Attitude, Social Influence, Theories of persuasion

Dr Awdhesh Singh, IRS (Retd.)

Director, Awdhesh Academy,

Former Commissioner, Customs & Indirect Taxes (Central Excise/GST)

York Willbern Six levels of Public Morality

• York Willbern was a director of the Bureau of Government Researchin his article entitled "Types and Levels of Public Morality,"

• He provided six levels of morality or ethics for public officials. These are

1. Basic honesty and conformity to law;

2. Conflicts of interest;

3. Service orientation and procedural fairness;

4. The ethic of democratic responsibility;

5. The ethic of public policy determination; and

6. The ethic of compromise and social integration.

1: Basic Honesty and Conformity to Law

• Moral standards in the public life not possible unless the person is moral in the personal life as well

• “The public servant is morally bound, just as are other persons, to tell the truth, to keep promises, to respect the person and the property of others, and to abide by the requirements of the law”. (York Willbern)

• They must follow the moral codes more rigorously than the ordinary people

2: Conflict of Interest

• A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests and serving one interest could involve working against another.

• In such a situation, the action of the person is perceived to be biased as it appears that the decision-maker would choose personal gain over duties to their employer or the organisation.

• Conflict of interest must be avoided else the actions of the individual become unreliable.

• It is possible to discover the conflict of interest in advance and avoid it altogether.

Actual and Potential Conflict of Interest

• An actual conflict of interest exists if the circumstances are reasonably believed to create a risk that a decision may be unduly influenced by others. • Example: If a civil servant accepts a valuable gift from a person, he is likely to

take a decision in favour of the person.

• A potential conflict of interest arises where interest or obligation of a person could conflict with official duties and responsibilities in the future. • Example: If a person is directly reporting to his spouse in an office, their

personal relationship has the potential to affect official duties.

Examples of Potential Workplace Conflicts of Interest• A relative or close friend reports to a supervisor who decides the salary and promotions.

• A male manager dates a female employee who reports to him or vice versa.

• A purchasing agent hires his brother-in-law to provide vending services to the company.

• An employee who is a member of a company employee selection team fails to disclose that he is related to a job candidate whom the company team is considering for a position.

• A manager provides paid consulting services on the weekend to a company customer or supplier.

• An employee works part-time in the evening for a company that makes a product that competes with the products of his full-time employer.

• A purchasing agent accepts trips and gifts from a vendor and then selects the vendor's products for purchase by the company.

Steps of avoid conflict of interest for public servants • Do not invest of the companies on which they have jurisdiction.

• Do not employ their children or close relatives in the organizations under his control.

• Follow transparent procedures for selection of vendors to avoid any perception of favoritism.

• Recuse yourself from the decision-making where their close friend or relative is one of the affected party.

3: Service Orientation and Procedural Fairness

• In a democracy, people are the supreme ruler.

• “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”. (Mahatma Gandhi)

• They rule through their representative (MP/MLA) who become ministers and head the government

• Civil servants should work with the spirit of service

• Consider your salary as honourium to serve the people

• All rules and procedures must be followed for taking decisions.

• "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done."

4: The Ethics of Democratic Responsibility

• Act within the ambit of law guided by the will of the people.

• Must not live in ivory towers and run the administration based on their whims and fancy.

• Closely interact with the people to understand the pulse of the people and fulfill their hopes and aspirations.

5: The Ethics of Public Policy Determination

• Politicians make the laws, bureaucrats implement them

• Politicians often play vote bank politics and cater to their constituency as their survival depends on their votes.

• The public officials acts as the balancing power to the politicians

• They should to be fair and just to everyone as their position is secured.

• They must draft polices in ethical ways in the larger public interest of the country.

6: The Ethics of Compromise and Social Integration• Compromise, rather than standing on principle, is moral, because

without compromise there will be discord and conflict, and disintegration rather than integration of the society.

• The public officials should ensure that the different segment of the society live in harmony with each other.

