The safe haven that once used to be the supermarket aisle has now become a confusing place, a shrine to clean eating, promising energy, happiness and healthiness. Never before have we been so obsessed with clean eating, from sweet potatoes to acai berries to the all too loved coconut oil. But is this faith one to be worshipped or feared?                                                                                                       Leading the way are the so-called health and wellness bloggers that have all somehow developed a sudden intolerance to gluten, wheat and dairy. A little bit of a coincidence isn’t it?But why do we seem to be falling for this new health craze, with its extortionate prices and bland tastes?As the availability heuristic explains, the things in or mind that are more accessible, the more likely we are to choose them. Agenda setting theory is a form of availability heuristic explaining that it is the News, which influences the perceived importance off things through repetition and emphasis so as soon as we read something, we form a biased opinion of it. Therefore, with hundreds of thousands of followers on every social media outlet, it’s no surprise that an increasing number of people are turning to these bloggers for guidance, making it almost impossible to check your Instagram without being bombarded with some new healthy diet. Yet, it seems bizarre that we automatically trust these bloggers, the majority of whom don’t even hold a qualification in nutrition or fitness. We are prone to judgmental heuristics such as credibility bias in that we assume that these bloggers are experts in the field of health and food, ignoring any arguments and automatically allowing ourselves to be convinced solely by their status (Cialdini, 2009). For instance, how many times have you thought that if something is expensive, it must be a good product? Many times right? This is exactly how we think that ‘if an expert said so, it must be true’. In some cases, they may well be telling the truth, but at other times their advice may cause us to make costly mistakes (especially if you’re on a student budget but can only buy gluten and wheat free edamame spaghetti). Fig 1. Ratings of ‘goodness’ of Chinese charactersAnother reason is that of mere exposure, as proposed by Zajonc (1968). According to this theory, the more exposed we are to things; the more favourable they are seen. For example, in his study he found that after participants saw a range of made up Chinese characters, the characters they saw more were rated as more ‘good’ compared to characters they saw less .The elaboration likelihood model is a dual process model of persuasion that explains how certain influences can lead to different impacts on a person’s attitudes and behaviours (Li, 2013). There are two possible routes that one may take, the central route, which requires one to take part in systematic, critical and effortful thinking, or the peripheral route, which involves using simple automatic cues without effortful thinking. The more thought and elaboration that goes into making a decision, the more likely it is to trigger stronger attitude and behaviour change (Boyce & Kujjer, 2014). Therefore, in terms of this healthy eating craze, it seems that people who are less motivated may use cues such as one’s perceived credibility in order to arrive at a decision whereas those that are more invested are more likely to have a sustained change in behaviour and stick to ‘clean-eating’. Of course we always want to make sure that we are doing things that other people are, keeping up with trends and not feeling left out. Social influence and in particular, normative social influence plays a major part in how we are persuaded by the behaviour and expectations of others in order to conform to the norm of society (Li, 2013). If all your friends are out there buying almond milk and you purchase the forbidden semi-skimmed, then be prepared to face some serious social segregation. So regardless of our beliefs and attitudes, we are under high levels of social pressure to conform to certain behaviours and before deciding whether to accept and carry out this behaviour ourselves, we first observe successful experiences encountered by others (Li, 2013). As Mcferran, Dahl, Fitzsimons and Morales, (2010) found, when a confederate set up a norm, other participants conformed to the norm so either ate more or less, depending on what the confederate’s norm was. Moreover, as the group size increases, people increasingly conform to the group norm, demonstrating how an anchor set up by others can be highly influential when making our own decisions. I mean if Sophie lost 3 stone by eating apples for a week, then surely it’ll work for me too right?The theory of planned behaviour can also be used to explain why the masses are following the clean-eating hype. It is based on the foundation that the best predictor of actual behaviour is the behaviour that a person actually intends to carry out. It involves three key components; a person’s attitude towards the specific behaviour i.e. clean-eating, subjective norms, which involves beliefs about what others expect us to do and finally perceived behavioural control, the degree to which a person has control over their own behaviour. If one has more favourable attitudes towards a specific behaviour as well as more favourable subjective norms and greater perceived behavioural control, this strengthens their intentions to perform the behaviour and so they will engage in this clean-eating obsession.So there we have it, don’t join this health fixation if you don’t want to, but there will be enough influences surrounding you to persuade you to do so. After all, who can resist a bit of avocado on toast? References:Boyce, A. J., & Kuijer, G. R. (2014). Focusing on media body ideal images triggers food intake among restrained eaters: A test of restraint theory and the elaboration likelihood model. Eating Behaviors, 15, 262-270.Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: Science and practice. Boston: Pearson Education. Li, C. Y. (2013). Persuasive messages on information system acceptance: A theoretical extension of elaboration likelihood model and social influence theory. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 264-275. Mcferran, B., Dahl, D. W., Fitzsimons, G. J., & Morales, A. C. (2010). I’ll have What She’s Having: Effects of Social Influence and Body Type on the Food Choices of Others. Journal Of Consumer Research, 36, 915-929. Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 1–27.

