Processes of Social Influence through Attitude Change

In this review, we focus on social psychological studies of influence-research in which the goal is to bring about change in another person or oneself. Although many constructs can be targeted for change (e.g., beliefs, behaviors), we focus on attitudes (people's general evaluations of people, objects, and issues) because attitudes often serve a key mediational role in behavior change (i.e., atti­ tude change can mediate the impact of some influ­ ence treatment on behavioral compliance). In one classic model of influence, some influence treatment affects beliefs, which in turn affect attitudes, which in turn affect behaviors (Fishbein &: Ajzen, 1975). Regardless of the causal sequence, however, the same fundamental influence processes can operate independently of the target and type of change sought. For example, compliance typically involves a situation in which a behavioral response is sought in reaction to a simple and explicit request to do something (e.g., donate money to a charity), whereas persuasion typically involves an attempt to bring about a change in beliefs or attitudes as a result of providing information on a topic (e.g., delivering a message on the dangers of smoking). Nevertheless, despite some obvious differences in the persuasion and compliance traditions (e.g., fOCUSing on changes in attitudes vs. behaviors, prOviding information or not), we argue that some !undamental communalities also exist in the key processes that underlie the effectiveness of these influence methods. In the typical situation in which influence is POSSible, a person or a group of people (i.e., the recipient) receives an intervention (e.g., a communi­ cation such as a message or a simple request) from another individual or group (i.e., the source) in a particular setting (i.e., the context). Successful influ­ ence is said to occur when the recipients' beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors are modified in the desired direction. As we have noted, although this chapter focuses on influencing attitudes as the key depen­ dent variable, the same procedures can be useful in modifying beliefs and behaviors. Later in this chap­ ter, we discuss when changes in attitudes are more versus less likely to result in behavior change. In this chapter, we describe research on social influence organized around the key variables that determine the extent of influence. We describe how these different variables (e.g., attractiveness of the source, power of the recipient, modality in which the message is conveyed) affect the extent of influ­ ence in different ways depending on the extent of thinking a person is doing. As we describe next, although influenCing another person (or oneselD is complex, it can be understood by breaking down the processes responsible for influence into a finite set. After a long tradition of assessing the impact of influence treatments on attitudes with deliberative self-reports of people's attitudes (Eagly &: Chaiken, 1993; Petty &: Wegener, 1998), more recent work has assessed change with measures that tap the more automatic evaluations associated with objects, issues, and people. Techniques that assess automatic evaluative associations without directly asking people to report their attitudes are often referred to as implicit measures, and assessments that tap more