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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
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