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Example research essay topic: Attitude Change The Case Of Attitudes Towards - 2,090 words

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ATTITUDE CHANGE: THE CASE OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE "GREEN CARD" IN GERMANY And Florack, Ursula Piontkowski, Ina Knocks, Julia Rottmann, Pia Thiemann University of Munster The chosen paper discusses the study of attitude change (the sleeper effect) towards the green card for skilled employees in Germany. Besides this attitude change is examined as influenced by a biased source. The choice of this study object (attribute towards the green card) is explained by situation existing in Germany in 2000 during state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia when different parties used the same slogan for their own purposes which actually were quite contrary. The authors drew attention to the fact that the arguments in this debate were made by the biased communicators.

So it was decided to study whether conclusions from such sources led to the change of attitude as well as how enduring this attitude change was. There were already conducted quite a great number of studies of the sleeping effect, the authors took one step forward and extended these studies. It is commonly known that under certain circumstances information from biased or non-credible sources may lead to delayed attitude change (absolute sleeper effect) or to a reduced decline of attitude change over time (relative sleeper effect). But previous researches did not take into consideration such parameters as the length and complexity of information about the communicator. So this time there was used a variety of source information with different complexity. The authors hypothesized a lower sleeper effect in cases when the source information was complex.

As for the cases with short and easy source information they expected the usual sleeper effect. They also supposed that the attitude change would become stronger right after the reading of the article in those participants who didnt receive any information about the communicator as compared to participants who were informed about the biased source. The authors also assumed that during the second measurement which would take place in six weeks after the reading of the message, its influence should be stronger for those participants of the study who had received a short information (46 words) about the author during the first measurement. Since complex information should be better stored in memory, they expected no sleeper effect for participants who had received an extensive author note (202 words). These predictions were tested by the authors in an experiment with students from German universities. As participants were taken 69 students from the University of Muenster.

They were asked to take part in a survey about the implementation of the green card in Germany. All the participants had to read a short article which included arguments against the implementation of the green card for foreign experts. The measurement was conducted twice (right after having read the article and in six weeks). During the first measurement the participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: three experimental and one control. The ones from experimental groups received a booklet which included all the materials, instructions as well as questionnaires.

First they had to read an introduction describing the background of the topic, and then the message itself. The message included the arguments against the implementation of the green card in Germany. The message read by the participants from the experimental groups was clearly biased init's point of view. Once the article was read, the participants of the experimental groups received either no description of the message source, a short description, or a long description. The fourth group of participants (the control group) received no arguments and no information about a source. They were just asked about their attitude towards the green card in Germany.

And finally, all participating students answered several questions asking about their attitude towards the green card. The participants who received information about the source were asked if they believed the communicator to be biased on the discussed topic. The second measurement was conducted in six weeks and it was presented as a completely independent one, not connected to the first one. Among questions there also was a question regarding the attitude towards the green card again.

As for the participants of the control group they answered the questions relevant for the attitude measure only at the first measurement. The information about the author and the source was varied according to its vomplexity and length. But the communicated data guaranteed that participants perceived the communicator as biased on the topic of immigration. During these two measurements there was used a 9 -point scale for both questions (1 = disagree; 9 = agree).

So as a result there were two figures: communicator bias and attitude towards the green card. The assessment of the communicator bias made by participants who received the long version of the author information did not differ from the one made by those who received just the short version. Both groups assessed the authors credibility as a low one. As for the attitude towards the green card the authors communicate that a single factorial ANOVA with the attitude scores at the first time of measurement as dependent variable reveals differences between the experimental conditions and the control condition. The expectation that participants were more likely to be negative towards the implementation of the green card when they received the message without any information about the source data as compared to participants who received no such message was confirmed by the conducted survey as the authors hypothesized. However, there was found a deviation from what the authors expected.

The same effect described above was found when participants who read a short or long description of communicator who was biased, were compared with participants from the group who didnt receive a message. The attitudes towards the green card of participants from the groups which didnt receive an author note, and which received a short note or a long note did not differ from each other. The second study was conducted in six weeks and results were so that the rejection of the green card was higher in participants who had read a short description of the biased communicator compared to participants in the control group. There was no difference found between the control group and the group which received only the message itself.

This relative sleeper effect was also confirmed in an ANOVA with the point of measurement as dependent factor (immediately vs. after 6 weeks) as well as the author information (no information vs. short information) as independent factor. There was found a decay in attitude change for participants of the message-only group, but not for participants who had read a short author note. But this interaction disappeared when, additionally, the group which received a complex author information was considered. Besides there was not found any interaction when only participants were considered who had read a short or long author note.

