Elaboration Likelihood model analysis Term Paper

Elaboration Likelihood model analysis - Term Paper Example Today businesses are constantly developing new persuasion mechanisms to market their products and services. They are looking for innovative ways of creating and delivering the content of the message. They aim to capture the audience attention, create assurance, spawn preferred attitudes, create social norms and eventually influence behavior. In this paper, I will explain the theory of elaboration likelihood model and show how it explains the persuasive strategy apparent in a television ad campaign for Budweiser puppy love commercial. A lot of research studies conducted in this field of persuasion indicates the challenges of developing a persuasive message. The results are varying particularly on issues dealing with public policies (Rucker & Petty, 2006). These results are linked to the thinking of the early 1970s researches about persuasion. The variables suggested by researchers during the 1970s continue to be investigated till now; they include message characteristics. This will encompass its credibility, attractiveness, emotional appeal, the mood it creates, and the channel used to present the message (Petty, Barden, et al., 2009). The assumption was that these variables achieved a single goal, which is persuasion. They could produce only one outcome, the effect of the persuasion message would be either successful or reduced. Some studies show that including only positive arguments in the message improved persuasion efforts. However, other studies found no similar benefits of incorporating positive aspects only; sometimes it reduced the effect of persuasion efforts. Some studies found also that incorporating negative aspects enhance the impact of persuasion rather than reduce it as earlier thought. The contentious issues in these results were the uncertainty on how these negative effects were relayed and steps involved in conveying them (Wagner & Petty, 2011). It was due to the

