Attitudes Flashcards
What are attitudes
Attitudes are the evaluations of people, objects and ideas
What are the three components of attitudes
1) Cognitive component
2) Affective component
3) Behavioural component
Is there a genetic component to attitudes
Small effect if there is any because of twin studies but not a major role
What is the cognitive component of attitudes
The thoughts and beliefs that people form about the attitude object
Affective component
People’s emotional reactions towards the attitude object
Behavioural component
How people act toward the attitude object
Cognitively based attitudes
An attitude based on their beliefs about the properties of the object; for example the objective merits or faults, listing plus and minus for a vacuum cleaner eg (how well it cleans up, how fast they charge, etc(
Affectively based attitudes
An attitude based more about your feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of the attitude object;;
could be based on your beliefs rather than facts or you like the taste of something thats bad for you or you pick this object for its aesthetic appeal
WHere do affective based attitudes come from?
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Beliefs and values
WHat is classical conditioning
Making an emotional response to a neutral stimulus by pairing the neutral stimulus with the emotional stimulus
Operant conditioning
The behaviors we choose are less or more frequent because of punishment or reward
Behaviourally based attitudes
An atittude based on observations of how one behaves toward an object
Similar to the self perception theory where we don;t know how we feel so we use behaviour to see how we feel
Explicit attitudes
We can easily report these and publicly endorse them
Implicit Attitudes
Attitudes that exist outside of conscious awareness
What are implict and explicit attidues rooted in
Explicit attitudes better reflect recent experineces and current attitudes whereas implicit can better predict their childhood experiences
Does attitude always predict behaviour
No
What factor affects whether our attitude predicts our behaviour
Attitude accessibility: the higher the accessibillity the better that attitude can predict behaviour
What is attitude accessibility
The strength of the association between an attitude object and a person’s evaluation of that object
How to measure attitude accessibility
The speed with which people can report how they feel about the object
The higher the accessibility the quicker it is for people to report, the opposite is true
What affects how accessible an atitude is?
experience with the attitude object: the more direct their experience is, the greater the accessible
WHat theory relates how and when attitudes can predict deliberative behaviour
Theory of planned behaviour
What is the theory of planned behaviour
The idea that people’s intentions are best predictors of their deliberate actions; the intentions are determined by their attitudes towards that behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control(ease with which they can perform the behaviour)
T or F, the more specific the attitude to the behaviour, the better that attitude can predict that behaviour according to the theory of planned behaviour
true
If you ask married women about their attitudes to using birth control, ranging from general attitude to specifically using it during the next two years, what can you say about their attitudes predicting behaviouring according to the theory of planned behaviour
The general attitude was not a good precitor of their actual birth control usage when checked two years later but specific attitude was a good predictor
How does subjective norm affect how we can predict deliberate behaviour
This is people’s beliefs about how others they care about will view the behaviour; even if their attitude towards it is one thing
What is perceived behavioural control
How easy it is to do the thing, if they think its too hard to do, then they will not have strong intention to do it
LaPiere
The study about racial prejudice and how it predicts behaviour with the chinese travellers and then asking them in email
When is attitude accessbility a good predictor of behavior
when the behaviour is spontaneous
How can we change attitude by changing behaviour
Cognitive dissonance: making a person do something that is different from their attitude but then make sure there is no external justification and have to look for internal justification and so reduce that dissonance by changing attitude
Why is dissonance not used often for like public persuasion
Because while it is useful for the individual it is harder to do so for a bigger crowd; how to make all of the country do one behaviour
What is persuasive communication
A message advocating a particular side of an issue
What are the three factors that are likely to influence attitude change in response to persuasive message according to yale atttitude change approach
source of the communication, nature of the communication and the nature of the audience
Elaboration likelihood method
Two ways persuasive communication can change attitude: centrally vs peripherally
Central route to persuasion
People have both the ability and motivation to elaborate and think about the argument and message: emphasis is the logic and content of the argument
Preipheral route to persuasion
Focus is on the surface characteristics of the message (like speaker, how long the message is) but not on th elogic and stregnth of the argument itself
WHat determines whether or not they take the central route or the peripheral route
Whether they are motivated to pay attention to the facts and whehter they have the ability to pay attention to the facts (distraction, complexity of the argument)
What affects whether people are motivated to pay attention
Personal relevance
college students and the question of whether they shoud implement a test for graduation (implement next year or many years later)
The two variables: strength of argument and prestige of speaker)
Found that when it was more relevant (next year) there was greater influence by the strength of the argument (central route) and no significant difference between the speaker
But when it was not relevant (next 10 years), the speaker mattered more than the quality of argument
What affects the ability to pay attention to the message
distractions, and difficult to understand message (like too professional and niche)
Experiment where there was a mock trial video and the witness testifying was a biologist (told them he was either super expert or noob scientist) and then he either gave a simple or hard explanantion
When the explanation was simple people paid less attention to the crednetial but when the argument was difficult to understand (lower ability to pay attention) they relied more on the crednetial of the biologist
Which route to persuasion is more likely to lead to long lasting attitude change
Central
How can you use emotion to change attitude
Fear-arousing communication
Emotions as a heuristics
When can fear arousing communication be good
If there is a moderate amount of fear that is enough to grab attention/make them motivate to listen but not too much to completely repulse them, and there must be a way to reduce that fear (like provide methods to stop smoking)
Heuristics systematic model of persuasion
A explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically processing the merits or using mental shortcuts or heuristics
EG hey i feel good that must mean my attitude towards this is good but maybe your feelings can be from something else
Best way to advertise depending on different types of attitudes
If cognitively based attitudes usually for the product best to do it rationally but if they are usually affectively based attitudes then can use emotions to try and change it
How our bodily actions can help change attitude
Shaking head vs nodding head while listening to argument. But it is different for strong vs weak argument,s (if strong then nodding strengthened their agreement but if weak they were more convinced that the argument was weak)
Attitude inoculation
Vaccination by giving them small doses so that they have more time to counter those arguments and then be more assured of their own argument
How to resist effect of product placement
Be warned about it ahead of time
Reactance theory
When people feel that their freedom is being restrictd they will actually reduce that discomfort but performing the prohibited task
