3. Attitudes, emotions and behaviour Flashcards
What is an atttitude?
An attitude is a positive or negative evaluation that people hold in regard to objects, people, ideas, behaviours or the outcomes of behaviour. These attitudes can be cognitive- based on how we think about the object- or emotional/affective, relating to how we feel about a particular object.
Where we have free will, we’d expect that our behaviour is in line with our attitudes; if we do something then it’s because we want to do it and have a positive attitude towards it.
Do attitudes predict our behaviour?
Sometimes we act contrary to our own attitudes.
A study by LaPiere was run to study the consistency between attitudes and actions.
LaPiere travelled around America with his wife and a Chinese student at a time when American attitudes towards the Chinese were generally negative. He was interested in observing how staff at hotels and restaurants would respond to the Chinese guests. Where possible, LaPiere hid out of the way and let the Chinese student and his wife try and book a room or order a meal. It was found that only one hotel/restaurant refused them service. Six months later LaPierre wrote to the same hotels and restaurants and asked them if they would be willing to provide hospitality to Chinese people.
92 %- no
5 %- undecided
only one establishment said yes
This suggests there was a discrepancy between the attitudes or staff at these hotels and restaurants and their behaviour.
Outline the limitations of LaPiere’s study.
It was retrospective, meaning that behaviour was study first and attitudes were surveyed later.
A more logical design for testing whether attitudes have a causal influence over our behaviour is a prospective design. In this type of design, the hypothesised predictors of an outcome are measured or manipulated beforehand, and only the hypothesised outcome is only measured later on.
When using this design, we can be confident that the predictor variable caused the outcome. A prospective design helps researchers to establish which variable comes first in the causal chain.
The studies of both Wicker and LaPiere have been questioned on methodological grounds- the contextual elements haven’t been taken into account; someone’s general attitude towards something might not predict their specific actions.
LaPierre’s behaviour measure was much more specific (willingness to serve a particular Chinese man on one occasion) than his attitude one which was quite general. His attitude and behaviour measures were incompatible.
Explain the research of Wicker.
Wicker did a review of previous prospective studies into the attitude behaviour relationship and concluded that there was so little evidence of a relationship between the two that:
- we may not have any stable underlying attitudes
- it may be that we do have stable attitudes but they simply don’t influence our behaviour
Explain Ajzen and Fishbein’s 1977 review of evidence that has explored the extent to which attitude predicts behaviour.
They found that when they went back to studies of the attitude and behaviour relationship and coded them for how compatible the attitude and the behaviour associations were, they found that where there was low compatibility between the measures with regard to target and action, there was no relationship between attitudes and behaviour.
Where there was partial compatibility between attitude and behaviour measures, they found that there was mixed evidence for the relationship between attitudes and behaviour.
Where there was high compatibility between the measures, there was a significant and positive relationship between attitudes and behaviour. This suggests that attitudes do predict behaviour and the reason some studies suggest otherwise is because they violated the compatibility principle.
Explain a study that demonstrated the importance of compatibility.
Researchers took measures of the positivity of general attitudes towards organ donation and also measured people’s specific attitudes towards registering as an organ donor. They then measured how many people had measured to be an organ donor and found that the relationship between attitudes and behaviour was greater for the specific attitude measure than the more general one because it was more compatible with the behaviour measure.
Explain Ajzen and Fishbein’s research into the compatibility principle.
They argued that when we look at the relationship between attitudes and behaviour, the attitude and behaviour measures must be matched according to four ‘TACT’ elements.
Target at which action is directed
Action
Context in which action is performed
Time at which action is performed
Whatever TACT elements feature in attitude measure should feature in behaviour measure to create compatible measures. When they are not matched, estimates of the attitude behaviour relationship may be confounded.
Why might our behaviour not reflect our attitudes?
Peer pressure and social influence: The attitudes of others and what they want us to do might be important in shaping our behaviour too. It can cause us to act in a way that contradicts our own attitudes.
What is the theory of reasoned action?
Ajzen and Fishbein argue that people don’t act directly on their attitudes but rather that if you have a positive attitude towards a behaviour then you do that behaviour because you want to. That wanting to is called intention- if you want to do something then you intend to do something.
They argued that there is a causal chain where our attitudes influence our intentions and we act based on our intention. They argued that ‘subjective norms’- what we believe other people’s attitudes are to us doing or not doing a behaviour- also contributes to our how we behave.
