Attitude et Persuasion - Chapitre 1 - CC 1

Question 1

Attitude definition (Allport, 1935)

Answer 1

Mental and neuronal state of readiness, organized by experience, influencing the individual’s response to all objects and situations associated with it.

Question 2

Attitude definition (Thurstone, 1928)

Answer 2

Everything an individual feels and thinks about an object.

Question 3

Attitude definition (Bem, 1970 - likes and dislikes)

Answer 3

Evaluative summary about an object.

Question 4

Attitude definition (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)

Answer 4

Psychological tendency expressed by the evaluation of a particular entity across a continuum from ‘favorable / positive’ to ‘unfavorable / negative’.

Question 5

Attitude object

Answer 5

concrete vs. abstract
animate vs. inanimate
individual vs. group

Question 6

Psychological tendency

Answer 6

Internal state to the individual who
predisposes to a particular evaluation:
- Latent
- Stable
- Motivates the evaluation

(if we love an object we are predisposed, if we don’t we are not)

Question 7

Evaluation

Answer 7

manifested, latent, cognitive, emotional or behavioral expression

“expression manifeste, latente, cognitive,
affective ou comportementale”

Question 8

The attitude as an mediating processus

Answer 8

Stimulus object (observable) -> Attitude (inferred/latent) -> Evaluative response (observable)

Attitude = mediating process between us and reality

Reality = situations or objects that we interact with, and during these interactions we give evaluative responses

Evaluative responses = motivated by out attitudes and this constitutes our reaction to the stimuli

Question 9

Antecedent -> Attitude -> Consequence

Answer 9

Cognitive (think), Affectif (feel), Behavioral processes -> Attitude -> Cognitive, Affectif, Behavioral responses

Antecedent - our way of thinking, feeling or behaving will influence/determine our attitudes (att can be based on all 3 or just 1)
Attitude - latent, stable, predisposes and motivates us to make evaluations - and they will be expressed through the 3 types of responses

Question 10

Conception of attitude - Disposition

Answer 10

• motivation, internal disposition, habit, character
• stable element (change of attitude)
• dispositional basis of attitudes (Albarracin et al., 2013; Eschleman et al., 2015)

Question 11

Conception of attitude - Orientation

Answer 11

• descriptive, phenomenological, non-explanatory

- contextual construction (attitude training)

Question 12

Difference between Disposition and Orientation - conceptions of attitude

Answer 12

Disposition - stable element (changement d’attitude)
Orientation - contextual construction (formation d’attitude)

• Orientation - even if you don’t have an attitude towards an object, when I ask for your opinion on it, you will start the evaluative process = contextual construction

Question 13

Importance of attitudes - class comments

Answer 13

They are essential to understand human behavior.

They are based on an evaluative dimension and this evaluation is important for our behavior.

Question 14

Importance of attitude - Allport (1935)

Answer 14

the concept of attitude is probably the most distinctive

and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology

Question 15

Attitudes are:

Answer 15

• unit of analysis
• widespread and central (at the individual,interpersonal and societal level)
• predictive / influential (attitudes predispose us to react in a certain manner): cognitive and affective processes, other attitudes, behaviors
• accessible and functional

Question 16

Attitude accessibility

Answer 16

Attitude = object-evaluation association

Attitudes are automatically available when needed, and are disabled when no longer needed.

If they are active then they will facilitate or inhibit evaluative processes

Question 17

Attitude accessibility illustration - Power & Kardes (JPSP, 1986)

Answer 17

Facilitation process - if at first you evaluate positively and have a positive attitude towards an object (apple), this will facilitate a more positive evaluation of the next object

Inhibition process - if the next object is presented (fighter plane) has a negative connotation (we know that it is used to kill people) it will be more difficult for us to evaluate it negatively because of the positive evaluation we made before -> this can be tested with reaction time

Question 18

Attitude accessibility illustration - Fazio et al. (1986)

Answer 18

Facilitation (lower reaction times) according to the strength of the association.

When both object presented were either positive or negative, the reaction time was fast -> an attitude was activated with the first object that facilitated the evaluation of the second

When first object was positive and the second negative, the reaction time was slow ->an attitude was activated with the first object that inhibited the evaluation of the second

= exposure to an object will automatically activate an attitude