Persuasion

Persuasion, a process that changes attitudes, can occur in two different ways. When we are motivated to analyze and elaborate, or think carefully and scrutinize persuasive information, we take the central route to persuasion (Greenwald, 1968; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In the central route, the strength and quality of the argument matters most (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The other route I'll come back to later. A strong predictor that people will take the central route is their level of involvement in the subject (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984). For example, if someone is buying a car, he or she is more likely to evaluate important issues such as gas mileage, crash test ratings, number of seats, etc. However, if that same someone brings a friend along, the friend is more likely to consider more trivial issues such as which car is prettier, which brand has the best color of red paint, how many beer cases can fit in the back seat, etc. The friend's route to persuasion is called the peripheral route in which the message is not important, but the external cues are (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

A time when my attitudes were persuaded via the central route is when I decided to transfer schools. The persuader was my boyfriend who off-handedly mentioned how nice it would be to go to the same school our last night together at home before we left for spring semester. I had never thought of transferring before, and started to think about it quite seriously by looking up statistics and facts and opinions of others online. And as I thought about my first semester in which I wrote no papers, got a 4.0 without working harder than in high school, etc. it started to become a better and better idea. Before I knew it I was filling out an application, then scheduling and interview, then looking at financial aid offers, then ta-da. This situation included a lot of personal involvement considering it could decide my future, so I took the central route of persuasion.

A time when my attitudes were persuaded by the peripheral route is whenever I pick out a shampoo. Though I am personally involved, the issue simply isn't very important to me, so I am not motivated to elaborate on it very much. Whenever I go buy shampoo, I go to the store and just look at all of the different shampoo bottles. I let cues like brand, color, bottle, scent, etc. influence my decision rather than turning over every bottle and looking at the ingredients then looking up what the ingredient is supposed to do online ... blah blah blah. I end up picking the on in the prettiest bottle with the best smell despite whether it will give my hair the most volume or curl (neither of which I need). Because I rely on cues instead of the content of the argument to choose shampoo, I am using the peripheral route.

Greenwald, A. G. (1968). Cognitive learning, cognitive responses to persuasion, an attitude change. In A. Greenwald, T. Brock, & T. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attidudes (pp.147-170). New York: Academic Press.

Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on response to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 69-81.

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

Attitude as a predictor of Behavior

Most people would take for granted that our attitudes, or our positive and/or negative evaluations in reaction to a person, object, or idea (Petty & Chaiken, 2004), are directly related to our behaviors. LaPiere (1934) discovered that this is not necessarily the case. Many factors influence whether our behaviors follow our attitudes (Glasman & Albarracin, 2006). One of these factors is the strength of the attitude, and one of the factors that contributes to the strength of the attitude about something is the amount of information we have about it (Davidson et al., 1985).

This concept is true for me in political elections in two ways. First, when I was little, and I didn't know very much about elections, government, or current presidents (I say current because every self-respecting little kid knows oodles about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln). My attitude about elections was not very strong partly because I didn't know anything about the candidates running at the national level much less lower levels. If I had known more about candidates running for office, my attitude would be stronger which would cause a change in my behavior such as asking my parents to vote for a certain candidate.

Second, with my first presidential election in which I can vote coming up, I didn't know much until recently. Because I didn't have much information, my attitudes were not very strong, and I committed the crime of not voting in the primary (awful, I know). If I had known more, I would have had stronger attitudes, and been more likely to vote. Now that I do know a good bit about the candidates, I'm am surely going to vote in the general election coming up.


Glasman, L. R., & Albarracin, D. (2006). Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: A meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 778-822.

LaPiere, R. T. (1934). Attitudes vs. action. Social Forces, 13, 230-237.

Petty, R. E., & Chaiken, S. (Eds.). (2004). Key readings in attitudes and persuasion. London: Taylor & Francis.

