credibility and persuasion: a sociopsychological approach to changing the attitudes toward energy...

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING VOL. 20, NO. 7, PP. 683-696 (1983)

CREDIBILITY AND PERSUASION: A SOCIOPSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CHANGING THE ATTITUDES TOWARD

ENERGY CONSERVATION OF PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHERS

THOMAS R. KOBALLA, JR.

Science Education Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

ROBERT L. SHRIGLEY

i%e Pennsylvania State University. University Park, Pennsylvania 16802

Abstract

Tested was the effect of two persuasive messages presented by a credible communicator on the attitudes toward energy conservation of 180 preservice elementary teachers. The study asked the following questions: (1) Can attitudes toward energy conservation be positively changed with a brief, belief-laden communication? (2) Do positive attitude gains between pre- and posttests, if any, dissipate within three weeks following the treatment? (3) Do the integrated and the nonintegrated communications affect energy attitudes of three subgroups (abstract, concrete differentiator and concrete thinkers) of the sample differently? The important finding was that both experimental treatments, integrated and nonintegrated, were equally effective and significantly more effective in attitude change than the control. Secondly, the finding that neither experimental treatment dissipated in effect, at least for three weeks, suggests some duration of brief treatment periods. And finally, the attitude changes are as likely to occur when concrete differentiators are presented with a nonintegrated as an integrated treatment, but abstract thinkers exposed to the integrated treatment and concrete thinkers exposed to the nonintegrated treatment sustain a changed attitude to a greater degree than other combinations of treatment and cognitive processing styles.

Introduction

Aided by statistical techniques and computers, educational researchers have become sophis- ticated at constructing attitude scales and designing experimental research models, but the in- dependent variables tested in attitude research often lack a theoretical sophistication. We choose convenient variables, often modified modes of instruction, where, for example, the teaching of science in a laboratory or in an inquiry setting is compared to classroom lecture or teacher exposition. With broad treatments that are more similar than they are different, we should expect rather than be surprised by differences between treatments that are not significant. And when there is a significant difference between the mean scores of those and other teaching modes, the variables compared are often so broad that subsequent studies superimposed over the original study require such high risk inferential leaps that the probability of a researcher filtering out key elements responsible for attitude change is low.

@ 1983 by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0022-4308/83/070683-14$02.40

684 KOBALLA AND SHRIGLEY

Peterson and Carlson (1979), who reviewed a decade of attitude research in science education, concluded that findings are chaotic and confusing. Furthermore, they challenged US to sort out the key elements, those variables that affect the attitude change of teachers and students.

But sorting out the key elements of attitude research began 30 years ago and the literature of the social psychologist abounds with information on four or five theoretical approaches to attitude change most recently reviewed by Wrightsman (1977) and Zimbardo, Ebbeson, and Maslach (1977).

We have ignored this important block of related research. It would seem prudent to spend time examining closely three decades of sociopsychological research in attitude theory for the purpose of transferring its key elements into the spectrum of science education.

Wasn’t it Sir Isaac Newton who suggested that we stand on the shoulders of the giants of past generations? Hovland, Janis, and Kelly (1953), Insko (1967), Kiesler, Collins, and Miller (1967) and Zimbardo, Ebbesen,and Maslach (1977) might well be the giants on whose shoulders attitude researchers in science education should be standing.

The Starting Point

With stimulus-response learning theory the major support for Laswell’s (1948), and later Hovland, Janis, and Kelly’s (1953) model for attitude change, it would seem that their persuasive communication approach would be the logical place for science educators to start in their exploration for those key elements that Peterson and Carlson allude to. Hovland’s approach has been analyzed and baseline data gathered so that it is ready for use by teacher educators inter- ested in testing the validity of Hovland’s model in science education. (Shrigley, 1976; 1978).

Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver (1980) used Hovland‘s approach to test the attitudes of preservice elementary school teachers toward the teaching of science with the result that the group having experienced her as a persuasive and credible communicator made a greater mean posttest score in science attitude than a control group.

