Introduction: Start with background on attitudes-
-An attitude is a belief about something which is associated with a feeling about it and may also connect to a tendency to behave towards it in a certain way. The thing the attitude about is the attitude object. (From lecture slides).
-Can have single component models of attitudes- emphasise importance of how people feel about attitude objects (i.e. attitudes are evaluative judgements).
-Can have multi component models- Most widely used- ABC model- suggests that an attitude has 3 components. Affective- feelings and emotions associated with the attitude. Behavioural- tendency to act in a certain way. Cognition- thoughts and beliefs about the attitude.
An example an attitude about donating money to charity: (Don’t have to include).
Affect: Positive feelings about it
Cognition: A judgement that donating is good to do, beliefs about why
Behaviour: Actually donating money to a specific charity.
If the essay is on persuasive communications (i.e. publicity campaigns/advertising that sort of thing) then talk about Hovland Yale Model (Hovland, Janis and Kelley 1953).
-Success of such communication in changing attitudes and behaviour depends on factors concerning: * The communicator * The message * The medium * The audience
Can go into as much detail as you want but here are some points for each:
-Communicator person delivering message must have certain characteristics i.e experts are more persuasive than non-experts (audience believes person must know what they are talking about), must be likeable (if we do not like them may reject them/message straight away), must speak rapidly (belief that audience assumes person must know what they are talking about if they put their view forward with such clarity to communicate so fast), gender (statistics show males more persuasive), similarity between communicator and