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| The
Yale Approach |
The Yale Approach - Overview
Speaker
Message:
- Message
Organization
- Message Content
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Yale Approach
Glossary
References
Self-test
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The Yale
Approach - Overview
After World War II, Carl Hovland and his
co-workers produced a great deal of research at the Yale
Communication and Attitude Change Program. In part, they
wanted to learn about wartime propaganda. There have been
hundreds, if not thousands, of experimental studies that fit
the Yale approach, which is basically to test variables that
might influence comprehension, acceptance, and retention of
persuasive messages. This section will focus on the highlights
of this research.
William McGuire (perhaps best known for his inoculation
theory, which concerns how to create resistance to persuasion)
proposed a model of attitude change that helps understand the
Yale approach to persuasion.
McGuire’s (1968)
model of the
persuasion process includes six steps (sometimes it is
described as five steps, omitting “Presentation”):
Presentation > Attention > Comprehension > Yielding
> Retention > Behavior
“Presentation” is McGuire’s term for the persuasive
message. He then reasoned that people cannot be persuaded by
message they ignore, so after the message is presented to the
audience the next step in the persuasion process is paying
“attention.” Third,
the audience must understand the message before it can
influence their attitudes, so “comprehension” follows
attention in his model. “Yielding” is McGuire’s term for
acceptance, the point at which attitude change occurs. When a
persuasive message succeeds at changing a listener’s mind
(attitudes), McGuire says that the receiver has yielded to the
message. The fifth step is “retention,” and it concerns
how long the attitude change lasts. McGuire recognized that
attitudes do change; if they were permanent, of course, we
couldn’t hope to change them with our persuasive messages.
But the very fact that attitudes do change (and can be
changed) means that when we succeed at changing someone’s
attitude, that change probably won’t last forever -- some
other persuasive message (or experience) could change their
attitudes again. Finally, McGuire considered “behavior” to
be the ultimate goal of persuasive discourse. If we look at
the persuasion that surrounds us -- sales messages advertising
goods and services, political messages asking us to vote for
politicians, public service messages urging us not to drink
and drive, friends trying to get us to go see a movie or a
concert -- we can see that persuasion often has action as the
ultimate goal.
This model is important to understanding the process of
persuasion. As we shall see, some of the factors studied in
the Yale research program probably work by influencing
different parts of the persuasion process (for example, some
factors may have their greatest influence on persuasion
through comprehension, while other factors probably
concentrate on yielding). Most of the research conducted under
the Yale approach can be organized into two major headings:
speaker and message. I will discuss each of these topics
separately. I will suggest ways each factor might contribute
to the process of persuasion.
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