attitude and attitude change Flashcards
Define ‘attitude’
-Organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, events or symbols
-General feeling or evaluation (positive or negative) about someone, an object or issue
Describe the 3 component model (Rosenburg and Holland, 1960) - what do attitudes consist of
-Affective
-Cognitive
-Behavioural
Describe the affective component
-Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object
-E.g. ‘The thought of eating meat makes me feel sick’
Describe the cognitive component
-Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object
-E.g. ‘It is unhealthy and wrong to eat meat’
Describe the behavioural component
-Overt actions/verbal statements concerning -behaviour
-E.g. ‘I will only eat vegetarian food’
Describe complex attitudes
-If attitudes are complex and evaluated consistently then they becomes strong, either extreme positive or negative
-Simple dimension
-Complex dimension
-However, if they are inconsistent they become weaker as they are more complex
What are the 4 function of attitudes? (Katz, 1960)
-Knowledge function
-Utilitarian function
-Ego-defensive
-Value expressive
Describe the knowledge function
-Organise and predict social world
-Provides sense of meaning and coherence
Describe the utilitarian function
-Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes e.g. right attitude = no punishment
Describe the ego-defensive function
-Protecting self esteem from harmful world e.g. justifying smoking by saying loads of people do it
Describe the value expressive function
-Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self concept
What is the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968)?
-Repeated exposure of stimulus -> enhancement of preference for that stimulus (more positive view)
-E.g. ppts are more likely to say that novel words that are familiar are also positive (Harrison and Zajonc, 1970)
What is classical conditioning (Pavlov)?
-Repeated association
-Previously learnt neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus
-E.g. Celebrity endorsement - transfer positive image of celebrity can transfer to a product
What is instrumental conditioning?
-Behaviour followed by positive consequences are more likely to be repeated
-E.g. Insko (1965) showed that ppts reported a more favourable attitude towards a topic if they received positive feedback on the same attitude a week earlier
What is self perception theory (Ben, 1972)?
-Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions
-Infer attitudes from behaviour e.g. you read once a week and so you must enjoy it
How can attitudes be revealed?
-Self report and experimental paradigms
-Physiological measures
-Measures of overt behaviour
Describe self report and experimental paradigms
-Attitude scales
-Implicit association task (used to measure prejudice)
Describe physiological measures
-Such as skin resistance, heart rate and pupil dilation
Describe overt behaviour
-Frequency of behaviour
-Trends and preferences over various subjects
-Non-verbal behaviour
Describe LaPiere (1934) study on racial prejudice
-When a chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, cafes and hotels, they received service 95% of the time without hesitation
-In response to a letter of inquiry after, 92% of establishments replied saying they wouldn’t accept members of Chinese race
What problems can occur in this study?
-Specifics (are they the same people)
-Time (behaviour came first)
-Attitude strength and direct experience (simply yes/no doesn’t show complications in life)
Describe Wicker (1969) study
-Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour, average correlation was 0.15 in meta-analysis with 42 studies
Describe Gregson and Stacey (1981)
-Small positive correlation between general attitudes and alcohol consumption
Describe Sheeran et al. (2016)
-Medium to large sized changes in intentions are associated with only small to medium sized behavioural changes
What things can impact how well attitudes predict behaviour?
-How strong the attitude is
-Whether it is formed through direct experience
-How it’s measured
Describe ‘whether it is formed through direct experience’
-Haddock et al., (1999) found attitudes towards assisted dying was influenced by people’s experience of having direct encounter with assisted dying
Describe ‘how it’s measured’
-How specific the questions are
-e.g. Davidson and Jaccard (1979) found women’s general attitudes toward birth control didn’t predict their use of contraceptive pill as well as specific attitudes towards using contraceptive pill within the next two years
-How closely the questions (intentions) relate to behaviours
Describe the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
-Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Ajzen, 1991)
Is it replicated across cultures?
-Cho and Lee (2015) polled Korean and US participants and found strong evidence for theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions
-Personal control = strong association with intentions in individualistic culture
-Subjective norms = strong predictive power in collectivist culture
Describe the idea of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
-“Unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent or do not fit in together”
-Counter attitudinal behaviour -> feel discomfort and dissonance
-Strive to reduce dissonance -> reduce dissonance by changing inconsistent cognition
What task was conducted to look into cognitive dissonance?
-Telling people that they enjoyed it the task which was very boring (some were given money and some were not to lie to the people outside)
-Asked whether they actually enjoyed it or not
-Ppts who received $1 compared to no money or $20 said that they enjoyed (have dissonance)
What 3 strategies are used?
1: Reduce importance (cognition) - ‘I know lots of people who smoke and they haven’t got lung cancer’
2: Add an element - ‘I’m addicted, I can’t help it, I need to smoke or the stress I’ll suffer will be unhealthy’
3: Change one element - ‘I’ll stop smoking’
What are the 2 dual process models in the power of persuasion?
-Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986)
-Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
Describe the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986)
-Suggests that pathways are independent
-Central route - When a message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effect expended, contains information
-Peripheral route - When arguments not well attended to, peripheral cues e.g. attraction occur
Describe the Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
-Systematic processing - When a message is attended to carefully; scan and consider available arguments (engage more)
-Heuristic processing - Use cognitive heuristics e.g. statistics don’t lie
What is the application to the real world?
-Political campaigns
-Advertising/sales
-Encouraging socially valuable behaviours e.g. organ donation
