Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Theses

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    Pro-attitudinal advocacy, depolarization, and communicative intentions: The role of self-persuasion
    Abeywickrama, Ravini Savindya ( 2020)
    In the currently fractured attitudinal landscape, many people hold extreme attitudes on important socio-political issues and frequently advocate for their attitudes. As a result of advocating for one’s own attitudes, i.e., engaging in pro-attitudinal advocacy, people may unconsciously persuade themselves (i.e. self-persuade) to polarize further. Moreover, pro- attitudinal advocacy may lead to an unwillingness to engage with those on the opposite side of the attitude spectrum. Such processes may explain polarization in our electorates over time. Given that polarization leads to disrupted social cohesion, a critical question is how we might depolarize attitudes, and encourage open communication. In this thesis, I sought to examine a candidate mechanism of depolarization: self-persuasion. More specifically, this thesis explored self-persuasion occurring during pro-attitudinal advocacy as a way of a) depolarizing attitudes and b) opening up communicative practices in ways that encourage advocates to display open communicative intentions (e.g. willingness to engage with dissimilar others). Across seven studies, participants (N = 1946) were asked to engage in online advocacy to justify their attitudes towards contemporary socio-political and moral issues, such as migration and climate-change. I explored specific factors relevant to pro- attitudinal advocacy, including meta-cognitive confidence (confidence in one’s thoughts and arguments), advocacy framing (moral versus practical framing), and style of advocacy (defending one’s position versus attacking the opposing position). Results indicate that a) low meta-cognitive confidence in one’s advocacy attempt predicts attitude depolarization and greater receptiveness to opposing views, especially if one enjoys effortful cognitive activity (Studies 1 and 2), b) compared to moral justifications, using practical justifications to support one’s attitude predicts attitude depolarization and lower intentions to proselytize, via lower expression of moral language (Studies 3-5), and c) compared to defending one’s position, attacking the opposing position predicts more open communicative practices, such as seeking attitude-inconsistent information, via heightened motivation to hold accurate worldviews (i.e. accuracy motivation; Studies 6 and 7). Interestingly, our findings suggest that although attitudes sometimes depolarize, depolarization is not a necessary pre-requisite for open communicative intentions, such as seeking attitude-inconsistent information. This suggests that pro-attitudinal advocacy may influence behavior, even if attitudes remain unchanged. Further, in addition to self-persuasion, we find other mechanisms, such as, message content and accuracy motivation, which may predict depolarization and increase open communicative practices. We find evidence to suggest that re-framing advocacy attempts, such as encouraging practical as opposed to moral justifications, may depolarize attitudes and encourage more civil discourse between dissimilar others. Overall, our findings have implications for bridging gaps between opposing groups, particularly in online communication environments.