“That night, image replaced the printed word as the natural language of politics.” (Baker, 1992)Kennedy vs NixonUS politics is particularly prominent at the moment and going a full day where it isn’t highlighted in the media is unlikely. The debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have specifically attracted a lot of attention from the public, with the first debate breaking records with an audience of 84 million viewers and the subsequent two averaging at around 70 million viewers. But where did it all begin? On the 26th of November 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon competed in the first televised debate. This particular debate has now become famous for highlighting the role television plays in politics. Mainly because many accounts of the debate have suggested a viewer – listener disagreement, where those who watched the debate on TV thought Kennedy had won but those that listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon to be the victor. Although now it has been classed as a myth with little evidential support (Vancil & Pendell, 1987), it sparked interest in how the personal image of candidates on TV can influence voters overall evaluations.Druckman (2003) revisited this notion that individuals will have different evaluations of the debate and the candidates (Kennedy vs Nixon) depending on the medium the debate is portrayed on. The findings were consistent with accounts of the debate, that TV image does matter and could have played an important role in the first Kennedy – Nixon debate. TV viewers were significantly more likely to think Kennedy won the debate than audio (radio) listeners and viewed Kennedy as having significantly more integrity than Nixon. Interestingly, it was found that watching the debate on TV primed participants to rely more on image (i.e integrity) and this played a significantly more important role for viewers than for listeners. Listeners relied only on their perceptions of leadership effectiveness compared to TV viewers who relied on both leadership effectiveness and image in evaluating the candidates. Moreover, the influence of perceptions of image for TV viewers lead to a decreased influence of whether the candidates and respondents agreed with the same issues but this remained a significant factor for listeners. What is it about image that persuades people to think candidates would be better presidents? Todorov and colleagues (2005) found that inferences of competence from facial features with exposures of just 1 second could correctly predict voting behaviour of US election outcomes. Those that were perceived to be more competent from their facial features were more likely to have won their elections. Mattes and colleagues (2010) found results consistent with this but with other positive and negative traits as well. In their study images of the two candidates in the race were shown together for both 33 ms and one second and participants quick judgements correlated with which candidates won the elections. As you can see from the table below those perceived to have more of the positive traits were more likely to have been chosen by the participants and actually have won their elections. Those with negative traits were less likely to be chosen by participants and less likely to have won their elections. Both Todorov et al (2005) and Mattes et al (2010) saw this as support that the evaluations of candidates individuals make are quick and effortless processes.So how does this research relate to the Kennedy – Nixon debate? What was it about Nixon that lead to him being perceived so poorly on TV compared to radio? According to Hughes (1995), Nixon was still recovering from a knee surgery which he had spent time in hospital for which added to his already pale complexion and lead him to shift his weight a lot during the debate making him look uncomfortable. Moreover, in the black and white TV his dark beard made him look unshaven which his team attempted to cover up with ‘lazy shave cream’ but only added to his disastrous image making him sweat more under the extra lights requested by his team. All of this lead to Nixon being perceived as sickly and uncomfortable and thus possibly less competent. In contrast, Kennedy had spent time touring California and was subsequently tanned making him look healthy and well rested. Additionally, Kennedy wore a dark suit, making him stand out against the light background, compared to Nixon’s light grey suit which meant he blended into the background. Also during the debate, Kennedy directed his focus towards the camera and was seen making notes in reaction shots which made him appear self-confident. Whereas, Nixon often directed his focus towards Kennedy and was caught checking the time during reaction shots which lead him to being perceived as ’shifty eyed’ and thus less trust worthy. The comparison between the candidates of these non-verbal cues (only seen by those who watched the debate on TV) was the most likely reason that Nixon was reported to have lost the debate on TV compared to those that just listened to what he said on radio. How can Theories of Persuasion explain this?Petty and Cacioppo (1986) have proposed a dual process model called the Elaboration Likelihood Model which illustrates how individuals process information when they are persuaded (or not). Persuasion can take place via two routes Central or Peripheral. The central route refers to higher cognition or processing of information (arguments) and this route is taken when there is desire for beneficial outcomes, motivation to know and control and often when the individual cares about the topic. The peripheral route refers to lower cognition or processing