Moral Objectivism Essay Example for Free

Moral Objectivism Essay I recommend the moral theory of Objectivism as the basis of your software company’s ethical standards to be used by all company employees. This single, coherent, defensible moral theory is better applied to your company than multiple theories, because it is a value-based system of virtues that is concerned more with the type of person you should be, rather than with the rules that dictate how you should act. Moral Objectivism believes that there are moral standards that apply to everyone. Moral standards that are universal for all, but not absolute because there can be exceptional cases. Objectivist principles apply to all, unless exceptions are necessary. Objectivism is also considered a philosophy for living, because it promotes values like love, friendship, wealth, and comfort. Objectivism respects science, technology, and innovation, which makes it very relevant in developing your software company’s organizational values and code of ethics. Objectivism values purpose, achievement, success, and strives for good living to pursue the greatest achievements that you can attain in your life. It sets personal happiness as the major goal. Since most of us in the western world believe that a moral code of ethics is fundamental to our society, which makes Moral objectivism the best theory to apply within your software company. This theory allows your employees to grow, develop, and live together as one company of people working under one unified moral code. However, there could be a problem with people who are college students on a visa exchange program, green-card workers, or foreign-born/dual citizenship employees experienced working in a different culture in a different part of the world. Moral Relativism believes that the current company moral standards are irrelevant to these people, but what applies is what is relative to what these individuals or their cultures believe. The problem with this theory is that it is impractica l, illogical, and would cause mass confusion within your software company. Since moral relativism is relative to a person or culture, different people and cultures would create different morals and principles leading to conflicts, disagreements, and disharmony. For example, we believe that killing is wrong for everyone, but some foreign cultures believe that killing is sometimes permissible and necessary. To unite, share, and promote harmony and respect, Objectivist virtues applied in your business ethics is the perfect moral theory for a young, fast-growing software company, because it is value-based on virtues. Virtuous actions lead to the achievement of values. When operating and managing a software company, the business virtue theory contends that virtuous principles, strategies, and actions result in companies realizing their values like mission, purpose, and profit potential. Virtuous employees carry out their roles in a competent manner, which usually agrees with company goals. Virtues allow a person to act to gain value. When business people conform to the Objectivist virtues, they increase the likelihood of achieving their values and goals. Virtue ethics stresses the importance of each employee being able to make contributions of value. Valid virtue concepts are required to describe what it means to be an excellent director, leader, manager, or worker. To be successful, a software company needs to provide a set of virtues that are reality-based, non-contradictory, integrated, and comprehensive. Virtue theory states that ethics is part of business and that it is necessary to integrate morals into management and practice. The role of virtues in your company is to direct and motivate employee behavior toward the success of your company. A set of virtues exists that fit reality and most likely to lead to success and happiness in a business. Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ethics specifically recognizes production as the central human value. The personal virtues that she advocates have a direct bearing on work: rationality, honesty, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride. These virtues are used as guides in a business career and in the business management. They define the excellent manager or other employee and provide the principles that a company should adopt with respect to investors, employees, customers, or vendors. Virtue theory is concerned with the cultivation of character and provides a framework which a person can lead a flourishing, happy life. Moral growth comes from choice rather than from conformity to rules or codes. For example, traditional approaches like Consequentialism are viewed as constraining, because they focus on the rules that tell people how they should act, and nothing more. Utilitarianism concentrates on developing the principles instead of developing the character. Virtue theory provides a context in which strategies, plans, tactics, policies, and procedures are developed to attain a company stated mission and other relevant values. Virtuous employees experience the internal rewards of pride, self-esteem, and the