3 - Attitudes 1 Flashcards
attitude
a cognitive representation that summarizes an individual’s evaluation of an attitude object (a particular person, group, thing, action, or idea)
can serve many social and utilitarian functions (object appraisal function, utilitarian function, social identity/value-expressive funtion, impression management function)
attitude functions
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- what **purpose (function) **an attitude serves to the person
- can change depending on context, cultural differences
- object appraisal function - what features/properties of an object to focus on
- utilitarian function - steering us towards things that will help us, away from harm
- social identity/value-expression function - helps us define ourselves and our beliefs, be in good social standing with others
- impression management function - helps us make a ‘good impression’, have good interactions
componentsof an attitude
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- affective info - feelings and emotions the object arouses
- behavioral info - knowledge about past/present/future interactions with or actions towards an object
- cognitive info - facts and beliefs about the object
these are used during attitude formation and attitude expression
attitude formation general principles
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- attitude formation reflects how we put different info together and how much importance we attribute to each piece of info
- consistency - people form attitudes that are consistent with what they know, feel, experience (e.g. good = positive attitude)
- the bad outweighs the good (negative info>positive info)
- accessible information (most easily comes to mind) dominates attitude judgements
- after forming an attitude, it becomes part of the cognitive representation of that object, e.g. the attitude is recalled whenever the object is
persuasion heuristic
association of a cue that is positively or negatively evaluated with the attitude object, allowing the attitude object to be evaluated quickly and without much thought
peripheral route to persuasion… easy and superficial processing
measuring attitudes
and issues with it
- observing behavioral expression
- self-reporting scale
issues/challenges
- impression management (influencing attitudes)/demand effects……
- lack of awareness or insight about the issue
- controlled vs. automatic attitudes…… concsious, controlled, thoughtful attitudes vs. impulsive and automatically formed attitudes
bogus pipeline
can use bogus pipeline to deceive participants into revealing their true attitudes (e.g. fake lie detector)
good for countering impression management/demand effects
implicit attitudes
attitudes we can’t necessarily recall, control, or are aware of but nevertheless affect our behavior
explicit attitudes
overtly expressed and conscious attitudes
self-report measures
Fazio et al., 1995
• Gave participants scale of ‘modern’ racism (explicit measure) and reaction time priming task with racial attitude/word matching (priming for implicit measure)
- Found that explicit measures did not correlate with implicit attitudes
- Explicit attitude measures predicted explicit judgments (rodney king fairness trial) and implicit attitude measures predicted friendliness toward black experimenter
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Grenwald, McGhee, & Schwarz (1998)
• Assesses strength of people’s automatic
association between two concepts (supposedly the implicit preference for blacks/whites)
• 5 tasks:
t1. races/corresponding colors
t2. words/corresponding +/-traits
t3. black/positive traits
t4. races/corresponding colors
t5. black/negative traits
difference in reaction times between t.3 and t.5 demonstrates preference for one over another
Implicit Association Test (IAT) issues
- arbitrary metrics, how do miliseconds correspond to attitudes?
- reflecting cultural norms rather than personal belief? (e.g. knowing that it is considered normative in the culture can influence choice, even if one disagrees with what is normal)
Olson and Fazio 2004 - Personalized IAT, produced similar results….. replaced “pleasant/unpleasant with “i like/i dislike”
perusasion and attitude change:
supercifial processing
peripheral route
- People use a heuristic - A cue that’s positively or negatively associated with an attitude object - to judge, allowing the attitude object to be evaluated quickly and without much thought
e. g. if it’s rare, it’s good
association heuristic
and evidence
- You associate something about which you already
have strong feelings with a novel object….. eventually associate the novel object with those positive feelings through **classical conditioning **
Olson and Fazio, 2002: Attitude toward novel object changed form neutral to positive/negative, depending on which attitude object was paired with it
Gorn, 1982: Pen preference study; people wanted to take home pen associated with positive music more so than negative
heuristics: familiarity
mere exposure effect
and evidence
Mere exposure effect: people’s tendency
to prefer objects only because they have
been previously exposed to them.
evidence:
People will misremember repeated statements as being more reliable (even if false) (Arkes et al., 1989)
People are more persuaded by a sentence they have previously heard (in a different context) than by new sentences (GarciaMarques et al., 2001).
heuristics: attractiveness
• When a novel object is associated with
someone we like, we evaluate it positively
• More likely to agree with attractive others
heuristics: expertise
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Hovland an Weiss, 1951: More likely to accept the validity of an idea because of who says it, not because of the content
e. g., celebrity endorsements
why?
• Perception of competence
• Trustworthiness
• Other qualities that lend an air of authority: fast
heuristics: length is strength
and evidence
The longer the persuasive message and the more the reasons, the more likely it is to result in attitude
change
For minor persuasion, anything that sounds like an
argument will do.
• Xerox study (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978)
• Confederate asks people in line for use of a
photocopier if she can jump ahead
• No excuse, real excuse, or placebo excuse
people let her when she lists several reasons or talks longer
systematic processing (central route)
and distinguishing factors from superficial processing
central route
- more critical, analytical, counscious consideration of a message
Distinguishing factors from superficial:
- Attention: people must pay attention…
- Comprehension: keep it simple
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Reaction to message
• Elaboration: generation of favorable or unfavorable
reactions to the content of a persuasive appeal -
Acceptance: will emerge if the message creates
positive affect or knowledge (thoughts)
- though it can still be influenced by biases and heuristics (like confirmation biases)
elaboration
the process of generating favorable or unfavorable reactions to the content of a persuasive appeal
affective and/or cognitive reactions, reflecting both feelings towards and other characteristics of the object
happens during systematic processing
When do people use systematic
processing?
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b.
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When they are motivated
- Have high need to be accurate
- When the topic is highly self-relevant/important
>petty, cacioppo, goldman… highly-involved people looked at content, low-involved people looked at heuristics
- *2. When they are able to**
- Have sufficient **cognitive ability to process/understand **(e.g. Hafer plea bargain study…… people didn’t understand complex wording)
- Have sufficient concentration (e.g. Are not distracted)
- personality differences (e.g. having a high need for cognition)
- not in positive mood…… but not too fearful
Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman (1981)
• Students listened to speech: “Seniors should take comprehensive exam to graduate”
• Manipulated quality of arguments (strong vs. weak)
• Manipulated source expertise (expert (Princeton professor) vs. non-expert (high
school junior) source)
• Manipulated self-relevance (would be implemented at own university or other
school
high involvement = mainly influenced by the strength of the argument
low involvement = mainly influenced by the expertise of the argumenter
resisting persuasion
People often seek out/attend to information consistent with their own attitudes (confirmation bias) and resist inconsistent information…. Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979
Practice (Inoculation) may help resist attitude change
• Practice refuting counterarguments, especially
weaker ones
