Richard Petty Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Ohio State University Hosted by: The American Association for Public Opinion Research Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research Nashville, TN Sheraton Music City Hotel May 15-18, 2003

Dr. Richard Petty's talk, "Understanding the Process of Public Opinion Formation and Changes," centers on the Decade of Behavior theme of "democracy." His work yields a range of fascinating and important insights into how persuasion unfolds in Democratic countries and has interesting implications about how Democratic countries should react to public opinion shifts.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research is the world's foremost professional organization of survey researchers, and the annual conference brings together researchers from academia, industry, and government to address issues of public opinion dynamics and the interplay of public opinion with government. Although the association's members come from many different disciplinary perspectives, there has been relatively little involvement of psychologists in the organization to date. Yet psychologists' expertise and literature are very relevant to understanding how people form opinions on public issues and how government and individual citizens interact with one another as policy-making transactions unfold throughout history. Dr. Petty's lecture will build bridges between the study of public opinion and basic psychological theories of personality and information processing, highlighting the potential for psychology to offer new hypotheses to be studied through surveys.

Speaker Biography:

Richard Petty is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at the Ohio State University and is author of seven books and over 180 journal articles and chapters. Dr. Petty's research focuses broadly on the situational and individual difference factors responsible for changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Much of his current work is aimed at examining the implications of the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion for understanding prejudice, consumer choices, political and legal decisions, and health behaviors. Topics of special current interest include: understanding the role of meta-cognitive as well as implicit (unconscious) factors in persuasion and resistance to change; the effect of racial and ethnic prejudice and specific emotions on social judgment and behavior; and investigating how people correct their evaluations for various factors they think may have biased their judgments (such as stereotypes they hold or emotions they are experiencing).

Dr. Petty is past President of the Midwestern Psychological Association. He received the Distinguished Scholar Award from Ohio State University, the Distinguished Scientist-Lecturer Award from the American Psychological Association, the award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Consumer Psychology from the Society for Consumer Psychology, and the Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the American Psychological Association. Dr. Petty has served as a consultant and panelist for federal agencies such as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental.

Presentation Summary:

As the old saying goes, "There are two kinds of people in this world ." In Richard Petty's Decade of Behavior Lecture, he will illustrate how this is doubly true in the world of public opinion formation and change.

Some people navigate through the world forming opinions about almost everything they encounter, whereas others observe the world around them without forming opinions nearly so often. These groups are referred to as people high and low in "need to evaluate," respectively. Some people form most of their opinions thoughtfully, whereas others usually form their opinions with very little thought. These groups are referred to as people high and low in "need for cognition," respectively.

Dr. Petty will describe his research showing how need to evaluate and need for cognition shape the ways people's opinions are formed and change, how strong people's opinions are, how much their opinions affect their behavior, and how much their opinions are biased by cognitive and circumstantial forces.

Thus, Dr. Petty's lecture will build bridges between the study of public opinion and basic psychological theories of personality and information processing, highlighting the potential for psychology to offer new hypotheses to be studied through surveys.