joy of knowing that they did their jobs well. The achievement of a company’s mission, purpose, or ultimate end requires virtuous action on the part of the company’s employees. The ultimate value for a business is financial value. The purpose of a business is to maximize owner value over the length of the company. Virtuous behavior is required at all levels of a company from employees who realize that business is a natural and moral means by which they can satisfy their personal needs and attain their success as individual human beings. A virtuous employee begins by understanding what the facts are and does not evade the distinction between the real and the unreal. For making business decisions, an employee needs to use his reason to make rational, logical decisions based on the facts of reality. Much of morality in business falls under the virtue of honesty. Honesty means being in reality. Honesty is basic to the structure of human relationships. Dishonesty is self-defeating, because it involves being in conflict with realty. Morality in business involves objectively recognizing and dealing with customers, employees, creditors, stockholders, and others as autonomous rational individuals with their particular goals and desires. Honesty is closely related to the virtue of justice. Justice, a form of faithfulness to reality, is the virtue of granting to each person that which each person deserves. Justice is the expression of man’s rationality in his dealings with other men and involves seeking and granting what they have earned. For example, a virtuous manager must make sure that customers get what they pay for. In addition, he needs to identify employees for what they accomplish and treat them accordingly. Employees should be objectively appraised and compensated based on their contribution toward achieving a company’s mission, values, or goals. A virtuous manager discriminates among all those that he deals with such as customers, distributors, suppliers, and workers based on relevant qualities and personal merits such as ability, competency, performance, and character. He does not improperly discriminate based on irrelevant characteristics such as sex, race, or nationality. In summary, when you are using the moral objectivists values-based on virtues for your software company, you will never have to worry about being bailed on Wall Street like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, GM or Chrysler Corporation. Since we know that greed and dishonesty were major vices that heavily contributed to this financial mess, we can confidently move forward as a software company knowing that our moral code in place would never allow that to happen.

Dickens Ideas On Gentility As Shown Through Great Expectations :: Great Expectations Essays

Dickens criticized the world of his own time because it valued the status of being a gentleman over someone doing a useful job. Those who thought they were gentlemen often mocked ordinary citizens. Show how he achieved these aims through the language used and his description of the way Pip and the other characters behaved in the novel. In his numerous literary works, Dickens strong sense of right and wrong, and his recognition of the many injustices present in Victorian Society are clearly displayed. There is no better an example of these strong set of ideals then those portrayed in his novel, Great Expectations, which tells the story of Pip, a young boy who is initially fooled into believing that material wealth is a substitute for the real moral values a gentleman should posses. However, through the many trials and tribulations he is forced to go through, he is finally able to identify what it means to be a "true gentleman", one that has acquired true wealth and value. It is only then that he is able to see the real meaning behind Matthew Pocket’s wise words, that: "No man was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was since the world began, a true gentleman in manner." (page 175) In Dickens novel, society’s idea of a gentleman is perceived as someone of great affluence and breeding, who did not necessarily posses the moral values and graces a true gentleman should have. After his initial visit to Satis House, Pip was infatuated by Estella’s beauty, wealth, and self importance. He allowed himself to be degraded by her scornful references to his "coarse hands", and "thick boots", not realizing at this point that these factors are unimportant on the route to becoming a true gentleman. At that very moment, he deludes himself into believing that if he were to meet Estella’s interpretations of gentlemanly conduct, that she would regard him as her equal. Unfortunately, he completely fails to recognize the true moral values present in Joe and Biddy, and is attracted instead by a fantasized version of Miss Havisham’s and Estella’s lifestyles. He sees his visit to Satis House as the first link in the long chain of events which will lead to his eventually becoming a gentleman. Dickens leaves the reader with no doubt that position and rank were major contributory factors as to how a person was regarded in Victorian society.