A 95% White Community

When I moved to Wylie at age 4, it had a population around 10,000 and was 95% Caucasian. I cannot remember encountering anyone from a different race until I was in intermediate school (5-6 grade). Even then, I can only think of about 4 people who were African-American, and a couple of people who were Indian. The brother and sister who were Indian were easy to tell apart because one was male and one was female. However, no matter how hard I tried, I could not tell the boys who were African-American apart. To me they all looked the same. They were not in my ingroup, or people in the same social group as me; they were part of an outgroup, or social group that I didn't belong to, that I had very little contact with, so I thought they were more similar than they actually were. This is called the outgroup homogeneity effect (Linville & Jones, 1980).

As you can probably guess, as an ignorant 5th or 6th grader this mistake got me in a lot of trouble one day. I avoided as much as possible calling these guys by their names not because I didn't know them, but because I couldn't tell who was who. Inevitably, one day, I could not avoid saying one's name. I had a 25% chance of getting it right, and of course I didn't. So what else am I supposed to do but try again? Wrong again. It was not looking to turn into a good situation, so I just stopped and prepared for my punishment. He came close to me and asked, "Why don't you know my name? Is it because we all look the same?" I had no choice but to answer yes because it was the truth, and I'm not good at lying. A flash of fury ran across his eyes, but then he said, "It's okay, you all look the same to me too." What a relief. This insight helped me to understand that not just African-Americans look the same, but anyone in our outgroups looks the same. Luckily, the more I became acquainted with people of different races, the more I was able to realize the subtle differences between all people.

Linville, P. W., & Jones, E. E. (1980). Polarized appraisals of outgroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 689-703.

PO Blog: What my voice says about what I think about you

I am a high self-monitor. Self-monitoring refers to peoples’ regulation of their own behavior in different social situations (Snyder, 1987), and high self-monitors, the type who are concerned with public image, saying the right thing, and being on everyone’s good side, score highly on the Self-Monitoring Scale, which has a range of 0-18 (Snyder, 1974; Snyder & Gangestad, 1986). I scored a 14.

One aspect of myself that I adjust for different social situations is the pitch of my voice. When I talk to authority figures (teachers, parents, etc.) or strangers, my voice is the lowest; when I talk to friends or classmates, my voice is mid-range or lower; and when I talk to my boyfriend, my voice is mid-range or higher. I noticed my own inconsistencies after I observed my commander varying his voice for interactions with his peers, those who had higher status, and those who had lower status. When I realized that I do the same thing, I questioned why he changes his voice, and what impact it has on others. In line with Bem’s self-perception theory, which states that we observe ourselves as an outsider like we observe others, if I answered these questions, I would learn more about myself (Bem, 1972).

I concluded that the real pitch of his voice is the one used when talking with his peers because in those instances he did not tuck in his chin and look slightly uncomfortable. However, when ever he talked to officers (higher status) or me (lower status), he did tuck in his chin to lower his voice. For the first question, I believe that he lowered his voice to appear more authoritative and competent because he only talked about business with people not in his status group, and when he talked business with his peers, he would also lower his voice. I do the same changes in my voice for authority and peers, but for my boyfriend, I also raise my voice sometimes to seem more innocent, dependent, and submissive. For the second question, I concluded that I would not think him any less authoritative or competent if his voice was higher, but I had also known him half a year by this point. The conclusion made me wonder if I stopped changing my voice for different social situations, would people think differently of me?

I decided to make the change on a Friday because I have one class which exposes me to teachers and classmates, and I also spend more time with my roommate and boyfriend, who are more likely to comment on a change. I changed my voice by deliberately raising my chin (not tucking it in) whenever I spoke to authority figures or was explaining something to a classmate or friend. I also deliberately tucked in my chin whenever I spoke to my boyfriend. The change was not hard to do because I could physically control it, but it was hard to hear myself talk differently in those situations.

Whenever I raised my voice, I got the questions “What put you in such a good mood?” or “Are you having a good day?” frequently from my classmates and my roommate. When I lowered my voice, my boyfriend almost hourly asked me what was wrong, and why I was so serious (Dark Knight reference purely coincidental).

I was nervous about how others would perceive me before I did the experiment, but when my friends thought I was happier, the change became easier and less awkward to hear myself talk. The change became a little straining when I talked with my boyfriend because he thought I was sad and it physically strained my voice to talk that much while lowering my voice. If others had thought anything other than my emotions, such as my competence, had changed, it would’ve been much more difficult.