A specially-developed communication, one that was laden with beliefs about the need American children will have for an understanding of science, affected positively the science attitude of preservice teachers.

Using Grabowski’s research as a model, this study focused on another attitude object, energy conservation. Assuming that elementary teachers will play a major role in teaching future generations to cope with energy shortages, science educators should be testing models that will positively affect the attitudes of teachers toward energy.

Questions Central to this Study

The major question this study was to answer, in part at least: Can Hovland’s sociopsychological approach to attitude change to made operational in an educational setting?

Because of a common bias among educators that the treatment period for attitude change has to be weeks or months, the second purpose of this study was to gather data on a short treatment period.

Question: Can attitudes toward energy conservation be positively changed with a brief, belief-laden communication?

Because attitude treatment seems vulnerable to dissipation after a few days, retention of attitude change should be tested.

CREDIBILITY AND PERSUASION 685

Question: Do positive attitude gain between pre- and posttests, if any, dissipate within three weeks following the treatment?

The success of Wood’s instructional systems model as described by Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver (1980) in the cognitive domain suggests that its effectiveness be tested in affective domain, too.

Question: Will an integrated persuasive communication, designed around Wood’s instructional systems approach, be more effective at changing attitudes of the total sample than a conventional, nonintegrated persuasive communication?

And, finally, along with testing the attitude of the total sample as one homogeneous group, we are accepting Cronbach‘s (1957, p. 168) challenge that we “. . .design treatment, not to fit the average person, but to fit groups of students with aptitude patterns.”

Question: Does the integrated treatment, based on Wood’s approach, and the conventional communication affect the energy attitudes of three subgroups in the population differently?

The Problem

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of two persuasive messages presented by a credible communicator on the energy attitudes of preservice elementary teachers.

The Rationale

Hovland’s persuasive communication model, the principal approach to attitude change among social psychologists as recent as 1980 (Cushman & McPhee, 1980), assumes that human- kind is rational, therefore a credible communicator confronts individuals with a message (the stimulus) expecting them to learn a new attitude (the response) much as we learn a cognitive S k i l l .

There are four parts to Hovland’s model summarized by the statement, “who says what to whom with what effect?” (Emphasis ours)

Who.. . Central to the first part of Hovland’s model is the credibility of the communicator, the person responsible for persuading others. As a means of determining those credible characteristics of the science educator persuading preservice teachers of the importance of energy conservation, using Shrigley’s (1976) model the investigators polled 113 science education students. The major credible characteristics established as a result of this survey are shown in Column B of Figure 1.

. . . says what . . . It is important that the subject attend to the message, to listen or read closely. Second, the subject must comprehend the message. To t h i s point, our model differs little from straightforward instruction in cognitive learning. But, the third part is acceptance or yielding, an affective action, and this is central to attitude change. Operationalizing the third part can mean the impartation of knowledge, in our case, knowledge about energy conservation. But as Wagner and Sherwood (1969) have written, we are selective in the knowledge that affects a new attitude. A communication that affects attitude is belief-laden. Within the communication is also subtly integrated information from Column B of Figure I that implies communicator credibility.

To design the message that elementary school teachers should teach young students the need to conserve energy, we asked science and environment educators to share with us persua-

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sive statements they had used in science education courses and 36 responded. The 72 statements were categorized into 11 major message subcomponents by a jury of four science educators, and from those components seven basic belief statements were written. The persuasive communication was designed around the seven beliefs. (See Figure 1, Column C.)

. . . to whom . . . The third part of Hovland’s model deals with the population to be tested, in our case, preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a science education class. Instead of view- ing our sample as one homogeneous group, we tested the relationship between energy attitude and cognitive thinking, the three cognitive processing styles.

. . . with what effect. . . The final component of Hovland’s model deals with the attitude response of the subjects to the instrument used, in our case, an energy conservation scale developed using Shrigley and Trueblood’s (1979) procedure, a scale having three subcomponents: (1) egocentric, (2) sociocentric, and (3) action-centered statements, as suggested by Hess and Shrigley (1981).

