Mahwish Yousaf Khan

Registration # 2093117
Attitude

Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's like or dislike for an

item. Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an "attitude object": i.e. a
person, behavior or event. People can also be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning
that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in
question. Attitudes are composed from various forms of judgments. Attitudes develop
on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition). The affective response is a
physiological response that expresses an individual's preference for an entity. The
behavioral intention is a verbal indication of the intention of an individual. The cognitive
response is a cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in
individuals are a result of observational learning from their environment.

Implicit and explicit attitudes

There is also considerable research on "implicit" attitudes, which are unconscious but
have effects (identified through sophisticated methods using people's response times to
stimuli). Implicit and "explicit" attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in
different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in
some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.

Philosophical aspect

Attitude may also be seen as a form or appearance that an individual assumes to gain
or achieve an egotistic preference, whether it is acceptance, manifestation of power or
other self-centered needs. Attitude may be considered as a primitive attribute to the
preservation of the self or of thee go.

Attitude formation

Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience. Teaser

(1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that they
may do so indirectly. For example, if one inherits the disposition to become an extrovert,
this may affect one's attitude to certain styles of music. There are numerous theories of
attitude formation and attitude change. These include Consistency theories, which imply
that we must be consistent in our beliefs and values. The most famous example of such a
theory is Dissonance reduction (In psychology, cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable
feeling or stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory
of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a fundamental cognitive drive to
reduce this dissonance by modifying an existing belief, or rejecting one of the
contradictory ideas. Often one of the ideas is a fundamental element of ego, like "I am a
good person" or "I made the right decision." This can result in rationalization when
a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice, or in other cases. Prevention of
cognitive dissonance may also contribute to confirmation bias or denial of discomforting
evidence. Experiments have attempted to quantify this cognitive drive. Studies have
not so far detected any gender or cross-cultural differences) theory, associated with
Leon Festinger (Fritz Heider (February 18, 1896 – January 2, 1988) was an Austrian
psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published The
Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which systematized and expanded upon his
creation of balance theory and attribution theory. Heider was born in Graz, Austria in
1896. His approach to higher education was rather casual, and he wandered freely
throughout Europe studying and traveling as he pleased for many years. At the age of
24 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Graz, and traveled to Berlin, where he
worked at the Psychology Institute. In 1930, Heider was offered an opportunity to
conduct research at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts,
which was associated with Smith College, also in Northampton. This prospect was
particularly attractive to him because Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of the Gestalt
school of psychology, held a position at Smith College (Heider, 1983). It was in
Northampton that he met his wife Grace (neé Moore). Grace was one of the first people
Heider met in the United States. As an assistant to Koffka, she helped Heider find an
apartment in Northampton and introduced him to the environs (Heider, 1983). They
were married in 1930, and the marriage lasted for more than 50 years, producing three
sons: Karl, John, and Stephan (in birth order). Karl Heider went on to become an
important contributor to visual anthropology and ethnographic film. John Heider wrote
the popular "The Tao of Leadership." Heider published two important articles in 1944
that pioneered the concepts of social perception and causal attribution (Heider, 1944;
Heider & Simmel, 1944). After this point, however, Heider published little for the next 14
years. In 1957, Heider was hired by the University of Kansas, after being recruited by
social psychologist Roger Barker (Heider, 1983). Shortly thereafter, Heider published
his most famous work, which remains his most significant contribution to the field of
social psychology. Heider's The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958) was
written in collaboration with the uncredited Beatrice Wright, a founder of rehabilitiation
psychology. Wright was available to collaborate because the University of Kansas's
nepotism rules prohibited her from a position at the University (her husband, Erik
Wright, was a professor), and the Ford Foundation gave Heider funds and assistance to
complete the project. (Wright is credited only in the Foreword; she later went on to
become an endowed professor of psychology at the University of Kansas). The
Psychology of Interpersonal Relations essentially founded the modern field of social
cognition. A giant of social psychology, Heider had few students, but his book on social
perception had many readers, and its impact continues into the 21st Century, having
been cited nearly 4,000 times. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations contains
several influential ideas. Heider argued that social perception follows many of the same
rules ofphysical object perception, and that the organization found in object perception
is also found is social perception. Because biases in object perception sometimes lead
to errors (e.g., optical illusions), one might expect to find that biases in social perception
likewise lead to errors (e.g., underestimating the role social factors and overestimating
the effect of personality and attitudes on behavior). Heider also argued that the order
people put on their perceptions followed the rule of psychological balance. Although
tedious to spell out in completeness, the idea is that positive and negative sentiments
need to be represented in ways that minimize ambivalence and maximize a simple,
straightforward affective representation of the person. He writes "To conceive of a
person as having positive and negative traits requires a more sophisticated view; it
requires a differentiation of the representation of the person into subparts that are of
unlike value (1958, p. 182)." But the most influential idea in The Psychology of
Interpersonal Relations is the notion of how people see the causes of behavior, and the
explanations they make for it—what Heider called "attributions". Attribution theory (as
one part of the larger and more complex Hadrian account of social perception)
describes how people come to explain (make attributions about) the behavior of others
and themselves. Behavior is attributed to a disposition (e.g., personality traits, motives,
attitudes), or behavior can be attributed to situations (e.g., external pressures, social
norms, peer pressure, accidents of the environment, acts of God, random chance, etc.)
Heider first made the argument that people tend to overweight internal, dispositional
causes over external causes—this later became known as the fundamental attribution
error (Ross, 1977) or correspondence bias (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Jones, 1979,
1990)).although there are others, such as the balance theory of Fritz Heider. Self-
perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem Self-perception theory is an account of
attitude change developed by psychologist, Daryl Bem. It asserts that we develop our
attitudes by observing our own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have
Caused them.

