Perceiving attitude change: How qualitative shifts augment change perception

Bechler, Christopher J.; Tormala, Zakary L.; Rucker, Derek D.

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2019.02.001

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…This prediction is based on recent research on categorical perception and attitudes. Bechler et al (2019) found that people perceived attitude change as larger and more impactful when attitudes shifted qualitatively (or categorically) from negative to positive, compared to when they shifted non-qualitatively (or non-categorically) from negative to less negative or positive to more positive. The same authors also found that this perception influences persuasion target selection (Bechler et al 2020).…”

Section: Target Selection and Persuasive Impactmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Misdirecting Persuasive Efforts during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Targets People Choose May Not Be the Most Likely to Change

Bechler¹,

Tormala²

2021

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

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Persuading people to engage in specific health behaviors is critical to prevent the spread of and mitigate the harm caused by COVID-19. Most of the research and practice around this issue focuses on developing effective message content. Importantly, though, persuasion is often critically dependent on choosing appropriate targets-that is, on selecting the best audience for one's message. Three experiments conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic explore this target selection process and demonstrate misalignment between who persuaders target and who will display the greatest attitude and behavior change. Although people prefer to send messages encouraging COVID-19 prevention behaviors to targets with slightly negative attitudes toward the behaviors in question, their messages can often have more impact when sent to targets whose attitudes are slightly favorable. Recent insights in categorical perception and message positioning effects in persuasion help explain this misalignment.

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Section: Target Selection and Persuasive Impactmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…This hypothesis draws from research on categorical perception of attitudes (Bechler, Tormala, and Rucker 2019), message positioning effects in persuasion (e.g., Clark and Wegener 2013), and recent research that integrates the two (Bechler, Tormala, and Rucker 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Misdirecting Persuasive Efforts during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Targets People Choose May Not Be the Most Likely to Change

Bechler¹,

Tormala²

2021

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research

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“…This finding is consistent with the proposition that people view attitudes categorically. Attitudes that differ across valence are perceived as more different than attitudes that differ within valence (Bechler et al, 2019), which produces steeper rises in behavior as attitudes move between negative and positive.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As noted, attitudes are inherently valenced constructs that have a qualitative barrier (i.e., a neutral point) separating them into two categories (negative and positive). This categorical distinction causes attitudes that differ across valence to appear more different than attitudes that differ within valence (Bechler et al, 2019), which we posit pushes the attitude–behavior relationship into a cubic form.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 96%

The Attitude–Behavior Relationship Revisited

2021

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The attitude–behavior relationship is of great import to many areas of psychology. Indeed, psychologists across disciplines have published thousands of articles on the topic. The majority of this research implies that the attitude–behavior relationship is linear. However, observations from 4,101 participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and 321,876 online reviews demonstrate that this relationship is systematically nonlinear. Across diverse topics, measures, and contexts, as attitudes move from extremely negative to extremely positive, the corresponding shift in behavior tends to be relatively flat at first (as attitudes move from extremely to moderately negative), to steepen when attitudes cross neutral and shift from negative to positive, and to taper off again as attitudes move from moderately to extremely positive. This result can be explained on the basis of research on categorical perception. The present research suggests a fundamental pivot in how researchers construe, study, and assess the attitude–behavior relationship.

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“…As we investigated the data, we also found that a subset of attitudes (3%) were quite positive or negative initially but then switched to the opposite valence 1 month later. That is, these attitudes changed qualitatively, and recent research suggests that attitudes that switch valence may be quite different in type from those that do not (Bechler, Tormala, & Rucker, 2019). Indeed, though these attitudes are relatively few in number, they were an average of 8.07 standard deviations from the mean on attitude change.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Attitudes Based on Feelings: Fixed or Fleeting?

Rocklage

Luttrell

2021

Psychol Sci

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Researchers and practitioners want to create opinions that stick. Yet whereas some opinions stay fixed, others are as fleeting as the time it takes to report them. In seven longitudinal studies with more than 20,000 individuals, we found that attitudes based more on emotion are relatively fixed. Whether participants evaluated brand-new Christmas gifts or one of 40 brands, the more emotional their opinion, the less it changed over time, particularly if it was positive. In a word-of-mouth linguistic analysis of 75,000 real-world online reviews, we found that the more emotional consumers are in their first review, the more that attitude persists when they express it again even years later. Finally, more emotion-evoking persuasive messages create attitudes that decay less over time, further establishing emotion’s causal effect. These effects persist above and beyond other attitude-strength attributes. Interestingly, we also found that lay individuals generally fail to appreciate the relation between emotionality and attitude stability.

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Perceiving attitude change: How qualitative shifts augment change perception

Cited by 16 publications

References 73 publications

Misdirecting Persuasive Efforts during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Targets People Choose May Not Be the Most Likely to Change

Misdirecting Persuasive Efforts during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Targets People Choose May Not Be the Most Likely to Change

The Attitude–Behavior Relationship Revisited

Attitudes Based on Feelings: Fixed or Fleeting?

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