Research Assignment:
Read the Gilbert, Heesacker, and Gannon (1991) article and answer the following questions in your own words (except for psychological and research terms, which you can and should use). This means you cannot simply change words, or the order of words, in a sentence from the article! You are responsible for understanding and following the guidelines on plagiarism on the library website.
Insert your answers after each of the questions in this document, save as ‘lastnameResearch’, and submit it on the Moodle site.
Note: This is not a group project! All answers must be your own work.
Here is a sample question with examples of answers that would earn an A, B, or C mark:
Question: What point are the authors trying to make with the second paragraph (“A sizeable literature…”)?
A ‘C’ answer: They want to say that there is a lot of research showing that attitudes and beliefs are related to sexual aggression. (This answer only restates the first sentence, without showing real understanding of the issue. It is also borderline plagiarism.)
A ‘B’ answer: The authors want to make the point that a number of relevant attitudes do predict actual sexual aggression behaviours, so it is important to find ways to change these attitudes. (This answer notes the importance of showing that these attitudes matter, in terms of behaviour, so changing the attitudes is important.)
An ‘A’ answer: As discussed by Perloff (2017), attitudes do not always predict behaviour. The authors are including this paragraph to establish that these attitudes are worth targeting in an intervention because research shows they do relate to actual sexual aggression behaviours. (This answer notes the larger issue of attitudes and behaviour, and also connects it to material from the readings.)
Note: An answer does not need to be long to earn an ‘A’. Aside from the final question, most can be answered well in 2-3 sentences.
- Why did the authors believe it was important to persuade by the central route rather than the peripheral route?
- How did the researchers attempt to motivate participants in the intervention to centrally process the message?
- (a) Why did the authors include measures of motivation, ability and thought favourability? (b) What did they conclude from the analysis of these measures?
- (a) Explain the potential limitation from demand characteristics. (b) On what grounds do the authors reject this interpretation?
- Discussing a limitation of their sample, the authors state “…this sample may not have been as prone to sexual aggression-supportive attitudes as other samples, and this may have helped to make the intervention effective.” Using information on the processing of persuasive communications (ie, from Ch. 7 in Perloff) explain how a sample with stronger sexual aggression-supportive attitudes might be less susceptible to persuasion even if they are centrally processing the arguments.
- In their discussion, the authors state: “A relevant distinction from the ELM is that subjective cogency of persuasive content is important to attitude change. This ‘psycho-logic’ may not necessarily include standards based on classical logic or the evidential standards of science and may differ widely across different sample (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Research is needed to uncover what constitutes a subjectively cogent intervention for this topic with specific target groups.” (a) What issue are the authors referring to? (Perloff discusses it in his coverage of “high involvement” in Ch. 13.) (b) How did they attempt to address it?
- As reported by the authors, participants in the intervention and control groups did not differ in their willingness to volunteer for women’s safety projects (see Results, Hypothesis 2). Using any material from Perloff’s discussion of attitudes and behavior (Ch. 5 – not attitude functions), give one suggestion as to how the researchers could have designed the intervention to increase the chances of affecting behavior.
- Imagine Richard Perloff (the author of your textbook) has asked you to contribute a brief paragraph on this study that he could include in his discussion of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Ch. 7). Consider what this study would add to his coverage. Write an appropriate paragraph (no more) and indicate where it should be inserted in the chapter. Your paragraph should include some description of the study, but also a point(s) about what the study adds.