I learned that the pitch of my voice is not as important in portraying my competence as in portraying my emotions while talking with people who already knew me. However, when I first meet people, I would never want to talk in a higher voice to an authority, because I do not want to convey a more submissive personality, or a lower voice to those closest to me, because I do not want to be that serious. I discovered that even though self-presentation strategies, ways we try to shape what others think of us and how we think of ourselves (Schlenker, 2003) such as self-monitoring, might not be meditated, they happen because we like to control how others perceive us.


Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York: Academic Press.

Schlenker, B. R. (2003). Self-presentation. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp.429-518). New York: Guilford.

Snyder, M. (1974). The self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526-537.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances private/realities: the psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman.

Snyder, M., & Gangestad, S. (1986) On the nature of self-monitoring: Matters of assessment, matters of validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 125-139.

First College Paper

First off, I transferred from Texas A&M to Southwestern because I wanted an academic program that wasn't an easy diploma and would prepare me for graduate school. I only wrote one paper last year at A&M, and I realized I needed to be doing much more to be prepared for graduate work.

Anyway, I received my first paper back last Friday and was very disappointed with my grade. Almost to the point of disbelief. I thought that I had been working very hard these past several weeks to keep on top of all of my classes, give myself enough time to complete homework thoroughly, and especially write my first paper with extra care and dedication. However none of my effort was reflected in my first grade. Very upset, I of course did not blame myself and partook in self-serving cognitions. A self-serving cognition is a self-enhancement technique, or mechanism that we used to not only elevate our normal self-esteem but save our self-esteem in the face of negative information (Taylor, 1989). These cognitions, such as self-serving bias (see last blog), allow us to disprove and therefore cope with negative feedback while thinking we are objective instead of biased (Pronin et al., 2004). I thought I was graded too harshly; the teacher put the wrong grade on my paper; the teacher, a business professor, favored business majors. All of which are false, but seemed very likely at the time.

The grade on my paper also rattled my cage because it violated self-verification or the desire for others to see us as we see ourselves (Swann, 1987). I thought of myself as a good student which I thought was reflected in my paper, but the grade I receive reflected that I was not as good of a student that I thought. This made me particularly upset when my boyfriend, without reading my paper, said that I probably deserved what I got. That's two people contradicting my self-perception.

As time went on however, I came to realize that though I spent extra time on my paper, I still took my usual shortcuts and only spent extra time making it look pristine. Now I accepted that I truly earned that grade, and therefore, accepted my boyfriend's comments that I deserved it. Now his view is the same as mine and consistent with self-verification, so it doesn't bother me.

Surprisingly to me this all happened in the span of about three days. If asked if how I would feel about this same situation earlier, I would have predicted that my melancholy would have persisted at least a week and probably until I received a better grade from that class. However, due to affective forecasting I would have been wrong. Affective forecasting is the uncanny ability for people to wrongly predict how they will feel about future events. People can usually predict whether they will feel good or bad about an event, but now how intense the feeling will be or how long it will last (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003, 2005). This happens not only because people underestimate their ability to cope with bad situations, but because they do not take into account other aspects of their life into their predictions about a specific event (Gilbert et al., 1998). For example, I got over my bad grade so quickly because I have gotten good grades in my other classes.

What also helped was that I remember this is exactly why I came here. To hone my writing, critical thinking, and other academic skills. Without high expectations, I would not be pushed to find my potential.

Taylor, S. E., & Lobel, M. (1989). Social comparison activity under threat: Downward evaluation and upward contacts. Psychological Review, 96, 569-575.

Pronin, E., Gilovich, T., & Ross, L. (2004). Objectivity in the eye of the beholder: Divergent perceptions of bias in self versus others. Psychological Review, 111, 781-799.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1038-1051.

Wilson, T. D., Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 131-134.

Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 617-638.

