Structure of and Theories About Attitudes

Bring to mind an attitude that you have held for a long time. If you could imagine this specific attitude as a structure, what would be the foundation? What has helped to cement this attitude in your thinking? Where might emotion and culture fit in?

This week, you will study the nature of attitudes and the theories that explain how attitudes are structured. You will examine connections between attitudes and concepts, such as beliefs, values,and ideology. You will also apply specific theories to familiar situations. In the process, you will explore how theories about influence and persuasion not only explain common behaviors but also can be useful for achieving specific goals and solving societal problems.

In addition, the focus on ethics continues this week. You will again use ethical standards to guide and evaluate approaches to influence and persuasion in different settings. You will also consider how culture influences attitudes in a given circumstance and why culture is a consideration in effectively changing attitudes.

Learning Objectives
Students will:
- Evaluate advertisement appeal to target population based on principles of ego involvement
- Apply expectancy-value theory to professional and personal situations
- Evaluate the expectancy-value theory as a persuasive approach
- Analyze the importance of culture on influence

Discussion: Ego Involvement and Influence
Last week, you examined ethical practice as an external guide on the use of persuasion. Another important dimension of persuasion is internal influence. That is measured by how invested a person is in an idea, person, place, or object.

For example, think of a cause that you care about. Researchers would say you are "ego involved" in that case. Ego involvement also varies, from low involvement to high involvement. Consider how easily someone could persuade you to give up this cause or change your view of it. Your answer will give you an idea of how much ego involvement you have invested.

Measuring allegiance to causes is only one example of ego involvement at work. Another example is how your personal investment informs your meaning-making processes when you engage with print material in advertisements.

For this Discussion, you will consider ego involvement as a key influence on decision making, with advertising as the subject. You will imagine yourself as a small business owner who needs to create an online ad for a specific product that you want to put on your website. You will explore how to influence the largest number of consumers to purchase your product.

To prepare:
- Review the Week 2 Learning Resources. In particular, pay attention to Perloff's discussion of ego involvement as part of social-judgment theory, and to the persuasion principles in the Kaptein&Halteren article.(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00779-012-0585-3)
- Decide on your business, the specific product you want to sell, and who is likely to be your target customer.
- Consider which of Kaptein&Halteren's persuasion principles might work best for influencing your website visitors to purchase your product.
- Think about the component of ego involvement in social judgment theory. Consider how you could create an ad with language that appeals to both consumers with low ego involvement and consumers with high ego involvement.
- Also consider advertising ethics you would need to follow in creating your ad.

Please make each question on bold type, then have the answer directly below

- Briefly describe your business, your target audience, and the specific product you are selling online.

- Present the principle(s) of persuasion you would use to sell this product, and justify why the principle(s) you chose would be best for your ad and target consumers.

- Explain what you would emphasize about the product to appeal to online consumers with low ego involvement and what you would emphasize to attract consumers with high ego involvement. In your response, be sure to demonstrate your understanding of ego involvement and what makes each group of consumers different.

- Select the specific advertising ethics that you were most mindful of in creating your ad, and explain your thinking.

Attachment:- INSTRUCTIONS.rar