I.
Age of Propaganda (Skip the following chs in Pratkanis & Aronson: chs. 12-16, 22, 26-27, 29-32, 34-35, 39-40)
A.
The
Essential Modern Dilemma.
B.
Why
mindless propaganda?
C.
Propaganda
examples.
D.
Propaganda
defined
1.
Propaganda
is…
2.
All
persuasion not propaganda.
E.
Page
and Shapiro: Educating, Misleading and Manipulating Public Opinion
1.
Educating:
Individuals or institutions (schools, elected officials, media, experts), that
influence public opinion by providing correct, helpful information, can be said
to educate the public
2.
Misleading:
Individuals or institutions that influence public opinion by providing
incorrect, biased, or selective information, or erroneous interpretations can
be said to mislead the public.
3.
Manipulating: If government officials or others mislead the
public consciously and deliberately, by means of lies, falsehoods, deception,
or concealment, they manipulate public opinion
II. Theories
of Attitude Change
A.
Carl
Hovland's Message-Learning
Approach to Attitude Change (Note: Pratkanis and
Aronson rename this the Information Processing
Approach).
1.
Who
says What to Whom and How and with What Effect? Persuasion is complex and
conditional. Depends on source, message, and audience characteristics, and
these only have an effect if the following learning conditions are met:
exposure, attention, interest, comprehension, and acquisition.
2.
Characteristics
of the source of communication
a)
Credibility,
trust, attractiveness and when they are important (note: we don’t read the
P&A chs on source characteristics, so will
summarize this topic in class).
3.
Characteristics
of the message (various characteristics are covered in P&A; we discuss only
a few in class).
a)
Visual
images
b)
Fear
arousal
4.
Characteristics
of the audience (see relevant chs in P&A, as
well)
a)
What
the audience is thinking: forewarning
b)
Prior
Predispositions (e.g., ideology, partisanship)
c)
Political
Awareness and Opinion Leadership: the impact of awareness (reception or resistance)
depends on prior predispositions and whether the message is one-sided or
two-sided (i.e., elite consensus or elite conflict). "Mainstream" and
"polarization" effects models. (From John Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion)
5.
Implications
of Message-Learning Approach to Persuasion
6.
Problems
with the Message-Learning Approach to Persuasion
B.
Cognitive Response
Approach
(e.g., Greenwald): The impact of a message depends how individuals think about
the information presented (e.g., do they think favorable or unfavorable
thoughts about the message?) because people are active participants in the
persuasion process.
C.
Elaboration-Likelihood
Model of
Persuasion (Petty and Cacciopo):
1.
Persuasion
can occur when thinking is high or low but the consequences of persuasion are
different in each situation.
2.
Central
and peripheral routes to persuasion.
3.
The
type of persuasion (and the likelihood of elaboration or thinking) depends on
people’s motivation and ability to process (i.e., elaborate, or think about) the message.
4.
Evidence
for the ELM: Andrews & Shimp (1990) experiment
had Ss read beer ads
5.
Example
of how persuasion might differ in response to the 1988 Willie Horton ad
III. Motivated Reasoning, Cognitive Dissonance, and Resistance
to Persuasion
A.
Cognitive
dissonance theory: “hot” cognitions charged with affect and containing motivational
properties.
B.
Motivated
reasoning as the rationalizing voter: how receptive are we to information that
is inconsistent with our prior beliefs?
1.
Normative
(e.g., Bayesian) models of belief updating: assume that the collection and integration of
new information relevant to our prior beliefs is independent of one’s prior
judgments, so that there should be some updating or belief revision when we
encounter new information inconsistent with our prior beliefs.
2.
Disconfirmation
biases: the tendency to counter-argue or discount information with which we
disagree. We are very responsive to information that supports our prior beliefs
while dismissing out-of-hand evidence that challenges our prior attitudes. Who
and when are citizens “motivated skeptics”?
C.
Political
examples
1.
Gun
control & affirmative action (Taber and Lodge)
2.
Death
penalty support (Peffley & Hurwitz)
3.
WMD
in Iraq, welfare beliefs (Kuklinski et al).