The theory of reasoned action, the predecessor of theory of planned behaviour, the extent to which we will attend to do something will depend on both our attitudes and the subjective norm.
A study asked undergraduates to report their own attitudes towards using drugs as well as their perceived attitudes of others towards drugs. Researchers also recorded their intention to use drugs within the next six months. They tried to used to use the attitude and subjective norm measures to try and predict variation in people’s intention scores and found that both attitudes and subjective norms contribute to intention- they both had strong predictive effects.
The theory or reasoned action is useful as it helps account for the influence of peer pressure on our behaviour and explains why we sometimes act in a way that contradicts our own attitudes.
Define the term subjective norm.
Our perceptions of the extent to which other people who are significant to us in someway will approve or disapprove of us doing a behaviour.
Explain the theory of planned behaviour.
Ajzen later developed the theory of reasoned action into the theory of planned behaviour. This includes a third variable- perceived behavioural control- which captures the extent to which people think they have control over whether or not they do the behaviour.
This theory predicts that if someone feels they don’t have control over whether or not they do a behaviour then they are unlikely to form an attention to do it.
It also proposes that perceived behavioural control, along with attitudes and subjective norms, can shape our intention and thus our behaviour.
To test whether TOPB provides an adequate explanation of people’s intentions and behaviour, you need to run regression models. These tell us for a particular set of variables, how much variation in your outcome variable does that set of predictors actually explain, and secondly, within that set of predictors, which ones have a unique influence on the outcome variable when you control for other variables within the set.
It is designed to be a comprehensive account of all potential influences on someone’s behaviour.
Intention is an important mediator variable between attitudes and behaviour.
What is the intention-behaviour gap?
There’s a gap between intention and behaviour; we only follow through on our attentions about 50 percent of the time.
A study undertook a meta-analysis of the size of the relationship across many different studies between intention and behaviour and other TOPB variables.
-1= perfect negative correlation \+1= perfect positive correlation
They found that the average correlation between intention and behaviour was 0.47. It was found that intentions predict only 22 percent of variation in behaviour, suggesting that there must be something in addition to intention (which includes perceived behavioural control, attitudes and norms) that predicts behaviour.
Another meta-analysis was conducted- this was instead a meta-analysis of experimental studies in which behavioural intentions had been manipulated and the effect on people’s behaviour had been estimated. It was found that where there was a medium to large change in intention, this translated to only a small to medium change in behaviour, suggesting that there is not a perfect correlation and so we sometimes fail to act on our intentions.
Explain implementation intentions.
It has been suggested that people are more likely to act on their intentions if they form specific plans that state exactly what it is they want to do and the circumstances in which they want to do it.
Forming these implementation intentions involves anticipating a situation we expect to find ourselves in and deciding exactly what we are going to do if we encounter this situation. This involves a mental rehearsal process and sets up a link between a situation you expect to find yourself in and your preferred response to that situation. This link/association becomes activated when we encounter this situation in the future and so we automatically start engaging in the behaviour we have planned to do.
They are highly specific plans of what will be done and what situation we will do it in.(when, where and how your behavioural intention will be implemented)
You cannot form an implementation intention without a behavioural intention.
In a study, 114 females who were due a smear test were contacted by their local health service and sent a reminder to attend. They were also sent a questionnaire comprised of theory of planned behaviour measures in relation to going for the test- intentions, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. An experimental group was also asked to form an implementation intention as to how they would go about making an appointment: they wrote down when, were and how they will make an appointment. It was found that attendance rates were 69% for the control group and 92% for the experimental group. There was no difference within the theory of panned behaviour measures between the two groups; both were equally motivated. This suggests the implementation intention is the reason they were more likely to act on their behavioural intentions.
What are emotions?
A display of feelings that are evoked when important things happen to us.
It means to stir up and to move- it isn’t just cognition but is also associated with behaviour.
Emotions have a motivational component which might lead to a behaviour.
Short in duration
Motivational relevance
Clear target
Emotional reaction depends on history/ experience
Explain affects.
E.g. tiredness/irritation/anger is an affective state
Affects can be divided into the different categories of emotions and moods.
An emotion is shorter in duration, more intense as it’s at the forefront of your mind and is difficult to ignore, and has a clear target e.g. being angry at a specific person.
A mood are longer in duration, tend to go on in the background and don’t have a clear target- e.g. you could be sad all day but not know why. It is less intense than emotions.
We don’t necessarily have a motivational relevance from our mood but we do from emotions- you might behave differently because of your emotions but not because of your mood.
