Can You Use Persuasion or Social Influence to Change Prejudice or Stereotyping?

Order Description
Readings:

Course Text: Persuasion: Psychological Insights and Perspectives
Chapter 11, “Changing Prejudice” (pp. 249–280)
Assignment:

Given all you know about how to change people at this point in the course, can you apply your knowledge to tackle one of the most important and difficult problems in society? The goal of this final Application Assignment is for you to think of creative new ways to use social influence and persuasion processes to change the negative attitudes, beliefs, and behavior that that underlie intergroup conflict.

To prepare for this assignment:

Review Chapters 4, 5, 9 and 11 in the course text, and think about the various ways that people are motivated to change their behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, etc.

Then think about ways of using a foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face strategy to facilitate positive behavior toward a disliked group.

Consider what behavior you would like to encourage and the steps necessary to initiate change.

Now consider how you might use cognitive dissonance to change negative attitudes towards a stigmatized group. Then think about using the induced compliance and/or justification of effort procedure strategies to motive change.

Lastly, create and describe a persuasive message to promote appreciation of multicultural diversity. Think about the audience, the use of central route to persuasion, and three strong arguments you could use to promote appreciation of diversity.

The assignment (1–3 pages):

Create and describe a foot-in-the-door or door-in-the-face strategy that can facilitate a positive behavior toward a disliked group. After you identify the group and the target behavior, explain whom you would try to change and what steps would be necessary to initiate commitment or reciprocity processes. Do you think this would lead to long-term change? Why or why not?

Use cognitive dissonance to change negative attitudes towards a stigmatized group. First identify and briefly describe the stigmatized group and the negative attitudes that your audience holds toward them. Then, using either an induced compliance or justification of effort procedure, explain how you would get your target audience to commit a discrepant act that would cause dissonance. Then explain how you would provide the means to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes toward the stigmatized group.

Create and describe a persuasive message designed to promote the appreciation of multicultural diversity. Identify the audience and, in order to use the central route to persuasion, explain how you would motivate them and provide the ability to process your message. Identify three strong arguments you would use to persuade them to appreciate multicultural diversity. Finally, assuming some people in the audience may not be motivated or have the ability to process the arguments, describe a positive source cue that you would include to influence these audience members through the peripheral route.