Wood’s Instructional Systems Approach. As a means of testing a model successful in cognitive learning, Wood’s model was used much as Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver (1980) used it, to design a second persuasive communication, one that would more directly relate the stimulus. Hovland’s “what” component, and the response, the energy conservation scale. This practice compares to the use of behavioral objectives in instruction where the evaluation instrument is directly related to the cognitive learnings.

The conventional persuasive communication assumes that individuals implicitly recognize the relationship between the cognitive and the affective, facts or beliefs and feelings. But Wood‘s model suggests that some individuals cannot make this inferential leap, the leap between the cognitive components of the message and the feelings measured by the scale. So the addi- tion of an organismic variable (0), a casual link, is predicted to facilitate the connection between the stimulus (S) and the response (R). DiVesta (1972) cites the potential of organismic variables, identifying them as aptitudes which serve as filters or catalysts between S and R, thus assisting the learner.

Cognitive Processing Styles. Harvey, Hunt, and Schroder (1963) differentiate styles of thinking into three groups: (1) concrete thinkers, (2) concrete differentiators, and (3) abstract thinkers. According to Harvey, concrete thinkers and abstract are skilled at integrating information, therefore they should not require the organismic link between S and R. The conventional communication would seem to be sufficient to change the energy attitudes of subjects identified as concrete and abstract thinkers. However, concrete differientators, those who fail to integrate S and R might benefit from the integrated persuasive communication, the message designed around Wood’s instructional model (see Figure 1 .)

Instrumentation

The Energy Conservation Attitude Scale. The investigators wrote 41 statements related to energy conservation and tested them through several generations by administering them to preservice elementary teachers and then submitting them to Likert analyses. Most of the original statements not reaching the item-total correlation r-value of 0.30 were either revised or eliminated.

The scale was kept relevant to the psychological object by reference to energy conservation in each statement. Cultural and social aspects central to energy conservation were an integral part of the selected statements.

The final generation of the scale was administered to 102 college students. To further vali- date the scale, the data were subjected to a principle component factor analysis. A three factor solution was chosen for the purpose of checking the investigators’ classification of items into


(1) egocentric, (2) sociocentric, and (3) action-centered categories. The following statements drawn from the energy conservation scale are representative of the three dimensions:

Egocentric: In my opinion, energy conservation is unnecessary. (Negative) Sociocennic: Conservation is presently a plausible alternative to the energy problems con-

Action-Centered: To conserve energy, I observe posted speed limits while driving. (Positive) A varimax rotation resulted in item loadings on each of the three factors; the analysis

accounted for 69.3% of the total variance with 15.1% attributed to the egocentric component, 23.8% to the sociocentric component, and 30.4% to the action-centered component. The co- efficient alpha for the 22-item scale was reported at 0.85, 0.87, and 0.86 for the three admin- istrations.

The Conceptual Systems Test. The Divine Fate Control subscale of the Conceptual Systems Test (CST) is an eight-item, five-choice, objective personality measure designed to permit the classification of respondents according to their conviction about whether or not a divine being has, and ought to have control of a person’s life. This subscale of the CST, designed by 0. J. Harvey and James K. Hoffmeister, was used to determine the respondent’s relative position along an abstract-concrete continuum of Harvey’s integrative complexity model.

fronting us. (Positive)

Procedure

Results from the Divine Fate Control subscale of the Conceptual Systems Test were tabu- lated in order to assign subjects to the low, middle, and high groups of Harvey’s model. Low scores on the subscale indicate abstract subjects, middle scores indicate in-between or concrete differentiators, while high scores indicate concrete subjects. From this classification scheme, 60 subjects were coded as low, 60 as middle, and 60 as high.

A pretest, posttest, delayed-posttest, control group design was used with equal number of subjects from the concrete, concrete differentiator, and abstract groups randomly assigned to one or three treatments, control (T, ), conventional (T2), or integrated (T3).