Self-perception vs. cognitive dissonance

Self-perception theory differs from cognitive dissonance theory in that it does not hold
that people experience a "negative drive state" called "dissonance" which they seek to
relieve. Instead, people simply infer their attitudes from their own behavior in the same
way that an outside observer might. Selfperception theory is a special case of attribution
theory. Bem ran his own version of Festinger and Carlsmith's famous cognitive
dissonance experiment. Subjects listened to a tape of a man enthusiastically describing
a tedious peg-turning task. Some subjects were told that the man had been paid $20 for
his testimonial and another group was told that he was paid $1. Those in the latter
condition thought that the man must have enjoyed the task more than those in the $20
condition. Bem argued that the subjects did not judge the man's attitude in terms of
cognitive dissonance phenomena, and that therefore any attitude change the man might
have had in that situation was the result of the subject's own self-perception. Whether
cognitive dissonance or self-perception is a more useful theory is a topic of considerable
controversy and a large body of literature, with no clear winner. There are some
circumstances where either theory is preferred, but it is traditional to use the
terminology of cognitive dissonance theory by default.

Uses of the concept

An awareness of the characteristics that constitute one's self-knowledge. Cooley

(1904- ) made a looking glass model which was comprised of three components:
1) How we think we appear to others
2) How we think they evaluate that appearance
3) The resulting shame or pride we feel
In philosophy ‘Self-Knowledge’ is commonly used to refer the knowledge of one’s
particular mental states, including one’s beliefs, desires, and sensations. Often it is used
to refer to knowledge about a persisting self- its ontological nature, identity conditions,
or character traits. Self-perception in short, is how we as individuals come to understand
ourselves. Self-perception is part of Marie Jahoda's theory of Ideal mental health

Meta programs, associated with Neuro-linguistic programming

Meta-programs in general are programs that create, control or make decisions about
programs, such as when and how to run them, preferred and unpreferred programs,
and strategic choices of fall-back or alternative programs. Neuro-linguistic programming
(NLP) uses the term specifically to indicate the more general pervasive habitual patterns
commonly used by an individual across a wide range of situations. Examples of NLP
meta-programs include the preference for overview or detail, the preference for where
to place one's attention during conversation, habitual linguistic patterns and body
language, and so on. Related concepts in other disciplines are known as cognitive
styles or thinking styles.