• All society members to grow together else they would grow apart.

• An ethical public official balances different interests of the societal groups and not seen to favour any particular group.

Constitutional Morality

Constitutional morality

• Constitutional morality means the standards of morality as exemplified in the Constitution of the country.

• Constitutional morality is important for constitutional laws to be effective.

• Without constitutional morality, the operation of a constitution tends to become arbitrary, erratic, and whimsical.

The challenges to the Constitutional morality

• Political leaders follow the popular opinion.

• They are elected based on the majority of votes

• They try to please the majority and ignore the right of the individual and minority provided in the Constitution.

How to uphold Constitutional Morality

• Follow the Constitutional values like secularism, equality, liberty and protection of fundamental rights in letter and spirit

• Government organisations must have functional autonomy to work according to law.

• Government must abide by the judgements pronounced by Courts resisting populism.

Attitude

Definitions of ‘Attitude’

• An attitude is ‘a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluation a particular entity with some degree of favours or disfavours.

• An attitude is an evaluation of an attitude object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive.

• An attitude can be a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, events, activities, and ideas.

Three Components of Attitude

1. Cognitive: Person’s thoughts and believe about an object

2. Emotional: Feeling which the object, person, issue or event invokes

3. Behavioral: Manner in which the attitude influences a person’s behaviour

Explicit and Implicit Attitude

• Explicit: A person is aware of his attitude, and they influences his behaviors and beliefs

• Implicit: Unaware of his beliefs that influence his conduct and behaviour

Conscious and Unconscious Attitude

• Carl Jung, one of the founder of psychoanalysis, defines attitude as ‘a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way’.

• Attitudes is usually in pair.

• It can be conscious or unconscious

Types of Attitude

Conscious Unconscious

Extroversion Introversion

Rational Irrational

Individual Social

Abstract Creative

Extraversion

• Their energy is outward, towards people and things.

• They need a lot of stimulation and often express emotions.

• They get their motivation from other people.

• Their often want to change the world.

• They like variety, action and achievement.

• Their attitude is often relaxed and confident.

• They are understandable and accessible.

• They tend to act first and think later.

• Introverts may see them as being shallow and pushy.

Introversion

• Their energy is inward toward concepts and ideas.

• They focus more on their inner worlds

• They face overload if they spend too much time outside and focusing on other people.

• They bottle up their own emotions, which can explode if pushed too far.

• Instead of trying to change the world, they just want to understand it.

• Their attitude is reserved.

• They tend to think before they act.

• Extraverts may see them as egocentric and passive.

Functions of Attitude

Function of Attitude

• A person’s attitude often satisfy his particular psychological needs.

• Psychologists study attitude to find out how attitude contribute to the overall well being of individual.

Classification of Functions of Attitude(Daniel Katz)1. Utilitarian

2. Knowledge

3. Ego-defensive

4. Value-expressive

1. Utilitarian

• People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them avoid punishment.

• An attitude that serves the self-interest is chosen by most people.

• The attitude of the tax officer and the tax payer depends on what is in their interest.

• The attitude of a rich man and a poor man is determined by their self-interest.

2. Knowledge

• People need to maintain an organized, meaningful, and stable view of the world.

• The different pieces of knowledge are synthesised together to work as one entity or one organism.

• Attitudes achieve this goal by making things fit together and make sense. Example:• I believe that I am a good person.

• I believe that good things happen to good people.

• I believe that nothing moves in the world without the desire of God

• I believe in God

3. Ego-Defensive

• This function involves psychoanalytic principles where people use defence mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological harm.

• We are more likely to use the ego-defensive function when we suffer a frustration or misfortune.

• There are several types of Ego-defensive mechanisms

A: Denial

• One refuses to see manifest reality

• It helps a person to deny the harsh reality, and seek refuse in illusions.

• Use of these mechanisms is a symptom of mental maladjustments.

• For example, a supporter of a leader or deity, refuses to see negative side of the action

B: Repression

• An individual who suffers a traumatic experience completely forgets about it.

