Psychographic Terms & Hypodermic Needle Model

What is a psychographic term?

Psychographics is the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Because this area of research focuses on interests, attitudes, and opinions, psychographic factors are also called IAO variables. Psychographic studies of individuals or communities can be valuable in the fields of marketing, demographics, opinion research, prediction, and social research in general. 

These personality types start off with this key. A full type is combined with 4 of these types followed by what sort of personality you have & the way that you look at the world...just like below.



Hypodermic Needle Model


A model of communications suggesting that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. It also has a strong effect in the act of communication and audiences. The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.
Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including:
- the fast rise and popularization of radio and television
- the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda*

Two-step flow

The two-step flow of communication model hypothesizes that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population. Introduced by Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet and Katz and Lazarsfeld developed the theory.
What each step is...
First—Opinion Leaders get information from a media source.
Second—Opinion Leaders then pass the information, along with their interpretation, to others (friends, family, acquaintances, etc.)

Uses and Gratifications




An approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centred approach to understanding mass communication.





Reception theory 

Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as audience reception in the analysis of communications models.







Obstinate audience theory (active audience) 



Raymond A. Bauer - “ one-way influence” -  “transactional model”
Bauer-Eberhart Study - Audience can filter out, distort or fail to recognize perceptual events which do not fit their points of view
Zimmerman-Bauer Study - Audience plays a large part in influencing the message
Advertising Study - People who like advertising found ads enjoyable while people who don’t like advertising found ads annoying and offensive.

Drip Drip Drip effect/ Cultivation differential - Two different interpretations


1. (drip effect, drip-drip effect) In theories of media effects, the notion that the mass media contribute towards gradual changes in the long term, either in individual attitudes or behaviour, or in the form of social changes (alongside other social forces).

2. (drip campaign) In advertising, a campaign in which media expenditure is stretched over a relatively long period, in contrast to burst campaigns. This strategy is often used for ‘reminder campaigns’ or when the goal is to achieve longer-term attitudinal effects.