Sex (and the Peripheral Route) Sells!

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a dual-process theory of attitude change (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).  The model describes two processes, or routes, that people take when presented with a persuasive message.  The first route, called the central route to persuasion, describes when individuals think about and scrutinize messages intended to change their attitudes, whereas the second route (i.e., the peripheral route to persuasion) describes when individuals use superficial cues to base their decision on an argument (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).   

            Whether people use the central or peripheral route and whether their attitude changes depends on three factors:  the source (i.e., the person giving the message), the message (i.e., what the source is saying), and the audience (i.e., to whom the message is directed; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).  In fact, past research shows that some techniques are more effective in advertising (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983).  When individuals are low in involvement (i.e., they cared less about the product), they recall a product more when a famous person (i.e., the source) endorses than when a citizen does (Petty et al., 1983). 

            Specifically, one factor that makes a source more persuasive is likeability, which can be split into two factors, one of which is physical attractiveness (Chaiken, 1979).  A recent ad campaign by Reebok includes Victoria Secret model Miranda Kerr (rated 27^th out of Men’s Health “100 Hottest Women”; Men’s Health, 2014). In the ads below, Kerr models Reebok’s new Skyscape shoes.  Reebok takes a step further (besides just using a “hot” famous person) using the physical attractive source technique by dressing Kerr in little to no clothing (e.g., a towel in the second photo). Clearly, Reebok hopes that its audience will use peripheral cues in making a decision to buy their shoes.

            In addition, the second factor in likeability is similarity (Chaiken, 1979).  Reebok attempts to make Kerr appear more similar, and thus more likeable.  In the top photo, the words state that the Reebok Skyscape is the “perfect all day shoe for Miranda Kerr – and you.”  By insinuating that even famous models need an “all day shoe,” Reebok is creating a similarity between the audience and Kerr, appearing to make her more likeable. 

Lastly, Reebok relies on positive emotion to increase use of the peripheral route.  Positive emotions can increase attitude change (Schwartz, Bless, & Bohner, 1991).  By including the cute puppy in the top photo and a massage table on the bottom, Reebok hopes to increase positive emotion, and thus, positive feelings about the shoes (e.g., that they are comfortable, relaxing). Similar to the physical attractiveness technique, Reebok wants the audience to rely on peripheral cues rather than the central route. (N=443)

           

References

Chaiken, S. (1979). Communicator physical attractiveness and persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(8), 1387-1397.

Men’s Health Magazine (2014, July 2).  The hottest women of 2014. Men’s Health Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/hottest-women-2014

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag

Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Schumann, D. (1983). Central and peripheral routes to advertising effectiveness: The moderating role of involvement. Journal of Consumer Research, 10(2), 135-146.  Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2488919

Schwarz, N., Bless, H., & Bohner, G. (1991). Mood and persuasion: Affective states influence the processing of persuasive communications. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 161-199.

Sexist? Who? Me?

            The Implicit Association Test (IAT) assesses individual’s unconscious and unintentional stereotypes (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998).  To do this, the IAT measures how quickly the individual pairs different constructs with their respective cultural stereotypes (e.g., females and family-related words; Project Implicit, 2011).  For example, to detect implicit racism, the test would first present faces of African-Americans and of European-Americans.  The individual must “sort” the faces into two categories: Black and White.  Next, the individual would sort Black faces and “good” words (e.g., joy, love wonderful) into one category and White faces and “bad” words (e.g., agony, terrible, horrible).  Then, the good and bad words would switch, so the individual would sort Black faces and bad words into one category and White faces and good words into the other.  The program would then compare how quickly the individual paired good words with either Black or White faces.  If the individual sorted good words paired with White faces more quickly than good words with Black faces, then that individual is said to have an implicit preference for White faces.  The associations can be labeled, “no association,” “slight association,” “moderate association,” or “strong association” (Project Implicit, 2011). Take the IAT here!  

            I took the two Gender IATs (i.e., Gender- Career and Gender- Science), which tested my association of both genders with either careers or family and either science or liberal arts.  I was surprised by my results.  For the Career IAT, I slightly associated men with career words and women with family words.  The results for the Science IAT were even more surprising: I strongly associated women with the sciences more and men with the liberal arts. 