• He removes it from his conscious memory so that it lies buried even unknown to him in his subconscious mind.

C: Projection

• It is defense mechanism in which a person ascribe his own unacceptable qualities or feelings to other people

• Example:• Everyone is corrupt

• Everyone lies

• Everyone is selfish

D: Rationalization

• A form of self-deception

• It allows one to adjust to an unwelcome situation or outcome by falsely seeing it as to one’s benefit

• Examples• Grapes are sour

• Wealth is root of all evil

• Power creates hatred.

E: Displacement

• Displacement is the redirection of an impulse onto a powerless substitute target.

• The target can be a person or an object that can serve as a symbolic substitute.

• Examples• If someone is frustrated with his boss, who treats him badly may go home

and kick the dog or beat up a family member

F: Sublimation

• People displace their negative emotions into some positive acts instead of some destructive activities.

• Examples• Channelize negative emotions to create art or music.

• Play games or do brisk walking to put negative emotions to some positive use.

4. Value-Expressive

• Serves to express one's central values and self-concept/self-image.

• Central values tend to establish our identity and gain us social approval thereby showing us who we are, and what we stand for.

• Examples• I am an honest person, hence I must criticise corruption always

• I am a hard-working person, hence I must criticise casual people

• I am an efficient government officer, hence I always criticise hard-working people

• I am a communist, so I must always criticise capitalism

Social Influence

What is Social Influence?

• Social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group, perceived authority, social role or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority

Why Social Influence Works?

• Acceptance: We want to be accepted by the group of people who are important to us.

• Cooperation: When all people in a group have similar values and beliefs, they can cooperate each other better to achieve a common goal.

Process of Attitude Change

1: Compliance: Compliance does not necessary means the change of attitude. People comply for an expected reward or punishment-aversion.

2: Identification: Identification is the changing of attitudes or behaviours due to the influence of someone who is admired. Example: Celebrity endorsement

3: Internalization: The process of acceptance and internalisation of a set of norms established by people or groups voluntarily.

Types of Social Influence

1: Conformity

• Informational Conformity: We want to get accurate information about a thing or an event. When we don’t get this information, we rely on others to provide information. Once some information is available with others, we accept this information, whether or not it is accurate.

• Normative: People have the tendency to adjust their attitude and behaviour to match with their friends and colleagues so that they are liked by them. Examples: fashion trends, hair styles, watching popular sports, movies or TV shows, smoking, drinking

2: Minority influence

• Sometimes the minority may influence the views of the majority.

• This happens when the minority group is extremely powerful, educated, successful or affluent.

• This also happens when an individual presents an opinion that is radically different from that held by the majority. As this opinion is novel and contrary to group norms, the attention of other members’ is drawn to it, and they are led to consider the merits of the minority opinion.

3: Self-fulfilling prophecy

• A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true due to positive feedback between belief and behaviour.

• If a rumour is spread that a particular company’s stock is going to perform poorly, many people would start selling the stock and the price of the shares would come down fulfilling the self-fulfilling prophesy.

4: Reactance

• Reactance is the adoption of a view contrary to the view that a person is being pressured to accept.

• This happens usually due to a perceived threat to behavioural freedoms or when it comes from a source that you don’t like.

5: Compliance

• People do something that they are asked to do by another even though they may have options.

• They prefer to comply in order to get social reward and avoid social punishment, even if they don’t agree with the direction.

6: Obedience

• Obedience is a form of social influence that derives from an authority figure.

• In compliance, you believe that you have some choice, but in case of obedience, you believe that you do not have a choice.

7: Psychological manipulation

• It aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.

• Often the manipulator advances his own interest at the cost of others.

• However, it can be positive as well. For example, a doctor may manipulate the psychological state of the patient to develop positive habits by feeding some extreme information about the health condition.

8: Abusive power and control

• People use their power and influence to control their victims.