Contraceptives in School Essay

During the past decade, there have been stark generational differences in terms of moral and social norms. In order to accommodate for these changes, society has had to make difficult decisions regarding the protection of todays youth. One of the biggest controversies that have been ongoing deals with the gray area regarding the roles of educators and parents. School systems today are distributing condoms and contraceptives to students as young as 11 years old with the intention of preventing their students from suffering from the negative side effects of sex. From an ducator’s perspective, the distribution of condoms has become a necessity due to the overwhelming lack of morals instilled in the youth at the fault of their parents. They also argue that it encourages safety and that it is completely foolish to assume that abstinence is always practiced. On the contrary, conservatives will argue that condoms promote sex and their distribution will show minors that sex at a young age is socially acceptable. Conservatives’ opinions are naive because they blatantly condone the fact that standards and practices have changed dramatically over time. The rising issue of under aged sex has made the distribution of condoms a necessity in order to combat the negative ramifications of the decisions made by todays uneducated youth. A misconception that is widely believed is that passing out condoms in schools will influence or pressure teens to have sex. According to Dr. Kevin J. Minch, if young people believe they will be â€Å"safe† when using a condom they are much less likely to be deterred from engaging in dangerous and immoral behavior (Minch). The conservatives believe that with the introduction of condoms at an early age, this would lead to the unnecessary exposure of the youth to a concept hat should only be tackled by legal adults. It allows them to stray into the obscure world they are not yet ready for. Widespread condom distribution will establish sexual activity as the norm among young teens, creating peer pressure to participate in sex. The added temptation to engage in sexual activity is â€Å"protected† will result in more women having sex at a younger age, perhaps furthering their exploitation. Minch) Sex is a topic that should be addressed at the discretion of each parent and the fact is that educators are slowly taking over the responsibilities of the parent. The opposition would argue that parents of every ethnicity and background have spent years of their life attempting to instill solid morals and values to their children. It is understandable how a parent would feel for a high school teacher to pass out condoms to students at such a young age. Education systems are making the decision on what they think is best for the child rather than having the parents deciding the verdict on this issue. It is said that teenagers who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to experience a pregnancy and the harsh consequences from unprotected sex. Good communication between parents nd children helps ensure that children make the right decisions when it comes to their sexual activity. However, as seen by the statistics, the amount of parental involvement in the lives of teens today is limited. Educators are simply picking up the slack since some parents do not educate their children on the simple right and wrongs like previous generations were taught. In addition to educators programs that educate our youth and that taxpayers should not fund these programs. â€Å"Is it really the responsibility of hardworking taxpayers to pay for the use of protection for irresponsible teens? I certainly do not think so† (Cook). Educators do not need to sanction the idea of a sexually active lifestyle; however they should hearten all young teenagers to make Judicious decisions when it comes to being sexually active. In this case, schools provide their sex-education classes and many prefer it stayed Just that, that it is not fit to provide a basket of condoms upon the exiting of a classroom. What the conservatives fail to do is look at the logical perspective and to take into account the statistics and reality of todays youth. What needs to be widely noticed is that the United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births. It is fact that that the teen pregnancies in our nation cost the United States at least 7 billion dollars each year. For the fiscal year of 2006 the federal government spent over 38 billion dollars to support families that began with a birth from a teenage mother. Nearly eight billion dollars is spent each year to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted diseases. Either the money paid towards taxes can contribute to pregnancies and their after effects, or the money can be well Prevention is much more important when all the facts are spent on prevention. displayed. Every year, around 750,000 teenagers will get pregnant. As a result, more than two thirds of teenagers who give birth will drop out of school, thus leading to an uneducated and difficult future. Teenage mothers and their children are more likely than others to be placed in the poverty bracket; therefore billions of dollars are spent taking care of them. Teen pregnancies are seen as a disadvantage in todays society due to the fact that many children born to teenage mothers tend to have a low birth rate. In addition to this, children born to teenage mothers are said to do poorly in school as they age and are more suceptible to abuse and neglect. The ruth is that the Centers of Disease Control reports nineteen million new STDs each year and approximately half of these reports are from our youth. One in four sexually active teenagers become infected with a sexually transmitted disease every year, which includes but is not limited to Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Genital Warts, and Herpes. (The Alan Guttmacher Institute). Another mind wrenching fact coming from the American Social Health Association is that of nine million new STD cases in the year 2000, ninety percent was accounted for by HIV and HPV (Human Papillomavirus) in ages fifteen to twenty-four years of age. Chesson HW, Blandford JM, Gift TL, Tao G, Irwin KL. According to an educator working out of a New York City public high school, the idea of distributing condoms has her approval. â€Å"If I could, I would give out condoms in my classroom. I think we should make it as easy as possible for teens to access condoms. † This statement could cause an upheaval of opinion, but this teacher is looking out for the welfare of her students. High school students’ main focus should be education, goal setting, and discover ing their own individuality. These teenagers should live an energetic and active life without worrying about remarital sex. Even though this is true, it has been proven that over 50% of teenagers have had sexual intercourse before graduating High School. So what is to come of this? Considering a high percentage of high school students are in fact having sex, there are outstanding statistics proving many STDs and teenage with the prevention classes and protection. When students are provided with condoms, it at least gives them the opportunity to be responsible with such an irresponsible act. Condoms are proven not to be 100% effective protecting against pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. However they have and will cut the odds by a landslide. Their distribution could have a significant impact on many lives by protecting them from diseases and unforeseen pregnancies that can end a young mother’s future. The best defense against STD’s and under aged pregnancies is simply knowledge and protection. Frequently, parents are too embarrassed to approach their child about any type of sexual activity. For this reason students are left uniformed and in harms way. A catastrophe will take place if sex education and protection are taken away from the students today. Parents need to be active and not permit sexual activity and disregard its existence. Often our society does not recognize these situations. Regardless of the parents’ opinions of moral and religious rights, someone has to protect the youth considering abstinence is not a sure avenue for these children. This is why our education systems have, and need to continue doing so, taken a step forth to protect our nation’s future.

