A public commitment to stop smoking

If you reached the end goal it was a success. If you didn't it was a failure. Despite the fact that you can gain a lot of insight and skills from the process of pursuing a goal and ultimately not reaching it the first time, you didn't make it and that's all the matters. Catastrophizing: Basically being a drama queen/king. This one makes you overthink and magnify the effects that a situation has on you. Picture the soccer players that flop like theatrical fish when they barely get brushed by an opposing player. Playa, please. Example: You went to the doctor and found out that, in their opinion, your BMI is higher than it should be based on the charts for your age and height. The two routes to persuasion: changing attitudes either from the central merits of a message or from peripheral cues The effect of the persuasive message, depending on who says what to whom--that is, the characteristics of the source, the message, and the audience The ability to resist persuasion How changing someone's attitudes changes his or her behavior Elaboration Likelihood Model: Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion Learning Outcomes Explain the two routes to persuasion proposed by the elaboration likelihood model, including circumstances for and durability of each. In earlier articles you learned that people often are unwilling or unable to think deeply about every decision they make and every piece of information they encounter. Although they sometimes engage in controlled, deliberate thinking, often they think in a more automatic and superficial manner. This theory proposes that persuasive messages can influence attitudes in two different ways, or routes. However, this scene pictures the classical therapeutic setting of psychoanalysis, but not of behavioral therapy. In a CBT office, you usually sit on a chair.

The comfort of those varies greatly from therapist to therapist, ranging from IKEA model Martin (which is quite similar to those seats that children sit on in the kindergarten), up to the expensive leather armchair with integrated massage function. A little personal research, which basically consisted of looking at hundreds of pictures of CBT offices online, revealed that IKEA's POANG is probably the most popular chair of behavioral therapists in Germany. The therapists themselves are as diverse as their furniture. There are young ones, who, right after having left university with a master's degree in psychology, start their psychotherapeutic career at the age of 25 in a CBT ambulance. And there are older ones, who, at the age of 80, still don't plan to retire and continue to invite patients. The number of female therapists greatly exceeds the number of male ones - at least in Germany. The teacher: at the beginning of the session, the homework is checked. Then comes a short test about the Kiesler model of complementary interaction - the topic of last week's discussion. Surely this means that you are obese and will likely get diabetes, never run that marathon you've dreamed of, and ultimately die alone. Shoulds: This one can also go by oughts or musterbation, as Albert Ellis coined. Basically, you direct should statements at yourself that make you feel really bad. You should be patient, you should be reliable, you should get along well with others. This is a common thing that people actually think is a good strategy for self-discipline, but it seems to backfire more often than not. Example: In accordance with your New Year's resolutions, you have told yourself that you should not eat donuts. When you do this, you start to think of yourself as someone who shouldn't eat donuts and further, as someone who is better because they don't eat donuts (damn, I want a donut right now). What happens when you slip, fall and your mouth lands around a delicious donut? You feel like utter garbage, because you told yourself that it was something that you must not do instead of being more realistic and telling yourself that it's something that you want to do, but will try to avoid for the sake of your physical well-being. We all know shit happens, and musterbation only compounds the bad feelings that you get after falling off the wagon. Which route a person takes depends on his or her motivation and ability to elaborate on--or think carefully about--the information to which he or she is exposed. Elaboration likelihood model

