Attitudes Flashcards
What are the three components of an attitude?
(C.A.B)
Cognitive – beliefs about the object(s)
Affective – feelings toward the object
Behavioral - predispositions to act in certain ways
Researchers assume that opinions are what?
Can measure attitudes by asking about verbal opinions.
- We usually do this by asking respondents to agree or disagree with opinion statements.
- To increase reliability, we usually use several statements, which together are called an attitude scale.
How does a Likert scale differ from a Thurstone scale?
- The Thurstone scale - simple agree/disagree statements; score determined by amount of statements you agreed with
- The Likert scale - a more complex range of agree/disagree statements : strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly agree.
Bogardus’ social distance scale is an early example of what kind of scale?
It is an early example of the Guttman Scale.
In a Guttman scale, the items can be ordered so that what?
a. In practice is it easy to construct such a scale?
- They are ordered so that if you agreed with a certain one, you would agree with all those below it
- Your score would be a number assigned to the highest one on the list that you agreed with
- No it is not, it is very difficult to create a scale in which all respondents order the statements in the same way
In Osgood’s research, how many dimensions were found? What were those dimensions called?
The following three dimensions were discovered :
- Evaluative - favorable vs. unfavorable
- Activity – active vs. passive
- Potency – strong vs. weak
Do attitudes always predict behavior? What are some reasons?
(N. R. V. E.)
No attitudes do not always predict behavior
Some reasons include the following :
- Not always know their attitudes
- Reporting of attitudes may be biased
- Vary with the specific situation
- External factors that override their own attitudes in influencing their behavior.
What are the four elements in a persuasion situation?
(C. M. A. C)
The four elements include :
- Communicator
- Message
- Audience
- Channel
Why does the impact of the credibility of a communicator change over time?
- The impact changes over time because people may remember an argument, but forget who said it
- And they might use that argument in the future, forgetting that they previously thought it was unbelievable.
When is it appropriate to use one-sided vs. two-sided arguments?
- A two-sided argument is needed if the other person is on the other side, otherwise you may be considered biased or ill-informed.
- If the other person is already somewhat on your side, it might initially seem better to present a one-sided argument.
How is the position of the audience relevant to the stance you take?
The closer your position is to the audience’s position, the more effective your argument is likely to be.
What factor was demonstrated to be important by Mann & Janis’ research on smokers?
Taking an active role in an arguement
- The symbols that were used in their advertising campaign.
- In the past, when anti-smoking campaigns used coffins and other symbols of death, there was a negative reaction
- In the present, there is resistance to it now
Balance theory is an example of what kind of theory?
It is an example of cognitive consistency theory.
Balance theory is most useful in predicting what?
- The primary use of Balance Theory has been to predict Liking.
- If you and another person have a similar attitude toward something, whether both positive or both negative, you should like each other
- But if you and another person have different attitudes toward something, one positive and the other negative, you should dislike each other
Festinger’s theory relates a person’s attitude to what?
- It relates a person’s attitude to their behavior
- The theory argues that we want consistency between our attitudes and our behavior.
- When they are not consistent, we experience a psychological discomfort called Cognitive Dissonance.
- We are motivated to reduce this dissonance by either changing our attitude or changing our behavior.
