Attitudinal Change in Social Psychology

Although in recent years the constituents of effective persuasion have been refined and analyzed in ways that appear meant to clarify the means by which behavior and attitudes can be influenced and facilitate socially optimal beliefs and behavior, it is difficult to reach meaning in any discussion of strategies and tactics of persuasion without reference to classical discourse of the subject. Much contemporary discussion of persuasion begins by mentioning Aristotle in this regard (e.g., Shelby, 1998; Hamilton, 1999). Aristotle's teacher Plato, too, deals with rhetoric and the art of persuasion, but chiefly to distinguish it from philosophy, which Plato, through the Socratic dialogues Phaedrus and the Gorgias, concludes is the higher intellectual pursuit.

Aristotle's treatment of rhetoric as persuasion does not make a moral judgment about its superiority or inferiority to philosophy but instead starts from the premise that the audience of the Rhetoric will be

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ing on how the communicating/persuasive agent is interpreted as well as on what the agent says. But the core experience is the receptor/auditor's cognitive act of interpretation. Writing in the 1970s, Delia calls for studies that are centered on the process of perceiver interpretation and cognition rather than on designations of argument as such. This challenge appears to have been met most strongly and systematically since that time by the work of Cialdini (1993), which focuses on the rhetorical or persuasive act as a process aimed at achieving the objective of attitude change. Attitude change occurs when the receiver of a communication favorably evaluates the ideas being conveyed by the sender of that communication. The sender exploits the receiver's tendency to look for shortcuts or cues that will relieve him or her of the responsibilty to think through the content of a message to make a truly rational decision about what attitude or belief to adopt. The core persuasive action is accomplished when ideas, or thoughts, are changed. That is why credibility of the sender, which Cialdini also characterizes as authority (1985, 1993), is such an important quality of persuasion. If the sender of a persuasive message is not perceived t
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Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)

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