A theory of persuasion which proposes that persuasive messages can influence attitudes by two different routes: central or peripheral. People follow the central route to persuasion when they think carefully about the information that is pertinent, or central, to the true merits of the person, object, or position being advocated in the message. This information is referred to as the argument. For example, people who follow the central route while listening to a political candidate's speech will attend closely to the candidate's arguments concerning why he or she will make a good leader, and they will consider whether those arguments are factual and cogent. Thus, when people follow the central route, their attitudes are influenced primarily by the strength of the argument. Strong arguments will change attitudes; Central route to persuasion A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who has both the ability and the motivation to think carefully about the message's argument. When you enter a CBT office for the first time, the therapist maybe does a little small talk like Did you have problems finding a parking spot? Afterwards, he or she starts the discussion with questions like: What can I do for you? However, now and then you will run into a therapist who just sits there, looks at you silently, and - as some kind of psychodiagnostics - waits for your reaction to this strange situation. When you are in the midst of talking about your problem, you may observe a behavior in your therapist that is called active listening. Here, he makes those special therapist sounds which are supposed to signal patients, that all attention is fully focused on them. These range from a simple M-hm! One might think that basically everybody would be able to do active listening - even without having studied psychology or having received special psychotherapeutic training. But, at least in Germany, CBT training institutes often play it safe and run communication workshops, in which this technique gets taught. Please visualize a bunch of future therapists in their late twenties, sitting together in pairs, and practicing timing and timbre of their personal feedback vocalization. A more advanced version of active listening is to give back what just has been said in a slightly altered form. Mind Reading: Yeah, I'm talking to you. This is one that MANY of us are guilty of.

Mind reading is very much what it sounds like. You assume that you know a person's thoughts or internal motives, even though in reality you are just taking guesses. Example: You text your significant other saying how much you love them and that you are really happy that things have been great lately. You ask them if they want to go to a movie later. I'm talking super cutesy with emojis and everything. Five minutes later, you get the response, K. That's it, just. When you see your partner later you say, So you don't want to go to the movies? Attitude change depends on the strength of the argument. The true merits of the person, object, or position being advocated in a message. In contrast, people follow the peripheral route to persuasion when they are not willing or able to put effort into thinking carefully about the argument. In these cases, people's attitudes are influenced primarily by peripheral cues, which are aspects of the communication that are irrelevant (that is, peripheral) to the true merits of the person, object, or position advocated in the message. For example, people following the peripheral route while listening to a candidate's speech are not thinking carefully about the candidate's arguments. Instead, they might focus on the candidate's physical attractiveness or the smiling faces of the schoolchildren standing behind the candidate. People taking the peripheral route also tend to base their attitudes on heuristics--mental short cuts, such as, If a person speaks for a long time, then they must have a valid point (see article 3) (Chaiken, 1987). Similarly, people who think and speak quickly are seen as more charismatic and skilled (von Hippel et al. Peripheral route to persuasion A style of processing a persuasive message by a person who is not willing or able to put effort into thinking carefully about the message's argument. This is also called reflecting or paraphrasing. Its simple form is manageable even for the less eloquent therapist - here, a sentence is returned one to one as a question.

However, when communicating in such a way, the other side will get bored very quickly. This technique is excellent for scaring away annoying conversation partners at parties - just become one yourself. The more difficult form of this technique: preserving the meaning of a sentence but putting it into your own words. This proves to the other that you have mentally processed the content of what has just been said. The expert form of active listening includes a feedback about the emotions, desires and pleas that you think are expressed in a statement. But, as said before: behavioral therapists are as diverse as their furniture. Therefore, the statement I just can't stop drinking. This is my problem. You're already pissed because you assume that they don't care as much as you given their lackluster response. If they cared as much, they would have used an equivalent number of emojis. In reality, they were just driving on the freeway and cared enough about you to not get killed by texting while driving. Fortune Telling: This is a close relative of mind reading. The difference is that in fortune telling, you are assuming that you can predict the future and outcome of a given situation. In reality, it's most often impossible to know the outcome of a situation until it has already passed. Example: Say you are a musician and you have a gig coming up tonight. You may have prepared plenty and your set list is on point, but you have yourself convinced that you are going to bomb and that everyone in that city sucks. I bet you aren't feeling too hot or treating the people around you very nicely. In fact, that might even lead to you blowing it hard at your gig where you otherwise might have killed it. Attitude change depends on the presence of peripheral cues. Peripheral cues