• They intimidate the victim so much that the victim starts believing that they have no option but to follow the orders of the abuser.

• This may happen in close family relationships like husband and wife or parents and children.

9: Propaganda

• Propaganda is a deliberate dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion.

• The facts are presented selectively to encourage a particular perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.

• Propaganda is widely used by the politicians to influence the citizens.

• “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” (Nazi Joseph Goebbels)

10: Hard power

• Hard power means using force and coercion to change the behaviour of the people.

• This type of social influence is made by the use of hard power or brute power.

• Dictators use hard power to bring quick social transformation in a society.

The Theory of Persuasion

Theory of persuasion

• People’s attitude may be changed by suitably communicating appropriate information to them.

• ‘Theory of persuasion’ is a means of persuading people to change their beliefs, attitude and habits

• It is also knowns as Elaboration Likelihood theory of attitude

• Example: An advertisement is an art of persuasion

Cognitive routes

• Central Route: • Present the data, motivate user to evaluate the data and draw the right

conclusion.

• Statistics and data can be manipulated to suit the purpose.

• Peripheral Route : • Present a stimulus signal such as a model or an attractive person who

influence people emotionally.

• People don’t look at the content, but look at the source.

Various Aspects for persuasion

• Object of the attitude (thing, persons, group or idea)

• The message or information

• The manner in which it is delivered

• The messenger

• The target audience

Audience Characteristic

• People with higher intelligence are unlikely to be persuaded by one-sided message.

• It is hard to persuade people with high self-esteem to accept new attitude.

• State of mind and mood influence response.

• The relationship with self-esteem and willingness to change in curvilinear• Average self-esteem person can be persuaded easily.

• High/low self esteem persons are difficult to be persuaded.

Cognitive consistency

• People try to be consistent in their attitudes, views and in their behaviors.

• Our thoughts are changed when we change our behaviour to maintain the consistency.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Our attitude can affect behaviour and our behaviour affects our attitude.

• This is called cognitive dissonance.

• Dissonance means disharmony of inconsistency.

• When our beliefs and actions are in conflict with each other, there is a psychological tension and discomfort.

• We can reduce the tension by changing our behaviour or changing our cognition/beliefs.

Learning Theories of Attitude

Three Theories of Attitude Change

• Classical Conditioning

• Operant Conditioning

• Observational Learning

1. Classical Conditioning

• Ivan Pavlov’s experiment with feeding a dog and ringing bell

• The smell of food make the dog salivate (unconditioned stimulus)

• Pavlov rings a bell when brought a food

• Sound of bell was able to salivate the dog (conditioned stimulus)

• Positive emotional reaction can be created to a person, object or event by associating positive feelings with the target object

• Commercial advertisement create this conditioning by associating a product with film-stars having fun.

2. Operant/Instrumental Conditioning

• Use praise or reward (positive reinforces) for favourable events or outcomes

• Remove an unfavorable event (negative reinforces) of outcome after the desired behaviour [Attendance requirement]

• Punishment for the undesired behaviour

• Examples• Issue appreciation certificates to good officers

• Give chocolates to children for good behaviour

• Punish bad behaviour, poor performance

3: Observational Learning

• People form attitude by observing people around them

• ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’: Gandhi

• We are influenced by the people whom we admire, like our parents, teachers and leaders.

• We try to become like the people whom we admire.

Q. Which type of conditioning is influenced by the Ivan Pavlov’s experiment, A. Classical Conditioning

B. Operant Conditioning

C. Observational Learning

D. None of the above

Q. Which is not a type of Social Influence?

A. Self-fulfilling prophecy

B. Psychological manipulation

C. Abusive power and control

D. Charity

Q. When data are presented to motivate user to change the attitude, the psychologist is following.

A. Central Route

B. Peripheral Route

C. Middle Route

D. None of the above

Q. Which type of people can be easily persuaded to change their attitudeA. People with low self-esteem

B. People with high self-esteem

C. People with average self-esteem

D. None of the above