3.1: Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviors

Over the years, many of my persuasion students have told me that they are taking this class because they "want to learn how to get other people to do stuff." I encourage those students to take a marketing class.

Persuasion is more than a tool; it is social science and it is strategy. To understand persuasion is to understand and respect human thought processes and human behavior. Persuasion is much more than a "how-to." We've probably all heard the joke, "How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?" Answer: "None. The light bulb has to want to change!"

One cannot say they've sold something if nobody bought it. One cannot say they taught something if nobody learned it. We have not persuaded anyone if no one chooses to make a change. Persuasion cannot make people change (though force or coercion can). We can influence people, but ultimately, people with free will choose to change–or not. Persuasion is not something that one does to someone else. It is something that one influences others to do.

Persuasion – influence – can be powerful, so we must be respectful of this power and be ethical, knowledgeable persuaders.

Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviors

We have learned in previous chapters that persuasion is about influencing change.  What, exactly, are we trying to change?  In almost every persuasive context, the goal is to change beliefs, attitudes, and/or behaviors.

Beliefs are things we accept, consider to be true, or hold as an opinion ("Belief" def. 2). Typically, beliefs are divided into two basic categories: core and dispositional. Core beliefs are beliefs that people have actively engaged in and created over the course of their lives (e.g. belief in a higher power or belief in extraterrestrial life forms). Dispositional beliefs, on the other hand, are beliefs that people have not actively engaged in but rather judgments that they make, based on their knowledge of related subjects, and when they encounter a proposition. For example, imagine that you were asked the question, “Can stock cars reach speeds of one thousand miles per hour on a one-mile oval track?” Even though you may never have attended a stock car race or even seen one on television, you can make split-second judgments about your understanding of automobile speeds and say with a fair degree of certainty that you believe stock cars cannot travel at one thousand miles per hour on a one-mile track.

Persuading audiences to change core beliefs is more difficult than persuading audiences to alter dispositional beliefs.

People have attitudes about pretty much everything. The color beige? Even if we don't think about it much, we each have an attitude about the color beige. An attitude is defined as an individual’s general predisposition toward something as being good or bad, right or wrong, or negative or positive. You have attitudes about activities, people, laws, policies, the color beige–you name it.

Behaviors come in a wide range of forms. Behaviors are what people do, how people act, how people behave. Most behaviors are readily observable. How a person votes, eats, shops, moves, speaks, and reacts to things are all examples of behavior. A great deal of persuasion, particularly advertising, public health announcements, and political campaigns, has the goal of influencing the behavior of particular listeners.

So if attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are WHAT persuasion tries to change, HOW do we change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors?

Before we can develop persuasive strategies, which are action plans for changing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, we must differentiate between strategy and theory.