I admit that I was a little disappointed in my results; I thought that I was not sexist!  I was less surprised by the results to the Gender & Careers IAT.  I think that I was socialized (from media, teachers, peers, etc.) to associate women with family words and men with career words.  For example, my parents gave me Barbie dolls, whereas they gave my brother toy cars.  Nevertheless, I thought that I no longer associated women with family words and men with careers words.  Yet, it appears that I am still affected by the culture in which we live, given that 76% of people who took this IAT made the same association (Project Implicit, 2011).

            I was more surprised by the Genders & Sciences IAT. I think my results were driven by two things.  First, I took the Genders & Careers IAT before the Sciences IAT.  After receiving results implying that I had some sexist stereotypes, I think I may have unconsciously tried to prove that I was not sexist, thereby giving much more weight to associating women in the sciences.  Second, I am currently pursuing a major in Biology (in addition to my major in Psychology).  One of the Biology classes that I am in this semester has one male student and previous Biology classes have had very few male students, in relation to female students.  Although the gender ratios can probably be attributed to the broader university gender ratio (60 women: 40 men), perhaps I now associate women more with Biology (or sciences in general) just as a matter of the number of women biologists with whom I interact daily, illustrating the contact hypothesis.  The contact hypothesis states that direct contact between two groups will reduce prejudice (Allport, 1954).  Because I do not interact with as many male biologists, I have more gender prejudice against associating men with science. 

  

            Completing the IAT made me realize that I am probably more influenced by media and our culture more than I would like. Obviously, I would prefer to have no associations between gender and careers or science because women and men should have equal opportunity to compete in the sciences (whether or not that is actually the case is a different story!). Nevertheless, I only slightly associated women with family words and men with career words; thus, there is hope that I may be able to eventually overcome this association!

References

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in 

     implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social 

     Psychology, 74(6), 1464-1480.

Project Implicit (2011). About the IAT. Retrieved from:     

     https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html 

Extrovert for a Day

Most of the time, I am a fairly quiet person.  I prefer to think before I speak.  I prefer to spend time alone or with a few friends, rather than at a party.  I absolutely hate small talk.  I agree with Gandhi’s philosophy to “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”  In other words, I am a stereotypical introvert!

So, for my “Be a different person for a day” social experience, I chose to be an extravert!  To do this, I was extra-friendly, extra-talkative, and extra-sociable (puns fully intended :)).  For example, when I went out for coffee with a friend, I asked the barista how her day was and made small talk with her while she was making my coffee. 

Throughout the day, I found being an extrovert extremely challenging.  For instance, I noticed that I often reverted back to my “normal” self.  I think that this happened because I am a fairly low self-monitor.  Specifically, I scored a six on Snyder’s Self-Monitoring Scale (1974).  Self-monitoring is a characteristic that describes people’s ability to change their behavior to suit their environment (Snyder, 1987).  A person who is a low self-monitor (like me) is less capable of acting differently under various circumstances and tends to remain stable across situations (Snyder, 1987).  So, it logically follows that I would be less able to act differently for a whole day. 

People reacted to my change in behavior differently.  My interactions with people who I did not know (e.g., the barista at Starbucks, the cashier at HEB) were fairly similar to previous interactions with comparable others.  In other words, I did not notice a change in how others interacted with me.  People were slightly friendlier but, for the most part, I did not observe many differences.  One difference that I did notice was that I held longer conversations with people who I did not know.  This was most likely due to the self-fulfilling prophecy, which is the tendency for an individual’s beliefs about another person to influence their actions in such a way that increases the likelihood of that person acting in line to confirm that individual’s expectations (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).  For instance, because I was trying to act overtly friendly with the cashier at HEB, he was friendly back, which influenced me to continue talking with him.  In other words, the cashier thought I was a friendly person and then continued talking to me, which enabled me to continue to act friendly.   

