ATTITUDES, VALUES, AND BELIEFS
by
Brian David Phillips
Picture This . . .
You and a friend went to a fast food restaurant. Your friend said she would rather not have a cola because she "doesn't like the taste."
Two days later, you see her walking down the street, drinking a cola, and wearing a T-shirt with a picture of her favorite actor drinking a cola.
What do you think accounts for your friend changing her mind.
A. She is merely following the fad of the day.
B. She likes the actor, so she likes cola.
C. She's just strange.
D. She's always liked cola and must have lied in the first case.
INTRODUCTION: Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs
A very key process in persuasion is the understanding of the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the audience.
MILTON ROKEACH
In his speech "Images of the Consumer's Mind On and Off Madison Avenue," Milton Rokeach described how advertisers have very effectively approached the audience's belief systems in their persuasion campaigns.
PROFESSIONAL PERSUADERS
The advertising man is not the only person who seeks to shape and change either people's beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. There are many kinds of people in our society, professional non- professional, working for pay and for free, who for various combinations of altruistic and selfish reasons are vitally interested in the theory and in the practice of shaping and changing other people's values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. Rokeach pointed, by way of illustration, to the psychotherapist, to the teacher, to the missionary, the politician, and the lobbyist. All these have in common, with the advertising man, the desire to influence and to persuade others to believe and to act in certain ways in which they would not otherwise believe and act.
This does not mean that the advertising man wants to change the same sort of beliefs which, say, the therapist or the politician wants to change. Every human being has many different kinds of beliefs, and every advanced society seems to have encouraged the growth of different kinds of persuaders who specialize in trying to change some kinds of belief and not other kinds.
TYPES OF BELIEF SYSTEMS
What, then, are the different kinds of beliefs which all men have and what kinds of beliefs does the advertising man wish most to influence? What are the properties of the different kinds of beliefs, and how easily is one kind changed in comparison to another kind? And what are the special problems which arise to plague the advertising man because of the fact that he specializes in trying to change certain kinds of beliefs and not other kinds, and what can he do about these problems?
FIVE KINDS OF BELIEFS