the participants percieved the message. This goes to show how credibility is highly useful when trying to convince someone, but may not convince them forever.
Attractiveness
Another potential factor in influencing attitudes is the attractiveness of the communicator. It is theorised that people are more likely to be swayed by a message from an attractive communicator than one who isn’t. This most likely has to do with how much we like the communicator. People instinctively tend to like people who are more attractive. DeBono and Telesca conducted a piece of research looking into how communicator attractiveness effects attitude changes. The researchers manipulated the strength of the argument and the attractiveness of the speaker in the advertisement. In one condition, the participants were told it was scientifically proven to be beneficial. In another, they were told it was silky smooth and easy to use. The participants were also either told this message by an attractive or unattractive communicator.
Afterward, participants were asked what they thought about the product (sunscreen). The participants were also split into high self-monitors and slow monitors. Those with low self-monitoring were more influenced by attractiveness, with no difference in the message. However, the participants who relatively high-monitors were influenced more by a strong message when the communicator was attractive, they were more engaged by the message. When the communicator was not very attractive, participants liked the less strong message more. This shows that when people have high self-monitoring, attractiveness does not hold much impact, it has to be accompanied with a strong message. The attractiveness merely draws attention to the message. When people have low self-monitoring, they will be much more likely to be influenced by communicator attractiveness
Fear
Fear is a relatively common strategy adopted when trying to change people’s attitudes. Take for example the dentist, who tells kids, ‘if you don’t brush your teeth, I’m going to have do a really painful procedure!’. Or the governments adverts against things like smoking and drugs. You get shown pictures of what a smoker’s lung looks like, or the aftermath of someone who got addicted to drugs. In changing people’s attitudes, fear is often used to convince people to do something or to change their way of thinking about someone
In a piece of research conducted by Janis and Feschbach, they tested how effective fear was in getting people to comply with dental activities. They tried to convince one group of participants in a very scary way, explaining that if they didn’t do all of the dental requirements, there were high likelihoods of teeth diseases that were pretty much uncurable, and the horrible side effects of poor management. They used non-fearful messages with the other group of participants. Contrary to intuition, the researchers found that low fear had the highest conformity, and the high fear being the least persuasive. The researchers concluded that in the brain’s attempt to block out the fear, the participants simply forgot about the instructions much more easily. As the brain tries to remove any uncomfortable feelings, it ignores whatever came with the initial fear, and so the instructions were mostly ignored.