Definition

The use of the term program when talking about the human mind originates from the
cybernetics metaphor, which considers the human brain as a biocomputer to which one
can apply all principles known in computing. The cybernetic model had been named by
Norbert Wiener around 1946, and became influential through the Macy conferences,
which were held between 1942 and 1953 and attended by prominent members as
Gregory Bateson, Warren McCulloch, John von Neumann, Walter Pitts, Norbert Wiener
et al. This metaphor has been inspired on the Universal Turing Machine, named after
Alan Turing, who indicated that it is possible to program a machine to imitate the
behavior of any other machine — and even that of a human with a pencil and paper
following a set of rules. The metaphor got inverted, and a basic premise became that
cognitive activity can be explained in terms of computation. According to this mind-as-
computer metaphor, the mind is constantly and continuously running a complex set of
programs which are controlling all aspects of our existence, such as breathing, walking,
talking, etc. Dr. John C. Lilly, who can be considered as the first person to define the
term metaprograms, formally defined a program as: "a set of internally consistent
instructions for the computation of signals, the formation of information, the storage of
both, the preparation of messages, the logical processes being used, the selection
processes, and the storage addresses all occurring within a biocomputer, a brain." And
a meta-program as: "a set of instructions, descriptions, and means of control of a set of
programs." Neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) is an interpersonal
communication model and approach to psychotherapy [1] initially co-created by Richard
Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s. The originators claim it draws from
aspects of neurology ("neuro-"), linguistics and computer science ("programming").
Critics consider the field of NLP to be highly controversial. Tension exists between
several divergent groups within NLP reflected in various definitions, training and
professional standards. NLP has often been promoted as an art and science of effective
communication and 'the study of the structure of subjective experience' Others have
tended to define NLP as a methodology for effective communication or modeling
excellence as it was originally created. NLP has enjoyed little support within the
psychological profession following research reviewed in the Journal of Counseling
Psychology in the early 1980s. This led some skeptics and psychologists to dismiss
NLP as a pseudoscientific or New Age form of psychotherapy.[7] A recent survey of
mental health professionals rated NLP as having questionable validity as a
psychotherapeutic technique.[8] While there has been some efforts within NLP to
improve its practice, recent research is spread thinly across various disciplines and the
field remains splintered. An off-shoot application of NLP: Neuro-linguistic
psychotherapy, has been recognized by United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
(UKCP). There has also been a recent University of Surrey sponsored, vendor neutral,
NLP Research Conference to encourage practitioners to engage in research.

Founding and early development

The first popular book on NLP, Frogs into Princes, first published in 1979, was based on
transcripts of its co-founders, Bandler and Grinder, presenting at seminars live. NLP originated
when Richard Bandler, a student at University of California, Santa Cruz, was
transcribing taped therapy sessions of the Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls as a project for
the psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who had originally commissioned Bandler to teach his
son drums. Bandler believed he recognized particular word and sentence structures
which facilitated the acceptance of Perls’ positive suggestions. Bandler took this idea to
one of his university teachers, John Grinder, a linguist, and together they produced what
they termed the Meta Model, a model of what they believed to be influential word
structures and how they work. They also 'modelled' the therapeutic sessions of the
family therapist Virginia Satir. They published an account of their work in The Structure
of Magic in 1975, when Bandler was only 25. The main theme of the book was that it
was possible to analyse and codify the therapeutic methods of Satir and Perl.
Exceptional therapy, even when it appears 'magical', has a discernible structure, which
anyone could learn. Some of the book was based on previous work by Grinder on
transformational grammar, the Chomskyan generative syntax that was current at the
time.[11] Some considered the importation of transformational grammar to psychotherapy
to be Bandler and Grinder's main contribution to the field of psychotherapy. Bandler and
Grinder also made use of ideas of Gregory Bateson, who was influenced by Alfred
Korzybski, particularly his ideas about human modeling and that 'the map is not the
territory' Impressed by the work, the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson agreed to
write the preface and also introduced Bandler and Grinder to Milton Erickson who would
become the third model for NLP. Erickson, an American psychiatrist and founding
member of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, was well known for his
unconventional approach to therapy, for his ability to "utilize" anything about a patient to
help them change, including their beliefs, favorite words, cultural background, personal
history, or even their neurotic habits, and for treating the unconscious mind as creative,
solution-generating, and often positive.
Persuasion

ersuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding people toward the
adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic (though not always
logical) means. It is strategy of problem-solving relying on "appeals" rather than
strength. Manipulation is taking persuasion to an extreme, where the one person or
group benefits at the cost of the other. Aristotle said that "Rhetoric is the art of
discovering, in a particular case, the available means of persuasion."

Principles of persuasion

According to Robert Cialdini in his book on persuasion, he defined six "weapons of

influence": Reciprocation - People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of free
samples in marketing. In his conferences, he often uses the example of Ethiopia providing
thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just after the 1985 earthquake, despite
Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine and civil war at the time. Ethiopia had been
reciprocating for the diplomatic support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1937.

Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, verbally or in writing, they are more likely to
honor that commitment. Even if the original incentive or motivation is removed after they have
already agreed, they will continue to honor the agreement. For example, in car sales, suddenly
raising the price at the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy. See
cognitive dissonance.

Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one
experiment, one or more confederates would look up into thesky; bystanders would then look up
into the sky to see what they were seeing. At one point this experiment aborted, as so many
people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity
experiments.

Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked to perform
objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents, such as the Milgram experiments in the early 1960s
and the My Lai massacre.

Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. Cialdini cites the
marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely
to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more
attractive people are discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype.

Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying offers are available for
a "limited time only" encourages sales.

Propaganda is also closely related to Persuasion. Its a concerted set of messages

aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of
impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents
information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often
completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a
particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather
than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of
the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. The term 'propaganda' first
appeared in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for
Propagating the Faith. Propaganda was then as now about convincing large numbers of
people about the veracity of a given set of ideas. Propaganda is as old as people,
politics and religion.

Elaboration Likelihood Model associated with Richard E.Petty and the

Heuristic Systematic Model of ShellyChaiken.
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) is a model of
how attitudes are formed and changed (see also attitude change). Central to this model is the
"elaboration continuum", which ranges from low elaboration (low thought) to high elaboration
(high thought). The ELM distinguishes between two routes to persuasion: the central route and
the peripheral route.

Central route

Central route processes are those that require a great deal of thought, and therefore are
likely to predominate under conditions that promote high elaboration. Central route
processes involve careful scrutiny of a persuasive communication (e.g., a speech, an
advertisement, etc.) to determine the merits of the arguments. Under these conditions, a
person’s unique cognitive responses to the message determine the persuasive outcome
(i.e., the direction and magnitude of attitude change). So, if favorable thoughts are a
result of the elaboration process, the message will most likely be accepted (i.e., an
attitude congruent with the messages position will emerge), and if unfavorable thoughts
are generated while considering the merits of presented arguments, the message will
most likely be rejected (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).In order for the message to be
centrally processed, a person must have the motivation and ability to do so.

Overview

Arising out of the socio-psychological tradition, SJT is a theory that focuses on the
internal processes of an individual’s judgment with relation to a communicated
message. SJT was intended to be an explanatory method designed to detail when
persuasive messages are most likely to succeed. Attitude change is the fundamental
objective of persuasive communication. SJT seeks to specify the conditions under
which this change takes place and predict the direction and extent of the attitude
change. In sum, the researchers strove to develop a theory that addressed the
following: a person’s likelihood to change his/her position, the likely direction of his/her
attitude change, a person’s tolerance of other positions, and the level of commitment to
his/her own position. (Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965). The SJT researchers claimed
that expectations regarding attitude change could be based on the message receiver’s
level of involvement, the structure of the stimulus (i.e., how many alternatives it allows),
and the value (credibility) of the source.
Judgment process and attitudes

The judgment process and the comparisons involved in it mediate attitude change,
although the causal nature of the judgment process on attitude change is harder to
determine (Kiesler, Collins, & Miller, 1969). A judgment occurs when a person
compares at least two stimuli and makes a choice about them. With regard to social
stimuli specifically, judgment processes incorporate both past experiences and present
circumstances (Sherif, 1963). Sherif et al. (1965) defined attitudes as “the stands the
individual upholds and cherishes about objects, issues, persons, groups, or institutions”
Researchers must infer attitudes from behavior. The behavior can be in response to
arranged or naturally-occurring stimuli (Nebergall, 1966; Sherif & Hovland, 1961; Sherif
et al., 1965). True attitudes are fundamental to selfidentity, are complex, and thus can
be difficult to change. One of the ways in which the SJT developers observed attitudes
was through the Own Categories Questionnaire. This method requires research
participants to place statements into piles of most acceptable, most offensive, neutral,
and so on, in order for researchers to infer their attitudes. This categorization, an
observable judgment process, was seen by Sherif and Hovland (1961) as a major
component of attitude formation. As a judgment process, categorization and attitude
formation are a product of recurring instances so that past experiences influence
decisions regarding aspects of the current situation. Therefore, attitudes are acquired
(Sherif et al., 1965). Experience, knowledge, and emotion dictate these choices.