So this means that the hypothesis that complex author information leads to a diminished sleeper effect was not supported. According to the results of the study there was found an enhanced rejection of the green card even though participants were informed that the author of the arguments was closely linked to conservative parties. A relative sleeper effect was found: in six weeks after the reception of the arguments during another allegedly unrelated second survey, participants indicated more positive attitudes towards the green card when they had received no information about the author than when they had received a short author note. It means that there was a stronger decay of the attitude change when participants had no source information as compared to when they were aware of the biased source. As mentioned at the beginning of this analysis the authors have extended previous studies of sleeper effect but not all their hypothesis were confirmed by the study. Unexpectedly there was found a relative sleeper effect.

The present research was based on the study of Pratkanis et al. (1998) who suggested that the message itself and the discounting cue are regarded as two separate communications with opposite influence. Although the impact of these two informations might be almost equal immediately after the presentation, Pratkanis et al. suppose that the decline of the influence of the latter communication is faster over time. It seems to be true that detailed information about the communicator is stored better in memory and is therefore easier to retrieve when recipients process the given information deliberately. So the authors followed the explanation of Pratkanis et al. that the sleeper effect is based on a differential decay of information in memory, and thus they expected a decreased sleeper effect for extensive source information.

But at the same time it is a well known phenomenon in persuasion research that credibility of source has a lower influence on attitudes when participants are motivated themselves and capable of checking arguments carefully and deliberately (Chain 1980; Johnson and Scileppi 1969; Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman 1981). So the authors name possible reasons which could explain the fact that participants of this study were motivated to scrutinize the presented arguments. First, participants may have felt a conflict between social norms or internalized standards of equality and activated negative affective evaluations (Gaertner and Do vidio 1986). To reduce this conflict, they may have scrutinized the given information extensively. Second, participants were explicitly asked to read the text carefully and, afterwards, to list three arguments provided by the author, which was also asked in a study conducted by Pratkanis et al. (1978). In his study this communicator effect also failed to appear.

So we should state that participants reviewed the arguments carefully and so the arguments were more central to them than the author bias. The other point which influence was not confirmed is the complexity of communicator information. The authors describe that studies of Kruglanski and Thompson (1999) suggested that complex information had a greater influence on attitude change than simple information. But there is one stipulation which needs to be taken to the consideration: Kruglanski and Thompson mostly used messages with few, simple arguments, so participants of their studies could have focused more on the author note than on the message, while in this study participants have paid more attention to the message itself. The presented study has found an occurrence of a relative sleeper effect for those participants who received a short author note. For them the article itself had an immediate and great persuasive effect although they thought the communicator biased.

But the influence of the message decreased over time for those who didnt have any information about the author. The authors of the study explain that it could be that participants made their judgment of the article before they read the author note, which was presented after reading. For those who received an author note, the incongruence between their judgment and the knowledge that they were agreeing with a biased author may have led to a feeling of dissonance and wish to reduce this feeling (Frey 1986; Frey and Wicklund 1978). For those who did not receive any information about the communicator, there was no need for the reduction of this dissonance and for a further confirmation of the judgment.

Thus, the decrease of the attitude change for participants without source information seems reasonable. The authors assume that the hypothesis of Pratkanis et al. (1998) does not offer a feasible explanation, because they should have expected then a more stable attitude change for participants who received simple in contrast to complex arguments. But the complexity of the author note did not have a significant effect on the attitude towards the green card either at the first measurement or the second. So its impossible to make any inferences about the significance of the complexity of source information. Resuming we can say that the study discussed in the summarized paper shows that the long-lasting attitude change is possible even if a source is perceived as biased.

The authors have also found that under certain circumstances, such changes in attitudes can be more enduring than the mere reception of arguments without a reference to the source of information. This study was conducted taking into consideration other relevant hypothesis. Not all of them (the ones assumed by the authors as well as those discussed in the paper as alternatives) turned to be true but this gives an opportunity for futher more detailed research. Bibliography: 1. And Florack, Ursula Piontkowski, Ina Knocks, Julia Rottmann, Pia Thiemann.

Attitude Change: The Case Of Attitudes Towards The "Green Card" In Germany. Current Research In Social Psychology, Volume 8, Number 3. October, 2002.


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Research essay sample on Attitude Change The Case Of Attitudes Towards

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