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Attitude Of Mother-in-law Towards Daughter-in-law As A Determinant Factor In Marital Stability In Some Selected Families
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FACTORS THAT AFFECT ATTITUDE CHANGE
Attitudes
can be changed through persuasion. In Hovland’s (1960) view, we should
understand attitude change as a “response to communicationâ€. He and his
colleagues did experimental research into the factors that can affect
the persuasiveness of a message and enumerated the following:
1.
Target characteristics are characteristics that refer to the person who
receives and processes a message. The first is intelligence trait and
the result is that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by
one-sided messages. Another variable is self esteem and there is some
evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and there is some
evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is
actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more
easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels
(Rhodes & Woods, 1992).
2. Source characteristics- the major
source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal
attraction/attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has
been found to be a key variable here (Hovland & Weiss, 1951); if one
reads a report on health and believes it comes from a professional
medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes
it is from a popular newspaper.
3. Message characteristics- here
the nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes
presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
4.
Cognitive routes- A message can appeal to an individual’s cognitive
evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to
persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to
evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the
peripheral route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not
look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern
advertisements that feature celebrity/celebrities. In some cases,
physician/doctors and experts are used. In other cases film stars are
used for their attractiveness.
Attitudes are defined as a mental
predisposition to act that is expressed by evaluating a particular
entity with some degree of favour or disfavour. Individuals generally
have attitudes that focus on objects, people or institutions. Attitudes
are also attached to mental categories. Mental orientations towards
concepts are generally referred to as values. Attitudes comprise four
components:
a. Cognitions are our beliefs, theories,
expectations, cause and effect beliefs and perceptions relative to the
focal object.
b. Affective component refers to our feeling with respect to the focal object such as fear, liking or anger.
c. Behavioural Intentions are our goals, aspirations and our expected responses to the attitude object.
d.
Evaluations are often considered the central component of attitudes.
Evaluations consist of the imputation of some degree of goodness or
badness to an attitude object. When we speak positive or negative
towards an object, we are referring to the evaluative component.
Evaluations are function of cognitive, affective and behavioural
intentions of an object. It is most often the evaluation that is stored
in memory, often without the corresponding cognitions and affect that
were responsible for its formation (Hovland & Weiss, 1951).
Persuasive Communication and Attitude Change
There
are several ingredients for persuasive communication with regards to
attitude change. First, the source must be credible. Second, it is
implied that a message should be repetitive to be effective. Known as
the sleeper effect, researchers have found that a persuasive message may
have a greater delay impact than initial effect on receiver attitudes
(Rajecki, 1999). A persuasive message aimed at attitude change must also
be different than the receiver’s opinion. This is a straight forward
concept-an attitude cannot be changed if it mimics the message attitude.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study investigated the influence of communication on attitude towards mother-in-law among female married adults in Lagos Metropolis.In carrying out the study, four null hypotheses were postulated to provide direction. The study consisted of one hundred randomly selected samples. The instrument used for data collection was a self-designed questionnaire by the researcher of a 4 point Likert format. Both one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Independent t-test Statistical Techniques were us ... Continue reading---
