Why won't you quit!!!

“These stupid things never work!” “I’m never coming back!”

Those are some of the words that you may hear from my dad every time we try to get him to quit smoking either through some at home method or through conferences; believe me we’ve tried it all!

After reading the methods of persuasion in the textbook I learned that getting a message through to somebody is harder than just telling them to do something. Petty and Cacioppo’s (1984) two-track distinction of how messages are perceived has helped me understand the reasons behind my dad’s awful habit. These two routes are the central route and the peripheral route and they are both composed of the message itself, the source of the message and the audience of the message.

In my dad’s case he is the audience. I believe that one of the reasons he has not been able to quit smoking is because he has been forewarned about it. Freedman and Sears (1965) have discovered that those who had the most time to think about the argument they were going to hear were less likely to agree with the argument. Even though I’d like to take my dad to an anti-smoking conference without telling him what we’re doing I don’t believe the argument will be persuasive at all; especially because he has now been inoculated to this argument. According to the inoculation hypothesis (McGuire, 1964), when people are exposed to weak versions of an argument they develop a larger resistance to it. So in reality I may have made my dad’s addiction to smoking worse by introducing ineffective ways of quitting to him. However, I don’t blame myself entirely for this; my dad does have a very strong attachment to this habit and actually enjoys it, therefore very reluctant to quit despite my best efforts.

References:

Freedman, J.L. and Sears, D.O. (1965). Warning, distraction, and resistance to influence. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1, 262-266.

McGuire, W.J. (1964). Inducing resistance to persuasion. Advances in experimental social psychology, 1, 192-229.

Petty, R.E. and Cacioppo, J.T. (1984). The effects of involvement on response to argument quantity and quality: Central and Peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 46, 69-81.