Page 45 - How Children Learn to Hate Their Parents

Persuasion – The Creation of Attitude:
It has been a central theme thus far that attitudes and behavior are strongly connected. When the attitude is specific to the behavior, attitude can be a powerful predictor of behavior. Behavior, in turn, helps create attitude. When we find ourselves doing something, we attribute reasons for it. When we find ourselves saying that something is bad even if we don’t believe it, eventually we come to believe it. The research on persuasion and persuasiveness examines how we can influence attitude in a way that ultimately changes behavior. Social psychologists have studied various aspects of persuasion over the last five decades. Some attempts have been made to study the effects of “propaganda” campaigns. Alienated parents often complain of their children being “brainwashed” or “poisoned” by the alienating parent.
This process becomes very important when we attempt to understand how a child, who previously loved a parent turns so cold and hateful toward that parent in the absence of a large scale factors that would cause that change.
Persuasion researchers have identified that there are two routes to persuasion (Meyers, 1996). One route, a central route involves step-by-step arguments that lead the listener to a logical conclusion. For example: “Mommy stays out all night. She doesn’t clean. She doesn’t cook anymore. She has a boyfriend. She doesn’t want to be in the house with us anymore. She doesn’t love us.”
A second route is a more peripheral route that triggers “acceptance without thinking,” by pairing or associating favorable sensations with the object of attitudinal change, or unfavorable thoughts, images and sensations with the object of attitudinal change. “I would like to buy you new sneakers, but Daddy doesn’t really give me enough money to do that.”
Social psychologists have identified a number of factors which influence the listener’s attitudes and behaviors with respect to change. They are:
The credibility of the speaker
Sleeper effects
Perceived trustworthiness of the speaker
Content of the message
Rational vs. emotional appeals
The arousal of good feelings and the arousal of fear One sided versus two sided appeals
Some of these factors are straightforward, but others operate in a more subtle or tacit fashion. In general the more credible the communicator is the more persuasive he or she will be. People who are considered believable are also generally considered to be trustworthy. It is logical to assume that a parent who has a close bond to a child will be a credible source of information to him or her. Parents routinely convince children to believe the unbelievable when they spin tales about Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy or The Easter Bunny. If a parent is truly motivated, telling anecdotal accounts of spousal abuse to a child, or telling the child false stories about abuse perpetrated on the child can and do readily become accepted as truth.
45