Band and Bias

Band, like any team activity, elicits a lot of motivational biases. Motivational biases skew our perception because they show us what we want and need to see instead of an objective view. As a member of a marching band, it is really easy to blame a bad performance on the stadium, the crowd, the drums, the drum major, the weather, judges, etc. When other bands are announced as better than our band, it's because they went later in the day and didn't have the sun in their eyes, because their director is good friends with a judge, or because they have a tract record of being good. Of course a good performance is not attributed to any of these things but are a fair result of hard work and skill. When we are announced as better than other bands, it's because we worked harder, our marching show takes more skill, or we play our instruments better. This bias to attribute successes to ourselves and failures to outside influences is called the self-serving bias and is prominent in most people outside of Eastern cultures (Mezulis et al., 2005).
As a member of band, a tight-knit group of students with the same goals, it is also easy to fall prey to the false-consensus effect. This is our tendency to think that others agree with us to a greater degree than they actually do (Krueger, 1998; Ross, Greene, & House, 1977). For example, when we start saying all of these bad things about other bands, our companions back us up which results not only fulfilling their own self=serving bias, but giving us a sense that everyone agrees with us. Of course our teammates are going to back us up though. This causes us to think that everyone agrees with us. Really, we are only one band out of 20 or so, and all of the other bands think the same things about us as we do about them.
While in band I also was a believer in a just world. Belief in a just world means that bad things happen only to bad people, and whatever misfortunes befall a person are deserved (Lerner, 1980). This is a defense bias because otherwise bad things would happen to good people, and we would be at risk the same as everyone else. While at a very important competition, I heard that a band, who usually placed higher than us, came from the same area as us, and took the same roads, had a bus wreck on the way to competition. As a result of the wreck and inevitable delay, the band was unable to compete that day. To justify not only the bus wreck that didn't happen to our band but finally taking the first place trophy, we said that we were always better performers, and they only place higher than us because they are so much bigger and more impressive though we are more talented. They deserved to be disqualified because they had taken our first place trophy from us many times before. This was wrong. Even if our claims were true, a bus full of band members did not deserve to be in a wreck and the whole band be disqualified. However, this is how we justified that it would not happen to us.

Krueger, J. (1998). On the perception of social consensus. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 30, 163-240.

Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum.

Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 711-747.

Ross, L., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus phenomenon: An attributional bias in self-perception and social-perception processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301.

Winning Him Over

My boyfriend, after dating for several months, admitted to me that he did not like me when we first met. As I reflect on the time between when I met him and when we started dating, it all makes a bit more sense. I remember meeting him and immediately having a crush. However, I was 14 and a bit ...inept at how to snag a boy. I worked really hard at winning him over -- throwing every move I had at him (all two or so of them). I assumed he was just playing hard to get. Especially when he ended up liking me, I just figured that I was right in my assumption. In social psychology, this affect is called confirmatory hypothesis testing. Confirmatory hypothesis testing happens when we search for information with a specific goal in mind rather than collecting information without bias (Snyder & Swann, 1978). For example, if a person expects someone to have a certain trait, that person will discover that trait by acting in a way that allows the trait to be evident (Zuckerman et al., 1995). I was looking for him to like me, so I only acted in ways that allowed him to show that he did like me.
The primacy effect, however, was the reason that I had to work so hard to get him to like me. The primacy effect means that we weight information collected earlier more heavily than information collected later (Asch, 1946). When I made a bad first impression on my boyfriend, I had to make several good impressions to neutralize the initial impression. Luckily we were in band together, so we had to be around each other all the time. Otherwise, I might be the victim of biased experience sampling which is the tendency to avoid the people we have bad first impressions of never giving them a chance to reconcile themselves and leading us to believe our impression was correct (Denrell, 2005).
Of course this all happened so long ago that I might be using a confirmation bias, the bias to remember information that supports beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them (Darley & Gross, 1983), to support my ideas.

Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Darley, J. M., & Gross, P. H. (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 20-33.

Denrell, J. (2005). Why most people disapprove of me: Experience sampling in impression formation. Psychological Review, 112, 951-978.

Snyder, M., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (1978). Behavioral confirmation in social interaction: From social perception to social reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1202-1212.

Zuckerman, M., Knee, C. R., Hodgins, H. S., & Miyake, K. (1995). Hypothesis confirmation: The joint effect of positive test strategy and acquiescence response set. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 52-60.