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Changing prejudiced attitudes by thinking about persuasive messages: implications for resistance
Author(s) -
Cárdaba Miguel A. M.,
Briñol Pablo,
Horcajo Javier,
Petty Richard E.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12225
Subject(s) - persuasion , psychology , attitude change , prejudice (legal term) , social psychology , resistance (ecology) , regulatory focus theory , elaboration likelihood model , elaboration , implicit attitude , philosophy , ecology , creativity , humanities , biology
This research showed that changing attitudes toward stigmatized groups can result from both the simple processes that require little thinking and the traditional elaborative forms of persuasion that require high thinking processes. Importantly, even when the obtained attitude change was equivalent for situations in which there was high and low message elaboration, the changes produced in high thinking conditions were found to be more resistant to further attacks than equivalent changes produced by less thoughtful mechanisms. Not only were those attitudes more resistant as measured objectively (Study 1) but participants also perceived their attitudes to be subjectively more resistant (Study 2). These studies suggest that examining the processes by which prejudice is changed can be important for understanding the consequences and long‐term implications of treatments and campaigns oriented to changing attitudes toward stigmatized groups.