Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. We should understand attitude change as i are sponse to communication. Factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a messageiare：
1.Target Characteristics： These are characteristics that refer to the person whoreceives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence——it seems thatmore intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Anothervariable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it issometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded， thereis some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasihility isactually curvilinear， with people of moderate self-esteem being more easilypersuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels. The mind frame andmood of the target also plays a role in this process.
2.SourceCharacteristics：Themajorsourcecharacteristicsareexpertise，trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of aperceived message has been found to be a key variable here； if one reads a reportabout health and believes it comes from a professional medical journal， one may bemore easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Somepsychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and the effect oftelling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after severalweeks （the so-called "sleeper effect"）. Whether there is a sleeper effect iscontroversial. Received wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of amessage before hearing it， there is less likelihood era sleeper effect than if they aretold a message and then told its source.
3.Message Characteristics： The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
4.Cognitive Routes： A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation tohelp change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual ispresented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitudechanging conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude change， the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modem advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases， physician， doctors or experts are used. In other cases， film stars are used for their attractiveness.
……
展开
