Page 35 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

28 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

principles of attitude change uncovered in decades of basic research (see
Briñol & Petty, 2012) will be useful in developing effective social market-
ing campaigns (Petty & Cacioppo, 1996).
To understand the importance of attitude change in affecting behavior,
this chapter begins with an introduction to the concept of attitudes and
their role in guiding behavior. Subsequently, we provide an overview of a
classic trichotomy for organizing persuasive variables around source, mes-
sage, and recipient factors. The chapter continues by introducing the
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986) of
persuasion to understand the critical role the amount of thinking plays in
how and when a particular source, message, or recipient factor influences
persuasion. After explaining how any given variable can affect persuasion
in many different ways, the chapter turns to examining how there can also
be interactions among various source, message, and recipient factors.
Finally, the chapter discusses the importance of elaboration and other fac-
tors in producing attitude strength; that is, for creating attitudes that are
persistent, resistant, and influential in guiding behavior.

Attitudes and Attitude Change

An attitude can be understood as the degree to which an individual likes
or dislikes a person, place, or thing (for discussion, see Eagly & Chaiken,
1993; Pratkanis, Breckler & Greenwald, 1989). Attitudes are evaluative
judgments that associate some degree of favor or disfavor with an object.
For example, with regard to social marketing efforts, a relevant attitude
object might be an individual’s attitude toward a charity, green products,
or a new public policy. In each case, an attitude might range from positive
(e.g., I like this charity) to neutral (e.g., I neither like nor dislike this char-
ity) to negative (e.g., I dislike this charity). Attitudes can also range in ex-
tremity (Abelson, 1995), such that two individuals might both like an
attitude object (e.g., a green product) but differ in how much they like it.
One of the fundamental reasons scholars have been enamored with the
study of attitudes is that attitudes have been shown to predict and influ-
ence behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Even though behavioral compli-
ance tactics, such as a change in norms or laws, can affect behavior, many
behaviors targeted by social marketing efforts are often left solely to the
discretion of the individual. For example, when a woman engages in self-
administered breast exams, or a legislator votes for a particular bill, or a
consumer gives to a charity or purchases a green product, these are all
volitional choices on the part of the individual guided, in part, by that in-
dividual’s attitudes. Furthermore, even mandating behavioral compliance