THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS OF PERSUASION AND FEAR APPEALS
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2.2. Ingredients of the Persuasion Process The foremost important ingredient of persuasive communication is attitude (Crano & Prislin, 2006). Attitudes are held towards certain objects and typical situations. As defined, persuasive communication aims to modify attitudes (for review, see Wood, 2000). Attitudes represent lasting, general evaluations of objects which people hold as a force or quality of mind. They form an enduring system of emotional feelings towards objects and are positive or negative evaluations of that object (Holland et al. 2002). In general, messages that contain strong arguments are more persuasive than messages with weak arguments (e.g. Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Characteristics of attitude strengths outlined in a meta-analysis by Cooke and Sheeran (2004) are: accessibility, involvement, certainty, ambivalence, affect-cognitive consistency, and temporal stability. Attitudes can be categorised in many different ways. A regular method to classify attitudes is by their affective, behavioural and cognitive (ABC) components (Petty et al. 1988). Affect refers to feelings towards the attitude object. It is a superordinate construct to encompass emotions, moods and feelings. Evaluations of objects are influenced by emotions (e.g. Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999), moods (see metaanalysis Hullet, 2005) and feelings (Schwarz, 2000). In general, positive affective states tend to correlate with enhanced persuasion and more favourable attitudes, whereas negative affective states are associated with reduced persuasion and less favourable attitudes (Bower, 1981). This is interesting since fear appeals are associated with negative emotional states (see: §4.4. Understanding Emotions). Behaviour involves intentions and outcomes with regard to an attitude object. Cognition means that there is a conscious or unconscious belief about the object. Affect is a type of emotion, behaviour involves people’s intentions and action, and cognition refers to thoughts and motivation. To recapitulate, attitudes are enduring constructs that involve dynamic evaluations of objects and refer to globally lasting evaluations of attitude objects. Most research investigates the effects of fear appeals on attitude change to measure the message’s persuasive effectiveness.
M.A. BOERMANS (2007) – BACHELOR THESIS COMMUNICATION SCIENCE