The investigator administered the attitude instrument to 180 preservice elementary school teachers enrolled in a science methods course over a two term period of time at an eastern university. Three weeks later the subjects received one of three different treatments via videotape.

The control group, T I , reviewed Investigating Siphons, a part of Investigative Science in Elementary Education (ISEE), a resource developed for elementary teachers by the Pennsyl- vania Department of Education. By this means the videotaped channel for the three treatments remained constant. However, this videotape in no way alluded to energy conservation making it a viable selection for a control group. TI was 13 :18 min long.

The conventional communication, Tz , was a videotape made by one of the investigators and the substance of the message was the seven belief statements in Column C of Figure 1, with the credibility factors subtly interwoven (see Column B of Figure 1). (A summarizing statement was added to equate the treatment lengths without adding any different information not already presented.) Tz was 13:25 min long.

The integrated communication, T3, was the conventional message, plus the integration component. In this auxilliary component the communication described the relationship between the beliefs on energy conservation (Column C of Table I) and the attitude scale, emphasizing the three subparts to the scale, egocentric, sociocentric, and action-centeredness (see Column E of Table I). This component, unique to the integrated communication, served as the organismic link between the stimulus and response as recommended by Wood’s instructional systems model. T3 was 13:40 min long.


TABLE I 3 X 3 Analysis of Variance Summary Table of Posttest-Pretest

Attitude Change Scores

Source ss - d f MS - F P -obabi l i ty

1 T1 - T2 - T3 936.57 2 468.28 14.78 (0.01*

2 C - C D - A 8.84 2 4.42 0.14 0.87

1 x 2 112.92 4 28.23 0.89 0.42

Error 5417.05 171 31.67

* p < 0.01.

Immediately following the treatment and three weeks later, the attitude scale was administered by the investigators (see Figure 2). The decision to use the same instrument for pre- and posttesting was based on the research of Lana (1969) and Ronis et al. (1977), where no posttest differences were noted due to the absence or presence of a pretest or the interval between the pretest and the message either immediately following the message or at various measurement delay intervals.

Results

Two broad questions were tested using a 3 X 3 analysis of variance with three levels of treatment, control, conventional, and integrated as factor 1 and three levels of cognitive style, concrete, concrete differentiator, and abstract, as factor 2 . The major question was:

Which persuasive communication will be most effective, the integrated communication, the conventional, nonintegrated communication or a control treatment, in producing a positive change in attitude toward energy conservation among preservice elementary school teachers. The investigator’s predictions are shown in Figure 3.

The second question was:

Is short-term and long-term attitude change most likely to occur when concrete differentiators, abstract and concrete thinkers, are presented with an integrated communication, a nonintegrated communication or a control treatment? The investigator’s predictions are shown in Figure 4.

The analysis of variance (ANOVES) between groups conducted on the criterion of attitude change revealed significant difference between treatment conditions, F (2,171) = 14.78 p < 0.01 (posttest-pretest) and F (2, 171) = 8.92, p < 0.01 (delayed posttest-pretest) (See Tables I and 11).

To answer the first question, complex contrasts (COMCON) was run using equally weighted contrasts for the three treatments in both the posttest-pretest and delayed posttest-pretest conditions. The COMCON program computes confidence intervals and tests complex contrasts in- volving more than two means. The Bonferroni t was used in order to control family-wise Type 1 error rate (FWl), at less than alpha. The Bonferroni solutions are generally superior in power to alternative methods that control FW1 (Games, 1971).

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Fig. 3. Depiction of expected short-term and long-term results for Question 1.

The mean difference of Tz and T3 are equally higher and significantly different than the mean differences of TI for the posttest-pretest condition, t (171) = 5.43, p < 0.01 and for the delayed posttest-pretest condition, t (171) =-4.22,p < 0.01 (see Tables 111 and IV).

These results indicate that the integrated and nonintegrated treatments are equally effective and the control treatment is the least effective in changing attitudes immediately and three weeks after the treatment (see Figure 5).