Latitudes of rejection, acceptance, and noncommitment

All social attitudes are not cumulative, especially regarding issues where the attitude is
extreme (Sherif et al., 1965). This means that a person may not agree with less extreme
stands relative to his/her position, even though they may be in the same direction.
Furthermore, even though two people may seem to hold identical attitudes, their “most
preferred” and “least preferred” alternatives may differ. Thus, a person’s full attitude can
only be understood in terms of what other positions he/she finds acceptable (or not) in
addition to his/her own stand (Nebergall, 1966). This continuum illustrates a crucial
point of SJT, referred to as the "latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment".
These latitudes compose, respectively, a range of preferred, offensive, and indifferent
attitudes. The placement of positions along the continuum hinges on the anchor point,
usually determined by the individual’s own stand (Sherif & Hovland, 1961). Therefore,
one’s attitude on a social issue can not be summed up with a single point but instead
consists of varying degrees of acceptability for discrepant positions. These degrees or
latitudes together create the full spectrum of an individual’s attitude. Sherif and Hovland
(1961) define the latitude of acceptance “as the range of positions on an issue…an
individual considers acceptable to him (including the one ‘most acceptable’ to him)” (p.
129). On the opposite of the continuum lies the latitude of rejection. This is defined as
including the “positions he finds objectionable (including the one ‘most objectionable’ to
him”) (Sherif & Hovland, 1961, p. 129). This latitude of rejection was deemed essential
by the SJT developers in determining an individual’s level of involvement and thus
his/her propensity to attitude change. The greater the rejection latitude, the more
involved the individual is in the issue and thus is harder to persuade. In the middle of
these opposites lies the latitude of noncommitment, a range of viewpoints where one
feels primarily indifferent.

Assimilation and contrast

These latitudes dictate the likelihood of assimilation and contrast. When a discrepant
viewpoint is expressed in a communication message, if it falls within the person’s
latitude of acceptance, the message is more likely to be assimilated or viewed as being
closer to person’s anchor, or own viewpoint, than it actually is. When the message is
perceived as being very different from one’s anchor and thus falling within the latitude of
rejection, persuasionis unlikely due to a contrast effect. The contrast effect is what
happens whenthe message is viewed as being further away than it actually is from
theanchor. Messages falling within the latitude of noncommitment, however, arethe
ones most likely to achieve the desired attitude change. Therefore, themore extreme
stand an individual has, the greater his/her latitude ofrejection and thus the harder
he/she is to persuade.

Ego-involvement
It was speculated by the SJT researchers that extreme stands, and thus widelatitudes of
rejection, were a result of high ego-involvement. According to the1961 Sherif and
Hovland work, the level of ego-involvement depends uponwhether the issue “arouses
an intense attitude or, rather, whether theindividual can regard the issue with some
detachment as primarily a ‘factual’matter” (p. 191). Religion, politics, and family are
examples of issues thattypically result in highly involved attitudes; they contribute to
one’s selfidentity(Sherif et al., 1965)

Intellect
Intelligence (also called intellect) is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind
that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve
problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are
several ways to define intelligence. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as
creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. However, most psychologists prefer
not to include these traits in the definition of intelligence.

Definitions
Intelligence comes from the Latin verb "intellegere", which means "to understand". By
this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably different from being "smart"
(able to adapt to one's environment), or being "clever" (able to creatively adapt). At least
two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been proposed. First, from
Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task force convened by the American
Psychological Association in 1995: Individuals differ from one another in their ability to
understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from
experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely
consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in
different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts
to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity
has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the
important questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen
prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen
somewhat different definitions. A second definition of intelligence comes from
"Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers
in 1994: A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to
reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly
and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or
test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending
our surroundings —"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.
Another simple and efficient definition is : the ability to apply knowledge in order to
perform better in an environment Researchers in the fields of psychology and learning
have also defined human intelligence:

Factors that affect attitude change

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. The celebrated work of Carl Hovland, at
Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s, helped to advance knowledge of persuasion. In
Hovland's view, we should understand attitude change as a response to
communication. He and his colleagues did experimental research into the factors that
can affect the persuasiveness of a message:

1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives
and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent
people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been
studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher
in self-esteem are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship
between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate
self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem
levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role
in this process.
2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness
and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has
been found to be a key variable here (Hovland & Weiss, 1951); if one reads a report
about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more
easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists
have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found
the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after
several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a sleeper effect is
controversial. Received wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message
before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a
message and then told its source.
3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion.
Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes. Cognitive
Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help
change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented
with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude
changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is
 encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in
modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors
or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.

Emotion and Attitude Change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change.

Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion
components (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992). Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive
process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are
commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent
examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising
emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Taking into consideration current attitude research,
Breckler and Wiggins (1992) define attitudes as “mental and neural representations,
organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence on behavior”
(p. 409). Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and conative
components. Attitudes are part of the brain’s associative networks, the spider-like
structures residing in long term memory (Higgins, 1986) that consist of affective and
cognitive nodes linked through associative pathways (Anderson, 1983; Fazio, 1986).
These nodes contain affective, cognitive, and behavioral components (Eagly & Chaiken,
1995). Anderson (1983) suggests that the inter-structural composition of an associative
network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus,by activating an affective
or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive
components tend to be intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to
produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude
change (Eagly & Chaiken, 1995). Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or
the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that
predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the
cognitive processes (Loewenstein, 2007). How we feel about an outcome may override
purely cognitive rationales. In terms of research methodology, the challenge for
researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we
cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been
constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use
of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate
measures (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992). For instance, fear is associated with raised
eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994). Other
methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues
(Shavelson & Stanton, 1975).

Processing Models

Some research on emotion and attitude change focuses on the way people process
messages. Many dual process models are used to explain the affective (emotion) and
cognitive processing and interpretations of messages. These include the elaboration
likelihood model, the heuristicsystematic model, and the extended parallel process
model. In the Elaboration Likelihood Model, or ELM, (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986),
cognitive processing is the central route and affective/emotion processing is often
associated with the peripheral route. The central route pertains to an elaborate cognitive
processing of information while the peripheral route relies on cues or feelings. The ELM
suggests that true attitude change only happens through the central processing route
that incorporates both cognitive and affective components as opposed to the more
heuristics-based peripheral route. This suggests that motivation through emotion alone
will not result in an attitude change. In the Heuristic-Systematic Model, or HSM,
(Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989) information is either processed in a high-
involvement and high-effort systematic way, or information is processed through
shortcuts known as heuristics. Emotions, feelings and gut-feeling reactions are often
used as shortcuts. The Extended Parallel Process Model, or EPPM, includes both
thinking and feeling in conjunction with threat and fear appeals (Witte, 1992). EPPM
suggests that persuasive fear appeals work best when people have high involvement
and high efficacy. In other words, fear appeals are most effective when an individual
cares about the issue or situation, and that individual possesses and perceives that they
possess the agency to deal with that issue or situation.

Components of Emotion Appeals

Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy,
disgust, indignation, fear, and anger. Fear is one of the most studied emotional appeals
in communication and social influence research. Dillard (1994) suggests that “fear
appeals have been thought of as messages that attempt to achieve opinion change by
establishing the negative consequences of failing to agree with the advocated position”
(p. 295). The EPPM (above) looks at the effectiveness of using fear and threat to
change attitudes. Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotion appeals
include the possibility of reactance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981) which may lead to either
message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As the
EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there
is not enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is
overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change.
Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than
perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not
agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind (Maase,
Fink & Kaplowitz, 1984). Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the
processing of political messages (Nabi, Moyer-Guse, & Byrne, 2007). While evidence is
inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with
low political message involvement. Important factors that influence the impact of
emotion appeals include self efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and
message/source features. Self efficacy is a perception of one’s own human agency; in
other words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation (Bandura,
1992). It is an important variable in emotion appeal messages because it dictates a
person’s ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person
is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not
likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming. Dillard (1994) suggests
that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message content,
and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The
characteristics of a message are important because one message can elicit different
levels of emotion for different people. Thus, in terms of emotion appeals messages, one
size does not fit all. Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from
memory (Fazio, 1986); in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an
object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement (Zaichkowsky, 1985) is the relevance and
salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated
with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible
attitudes are more resistant to change (Fazio & Williams, 1986).

MBTI definition of attitude

The MBTI write-ups limit the use of "attitude" to the extraversion-introversion(EI) and
judging-perceiving (JP) indexes. The JP index is sometimes referred to as an
orientation to the outer world and sometimes JP is classified as an "attitude." In Jungian
terminology the term attitude is restricted to EI. In MBTI terminology attitude can include
EI and also JP. (Myers, 1985:293 note 7). The above MBTI Manual statement, is
restricted to EI," is directly contradicted by Jung's statement above that there is "a
typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" and by his other uses of the
term "attitude". Regardless of whether the MBTI simplification (or oversimplification) of
Jung can be attributed to Myers, Gifts Differing refers only to the "EI preference",
consistently avoiding the label "attitude". Regarding the JP index, in Gifts Differing
Myers does use the terms "the perceptive attitude and the judging attitude" (Myers,
1980:8). The JP index corresponds to the irrational and rational attitudes Jung
describes, except that the MBTI focuses on the preferred orientation in the outer world
in order to identify the function hierarchy. To be consistent with Jung, it can be noted
that a rational extraverted preference is accompanied by an irrational introverted
preference.