Sleeper effect
The sleeper effect comes from social psychology and is a phenomenon of interpersonal communication . The sleeper effect was highlighted in 1953 along with the forgetting effect and is part of the Yale approach to changing attitudes . He was u. a. by Carl I. Hovland and Walther Weiss researches and describes the long-term effects of a message on the recipient if the attitudes towards the sender associated with the message have been "forgotten". This means e.g. B. that the effectiveness of the content of a very credible speaker decreases over time and that of an implausible communicator increases. After four weeks, the effectiveness of the two messages from the credible and the untrustworthy broadcaster equalized.
The effect
Often people (senders) try to change the attitude of the recipient of the message through their message (see persuasive communication ). The success of this change in attitude may depend on a. on the following factors:
- Attractiveness and credibility of the station
- Content of the message
The sleeper effect describes the revalidation process that the recipient carries out after a certain period of time for the message. If he has forgotten the origin of the message, the evaluation of the message only depends on its content and no longer additionally on the attitude towards the original sender of the message. The consequence of this is that the recipient either feels confirmed, has "revised" his or her setting change or only changes the setting now (because, for example, the message was credible but not the sender). This explanation is also known as the discounting cue hypothesis .
The following boundary conditions must be present in order to be able to measure the sleeper effect:
- The content of the message must be able to bring about a change in attitudes.
- The sender's credibility / unreliability must be great enough to bring about or prevent a change in attitude
- When measuring the setting change, the recipient must have forgotten the origin of the message
- When measuring the change in settings, however, the message must still have an effect on the recipient
Empiricism
In one experiment , test subjects heard a speech about juvenile delinquency. The information was given to one group of the test persons by a juvenile judge, the other by an alleged drug dealer (however, they were absolutely identical in both cases). Shortly after the performance, the test subjects thought the information was much more credible if it came from the juvenile judge (effect of the perceived competence). If the information was read out by the drug dealer, it was deemed to be rather unreliable. After some time, the test subjects were asked again about juvenile delinquency. If they were given no further instructions beforehand, it was found that even the “drug trafficking group” now considered most of the information that they previously believed to be untrustworthy to be credible. This speaks for the sleeper effect: the test subjects had largely "forgotten" the association between communicator and information. Before this second survey, some of the test subjects were briefly reminded of the respective speaker (drug dealer or juvenile judge). With them, there was hardly any change in the perceived credibility of the information compared to the survey immediately after the speech. The memory of the communicator had apparently reactivated the association between him and the information.
The effect in advertising
The advertising effectiveness of a message usually depends heavily on the person who delivers it. If the sender of the advertising message is untrustworthy, the message itself is also perceived as untrustworthy. The sleeper effect now has the effect that over time an untrustworthy transmitter is forgotten and only the advertising message remains.
Web links
- Patrick Bernau : I can hear the message ... (Article about the sleeper effect, FAZ from April 1, 2013)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kuncik, Zipfel 2005, p. 294 ff.