most likely due to limited cognitive resources or capacity to process and often not a strong argument is needed as other peripheral cues or heuristics are used to make a decision. From what has been described above (how individuals can be influenced by appearance of candidates) it appears that often people may rely on heuristics (cognitive short-cuts) to make judgements about candidates. This seems counter-intuitive, especially when thinking about candidate elections for presidency, you would think individuals would use the central route as elections of this nature would be important to them and there would be a desire for beneficial outcomes. However, a paper by Lau and Redlawsk (2001) suggests otherwise: stating that the ‘average’ individual tends to be less motivated when making political decisions and uses the peripheral route. Lau and Redlawsk (2001) identified 5 types of politic heuristics and found that these were employed the majority of the time by participants (see table below). One of which is specifically relevant, ‘candidate appearance heuristic’. This heuristic refers to when individuals makes judgements based on specific cues about the physical appearance of a candidate (Reilly). This is particularly worrying as findings from Lenz and Lawson (2011) suggests that there is a greater reliance of this heuristic in those with less political knowledge and that ‘appealing-looking’ politicians will benefit more from increased television exposure.So it appears that a candidate’s TV image is important as people tend rely on inferences made about appearance when making voting decisions. If you want to run for the US presidency do not make the same mistakes as Nixon. But then again, America voted in Donald Trump so it can not be the only factor given the things we see on TV about him.(see part 2 for some of the different persuasive techniques Trump employs in his debates with Hillary Clinton).References: Baker, R. (1992, November 1st). The 1992 Follies. The New York Times. Druckman, J. N. (2003). The Power of television images: The first Kennedy‐Nixon debate revisited. Journal of Politics, 65(2), 559-571.Hughes, S. R. (1995). The effects of nonverbal behavior in the 1992 televised presidential debates (Doctoral dissertation, Texas Tech University).Lau, R. R., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2001). Advantages and disadvantages of cognitive heuristics in political decision making. American Journal of Political Science, 951-971.Lenz, G. S., & Lawson, C. (2011). Looking the part: Television leads less informed citizens to vote based on candidates’ appearance. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 574-589.Mattes, K., Spezio, M., Kim, H., Todorov, A., Adolphs, R., & Alvarez, R. M. (2010). Predicting election outcomes from positive and negative trait assessments of candidate images. Political Psychology, 31(1), 41-58.Reilly, B. D. The Ties That Bind: Candidate Appearance and Party Heuristics.Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., & Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308(5728), 1623-1626.Vancil, D. L., & Pendell, S. D. (1987). The myth of viewer‐listener disagreement in the first Kennedy‐Nixon debate. Central States Speech Journal, 38(1), 16-27.

JUST ASK‘I find you very attractive, will you go to bed with me?’ Elaine Hatfield carried out a revolutionary experiment in 1989, showing that 75% of men would go to bed with an averagely attractive woman if they just asked (Hatfield, 1989). Other research has confirmed the power of asking, by demonstrating that if you want something you should simply ask for it. Santos, Leve and Pratkanis (1994) suggested we have pre-set answers to questions. Therefore, an usual request is more likely to be completed as we will need to think about the answer. To demonstrate this, Santos, Leve and Pratkanis got confederates to ask a participant to borrow either a low or high amount of money, that was either strange e.g 17 cent or typical e.g a quarter. The results firstly showed that if you want to borrow money you should just ask as it is likely to get results. Secondly, people are more likely to give you money if you ask an usual request compared to a typical request as seen in Figure 1.From the research done on the ‘just ask’ principle, I wanted to see how effective this technique would be in real life situations. I had bought a pair of jeans a couple of months ago, with the intention of giving them back to the shop. However, life got busy and I had missed the deadline for a refund. Seen as I had nothing to lose from the situation but money to gain, I decided to go into the shop and ask for a refund anyway. To my surprise, the shop assistant did not even bat an eyelid and completed the request without a seconds hesitation. Due to being astonished that I was about to get money for something I should not be, I even doubled checked that the shop assistant was aware of my lack of receipt. The request was still made. All I did was ask, and ended up getting money back in return.This is further proof of the ‘just ask’ principle. In the majority of situations, if you want something just ask! People drastically underestimate the power of asking, due to not believing it will be effective. However, as previous research such as Hatfield (1989) has shown, as well as my real life example illustrates, asking gets results!REFERNCES:Clark, R. D., & Hatfield, E. (1989). Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 2, 39-55.Santos, M. D., Leve, C., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1994). Hey buddy, can you spare seventeen cents? Mindful persuasion and the pique technique1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 755-764.