My interactions with people that I did know were much different.  The people that I did know asked why I was being so talkative and some of my friends asked why I was “so happy.”  One friend even remarked that I was being “a little obnoxious today” and that I needed to “tone it down a notch.”  My friends demonstrated Kelley’s Covariation Theory (Kelley, 1967).  For instance, the friend who I had coffee with stated that I had had too much coffee because I was being overly talkative.  Kelley’s Covariation Theory states that we attribute people’s behavior based on three different sources of information:  consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency (Kelly, 1967).  My friend noticed that (a) caffeine sometimes makes other people more talkative (high consensus), (b) my chattiness was a distinct behavior (high distinctiveness), and (c) other times I have been more talkative after drinking espresso (high consistency) and therefore, she attributed my eextroversionto the coffee.  Other friends who had not seen me drink coffee attributed my behavior to something good happening.   

Before I left my apartment for the day, I had to “prepare” myself to be extroverted  For example, I thought that I would be drawing more attention to myself (because I would be talking to others more than I usually do).  So, I ended up taking longer to put on makeup, fix my hair, and pick out my outfit.  Of course, at the time I did not realize that I was subject to the spotlight effect.  The spotlight effect is the tendency for people to feel as though others are focused more on them than they really are (Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000).  In other words, because I thought that people would notice me more than usual, I spent more time making sure that I looked my best.   

Throughout the day, I felt more awkward than I usually do.  Because I could not contemplate as long about what I was going to say before I said it, I kept thinking that what I said was stupid or silly and that whoever I was talking to would think so as well.  Again, I was subject to the spotlight effect.  I was overestimating the extent to which the person judged what I said (Gilovich et al., 2000); in reality, they were probably just as concerned about sounding dumb as I was. 

Furthermore, about halfway through the day, I ran out of things to talk about!  Generally, I don’t talk that much and in order to maintain my talkativeness, I just started saying the first things that came to mind (no wonder I felt awkward!).  Funnily enough, my incessant chatter led to me explaining to a friend what a eunuch is (If you don’t know what that is, click here).  I could finally relate to Kelly Kapoor in the TV show, the Office:

At the end of the day, I felt exhausted!  I felt like I needed some time for myself and give myself some peace and quiet.  The whole next morning, I don’t think I said one word!  I was even grateful that my roommate had gone out of town so that I wouldn’t have to talk anymore.

Acting as an extrovert for a whole day made me realize that I am fairly schematic for quietness.  Schematic traits (as discussed previously) are characteristics that we view as more important to our self-concept (Markus, 1977).  In other words, being an introvert is a large part of who I am and changing that was extremely difficult for me to do.  First, I also was not very good at it (based on my friend’s judgment of me as “obnoxious,” rather than just gregarious).  Second, for me, introversion is a fairly stable trait, judging by my continuous reversion back to being less sociable.  Lastly, I affirmed my beliefs that I am much more comfortable listening and thinking before I speak. 

After some insight, I realized I only try to be extraverted when I am trying to engage in ingratiation and self-promotion, two forms of strategic self-presentation (Stevens & Kristof, 1995).  Ingratiation is used when individuals are trying to fit in (e.g., trying to make friends) and self-promotion is often used when individuals are trying to gain respect or esteem (e.g., at a job interview).  In other words, because it is more socially appealing to be extraverted, I only act sociable when it is warranted.  According to Jones’s Correspondent Inference Theory, people infer whether a behavior corresponds to an individual’s personality based on whether (a) the person chose the behavior (b) the behavior is expected and/or (c) the behavior has positive or negative consequences (Jones & Davis, 1965).  Because in certain situations sociability (a) is expected and (b) has better consequences, I can attribute the acts of extraversion that I do to the situation, rather than to myself.  (N=1216)

References

Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: An egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one’s own actions and appearance.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 211-222.

Jones, E. E., & Davis, K. E. (1965). From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person perception. Advances in Experimental Psychology, 2, 219-266.

Kelley, H. H. (1967) Attribution in social psychology. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 15, 192-238.

Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63-78.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development. New York, NY US: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 526-537.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring.  New York: Freeman

Stevens, C. K., & Kristof, A. L. (1995). Making the right impression: A field study of applicant impression management during job interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(5), 587-606.