Attitude Change & Persuasion
Examine the functions of attitudes and use appropriate examples to support the discussion.
Mark Snyder and Kenneth G. DeBono reference "functional theories" about attitudes; they explain that the functional aspect of attitudes allows people to "…execute plans and achieve goals" (Snyder, et al., 1989). Interestingly, the functional theory often serves "…very different functions for different people" because albeit two people may have very "similar attitudes," the persuasive conditions that are needed to change those similar attitudes may "…be quite different" (Snyder, 340). That last sentence is backed up by the fact that in order to "successfully change an attitude," the specific function that is being served by that attitude must be addressed, Synder continues.
The authors provide four different functions that attitudes can perform. The first function they call "Ego-Defensive"; people protect themselves from "accepting truths about themselves" that are not desirable truths (and may be threatening to the individual) (Snyder, 340). An example they use to protect themselves is "reaction formation": a person may despise his or her neighbor, but a reaction formation would be to become excessively friendly to that hated neighbor. In other words, hiding true feelings is a function of an attitude aimed at protecting a person from the real truth.
A second function pointed to by Synder is "Knowledge"; people need to organize their information in some kind of "efficient manner" and hence they will categorize objects based on their "limited information" and use "attributes associated with general categories" in order to pass judgment on "specific objects" (340). A third function is "Value Expressive,"...
Attitude Change and Persuasion Persuasion is a process through which an individual or groups of individuals purposely changes in behavior or the way they act, way of thinking or any other aspect of another through the employing of intellect as well as feelings. This is a very important process because through persuasion people are affected and they also affect others. In most cases persuasion focuses mainly on attitude as the main
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