Now we will answer the second question. When testing if short-term and long-term attitude change is least likely to occur when concrete differentiators are presented with a nonintegrated communication, the group of concrete differentiators exposed to the nonintegrated treatment was compared to the five other treatment groups consisting of persons with different cognitive styles on weighted mean different scores of attitude change. The interaction effect in the attitude change over the short-term, the posttest-pretest condition, was not significant and as a result provided no support for the posttest-pretest component (see Table I and Figure 6). This finding suggests that the integrated treatment did not affect the concrete differentiators as predicted on the short-term condition, from pre- to posttest.

However, a significant interaction effect was noted in the long-term test, the delayed posttest-pretest condition, warranting further testing via complex contrasts among means (COMCON) (see Table 11). The t test for complex contrasts was conducted on the mean difference criterion delayed posttest-pretest performance of group TzCD and the weighted sum mean difference of groups TzC, T2A, T3C, T3CD, and TJA shown on Table V. The t test yielded a t (171) = 0.32, p < 0.05, revealing no interaction effect for this comparison nor pro- viding support for the delayed posttest-pretest condition. This fmding suggests that the integrated treatment did not affect the concrete differentiators as predicted on the long term condition from pre- to delayed posttest.

C CD A

Fig. 4. Depiction of expected short-term and long-term results for Question 2.


TABLE I1 3 X 3 Analysis of Variance Summary Table of Delayed Posttest-Pretest

Attitude Change Scores

Source ss - df MS - F Probability ~~ ~

1 TI T2 - T3 480.84 2 240.42 8.92 < 0.01* E C - C D - A 49.54 2 24.77 0.92 0.40

1 x 2 367.16 4 91.79 3.40 0.01*

Error 4604.10 171 26.92

* p < 0.01.

TABLE Il l Complex Contrasts Among Posttest-Pretest Mean Difference Scores

for T1 vs. Tz + T3 and Tz vs. T3

Sample Est. Stan- Contrast dard Error Obtained Prob. o f t

Comparison PSI Hat o f PSI Hat t or t i (two-tailed] ~ ~

1. Tl vs T2 + Tg -4.36 0.88 -5.43 0.01*

2. T2 vs T3 -0.26 1.02 -0.26 0.79

* p < 0.01.

TABLE IV Complex Contrasts Among Delayed Posttest-Pretest Mean Differences

Scores for T1 vs. T2 + T3 and TI vs. T3

Samp I e tst. Stan- Contrast dard Error Obtaine! Prob. of t

Comparison PSI Hat of PSI Hat t or t (two-tailed)

1. T, v s T2 + i; -3.46 0.82 -4.22 0.01*

2. T2 vs T3 0.06 0.94 0.07 0.94

* p < 0.01


Control Treatment

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Fig. 5. Depiction of short-term and long-term results for Question 1.

However, further efforts revealed significant comparison in the delayed posttest-pretest condition for other combinations. As shown in Table V and Figure 7, significant mean differences were identified for the combinations T2A vs. T2C t T2CD, t (171)~-0.241, p < 0.01 and T3C vs. T3CD t T3A, t (171) = -2.55, p < 0.01, suggesting that abstract thinkers might benefit from the integrated treatment and concrete thinkers from nonintegrated treatment when pretest and delayed posttest mean scores are compared.

Conclusions

(1) Hovland’s persuasive communication model seems viable in an educational setting. (2) Attitude toward energy conservation was changed with as little as a 13-min commu-

nication. (3) The attitude change in both experimental treatments was sustained for a period of

three weeks following exposure to the respective communications. (4) When cognitive processing styles are not considered, the integrated and nonintegrated

treatments are equally effective in changing attitudes of teachers toward energy conservation. (5) Attitude changes are as likely to occur when concrete differentiators are presented with

a nonintegrated as an integrated treatment. (6 ) When cognitive processing styles are considered, abstract thinkers exposed to the in-

tegrated treatment and concrete thinkers exposed to the nonintegrated treatment sustain a

C CD A

Fig. 6 . Depiction of short-term results for Question 2.