Projective Techniques Essay

Such tests are based loosely on the psychoanalytic concept of projection, the assumption being that respondents project unconscious aspects of their personalities on to the test items and reveal them in their responses †¦ The website of the Association of Qualitative Practitioners (AQR 2004) defines projective techniques as follows: A wide range of tasks and games in which respondents can be asked to participate during an interview or group, designed to facilitate, extend or enhance the nature of the discussion. Some are known as ‘projective’ techniques, being loosely based on approaches originally taken in a psychotherapeutic setting. These rely on the idea that someone will ‘project’ their own (perhaps unacceptable or shameful) feelings or beliefs onto an imaginary other person or situation †¦ Projective techniques may be used in qualitative as well as quantitative studies (Levy 1994) and they are useful (Boddy 2004b) in both. 240 International Journal of Market Research Vol. 47 Issue 3 Projective techniques are commonly used in qualitative market research (Gordon & Langmaid 1990) where the aim of the techniques is to facilitate the gaining of a deeper understanding of the area being researched. In discussing projective techniques they distance the use of projective techniques in qualitative market research from that of psychoanalytical practice, and suggest a more pedestrian and pragmatic definition: Projection [is] the tendency to imbue objects or events with characteristics or meanings which are derived from our subconscious desires, wishes or feelings. Dichter (1964) defined projection as meaning ‘to project subjective ideas and contents onto an object’, and said that one person could ascribe their own problems or difficulties to someone else. He described these techniques as being widely used in psychological work (Dichter 1960) and said that they are a non-directive interview technique where the respondent can project himself onto another and thus reveal some of the respondent’s own thoughts, feelings and fears. Projective vis-a-vis enabling techniques The market researchers Chandler and Owen (2002) define projective and enabling techniques quite succinctly and in a way with which most qualitative market research practitioners (Gordon & Langmaid 1990; Goodyear 1998) would probably agree. This differentiation is useful to make at the beginning of this paper as the techniques are often used interchangeably and the distinction between them may have become blurred in the minds of some qualitative market researchers. Classically, the idea of a projective technique relates to a device that allows the individual research participant to articulate repressed or otherwise withheld feelings by projecting these onto another character. The idea of enabling techniques relates to a device which allows the individual research participant to find a means of expressing feelings, thoughts and so on which they find hard to articulate. Enabling techniques are held to be the simpler (Will, Eadie & MacAskill 1996) of the two techniques as they just help people to talk about themselves. Will et al. ake the useful distinguishing point that while all projective techniques may be enabling, not all enabling techniques involve projection. Other researchers (Lysaker & Bradley 1957) make the point that even pictorial devices, which do not function as projective techniques 241 Projective techniques in market research (i. e. devices researchers would nowadays refer to as enabling techniques), may still have utility in gener ating responses. Gordon and Langmaid (1990) state that the use of projective as opposed to enabling techniques is a false distinction in market research as the aim of both techniques is to facilitate deeper understanding. However, they do go on to say that in enabling techniques people are asked to do something that itself has no interpretive value (and so doesn’t itself need to be interpreted). In terms of analysis there is a distinction because with enabling techniques the research participants are talking as themselves (that is not to say that this speech should always be taken at face value), whereas with projective techniques the research participants are talking as someone else and the researcher makes the interpretative assumption that they are talking as themselves. This agreement over the definition of projective techniques is about as far as most research textbooks get on the subject. How they are subsequently used is little discussed and how they are then analysed is hardly explicitly touched on at all (Levy 1994; Catterall 1998), which is a situation that has hardly changed from ten or more years ago. This paper aims to look at current reports of how projective techniques are analysed and what support for their reliability and validity exists, and aims to stimulate debate in this area of market research so that a better and more accessible understanding of the subject can be offered to those entering research as potential practitioners, to interested clients, and to researchers who are more used to a quantitative or direct questioning approach. The origins of projective techniques Projective techniques were employed in market research from the 1940s (Catterall & Ibbotson 2000) to encourage research participants to express feelings and attitudes that might otherwise be withheld due to embarrassment or fear if more direct questioning methods were used. Market research originally borrowed (Robson 2000; Boddy 2004a) projective techniques from psychoanalysis and clinical psychology where they are still used (Richman 1996) to gain insights into personality and personality disorders. Projection, as a concept, originated from Freud’s work on paranoia (Lilienfeld, Wood & Garb 2000), where he conceptualised projection as a defence mechanism by which people unconsciously attribute their own negative personality traits to others. Lilienfeld et al. say that Freud’s work 242 International Journal of Market Research Vol. 47 Issue 3 was subsequently developed by psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists. This development was based on the hypothesis that ‘research participants project aspects of their personalities in the process of disambiguating unstructured test stimuli’, and several different techniques were developed such as the well-known Rorschach technique, or ‘ink-blot test’, where subjects are assumed to project aspects of their personality onto the ambiguous features of a set of inkblots. Projective techniques in market research A commonly used completion technique (Gordon & Langmaid 1990; Will et al. 1996) in qualitative market research is ‘bubble drawing’. This is a device based on a technique called the Thematic Apperception Test where, according to Tucker-Ladd (2001), clinical psychologists use a series of standard pictures and ask subjects to make up stories about them. TuckerLadd says that what people see in the pictures says something about themselves and thus reveals their personality. Projective techniques can be used in a variety of market research situations as well as in social and educational research (Catterall & Ibbotson 2000), and these do not have to be aiming at uncovering aspects of personality of any great depth. For example, a bubble drawing was used (Boddy 2004a) by one researcher to uncover students’ underlying attitudes towards the delivery of a lecture on marketing research rather than to uncover any deeper aspects of their own personalities. Projective and enabling techniques are thus useful when research participants have difficulty expressing opinions or feelings and researchers need some way of accessing these from the participants’ minds (Gordon & Langmaid 1990; Kay 2001).