TABLE V

Complex Contrasts Among Delayed Posttest-Pretest Mean Differences of Six Groups on Attitude Change Scores

Cont ras t dard E r r o r Obtained Comparison P S I Hat o f PSI Hat t or t ' Prob. o f t

Sample Est. Stan-

_ _ _ _ _ ~

1. T2CD vs T2C + T2A

+ T3C + T2CD + T3A 1.26 1.27 0.99 0.32

2. T2A v s T2C + T2CO -3.42 1.42 -2.41 0.01*

3. T2C v s T2CD 0.25 1.64 0.15 0.87

4. T3C V S T3CD + T3A -3.62 1.42 -2.55 0.01*

5. T3CD vs T3A -2.35 1.64 -1.43 0.15

~~

* p < 0.01.

changed attitude to a greater degree than other combinations of treatment and cognitive processing styles.

Discussion

Significant in this study was the finding that teachers confronted with two different belief- laden messages changed their attitudes in a positive direction. It is significant that Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver (1980) reported similar findings with a similar sample but a different attitude object. This means that Hovland's model has been consistent across two attitude objects, energy conservation and science. These findings should encourage science educators to replicate this study by testing attitude changes toward metrication, computers in education, nutrition, and other science-related attitude objects using persuasive communications.

In view of the common bias among educators that attitude change requires weeks or months of treatment, a positive attitude gain resulting from each of two different 13-min treatment periods is significant. Here again, the time factor in this study is congruent with Grabowski whose treatment period was also brief, less than 30 min.

Grabowski did not administer a delayed posttest, so those critical of her brief treatment period could shrug off the findings by assuming that any positive treatment effects would dis-

C CD A

Fig. 7. Depiction of long-term results for Question 2.


sipate in a day or two. Therefore, the delayed posttest was a major extension of the Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver study. That the treatment effects in this study did not dissipate within three weeks was an important finding. It is obvious, however, that future studies superimposed over this model must test longer retention periods.

Wood’s instructional systems model predicted that an integrated, persuasive communication would affect the attitudes of our sample more positively than a conventional message. That the two messages affected the subject’s energy attitudes equally suggests that Wood’s model is as effective, but no more effective, than the conventional communication with preservice teachers as a whole.

Neither was Wood’s integrative treatment any more effective with concrete differentiators than concrete and abstract thinkers. That the three subgroups responded not as predicted when the posttest-pretest and delayed posttest-pretest mean difference scores were compared suggests that Wood’s model failed to differentiate the attitude changes in the three subgroups, at least as Wood‘s model was interpreted by the investigators. That Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver realized similar results in their parallel study suggests that Wood’s model be placed on the back burner of attitude research until it has been completely reexamined for alternative interpretations.

The investigators recommend that attitude researchers continue to seek out subgroups within our population of elementary teachers that might respond differently to alternate models of attitude treatment. If cognition affects attitude, and sociopsychological literature supports this premise, Harvey’s classification of thinking styles seems to be one set of population subgroups that we should continue to test.

There are other subgroups that should be tested. In sociopsychological research, levels of self-esteem have been tested with subjects having a low self-esteem prone to respond more posi- positively to a persuasion than those with high self-esteem. And, of course, we need to better unravel the mechanism that causes males to respond more favorably than females to science- related attitude objects.

The unpredicted results of Wood’s model in the second phase of this study should not distract from the major findings in the first section. Based on the results of this study and the results of Grabowski, Shrigley, and Welliver’s, the investigators recommend that science educators use Hovland‘s four-part approach, supported by the credibility survey technique and the design of a belief-laden message, described earlier and modeled in this study, be replicated with other teacher populations and other attitude objects. We should begin to give thought to the rationality of using Hovland’s approach in changing the science attitudes of children. It is possible that Lewin’s group dynamics approach, as described by Zimbardo, Ebbesen, and Maslach (1977), might be a more viable approach with young students.

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credibility and persuasion: a sociopsychological approach to changing the attitudes toward energy...

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