attitudes

Question 1

predicting behaviour is one of the goals of psychology

Answer 1

• describe behaviour
• explain behaviour
• predict behaviour
• change behaviour

Question 2

what are attitudes?

Answer 2

• “An attitude toward any concept is simply a person’s general feeling of favourableness or unfavourableness for that concept” (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, p.54).
• “A general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue” (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981, p.7)

Question 3

attitudes have different components

Answer 3

• affect - based primarily on people’s feelings and values related to the attitude object - emotions e.g., “the thought of eating meat makes me feel sick”
• behaviour - based on observation of how one behaves toward an attitude object e.g., “I recycle, so i must have a positive attitude toward environmental issues”
• cognition - based primarily on a persons beliefs about the properties of an attitude object - how we feel about something but also about how we believe about something e.g., “i like this vacuum cleaner because this one picks up more dirt”
• attitude might be a combination of different things
• different people might have different attitudes to the same thing

Question 4

where do attitudes come from?

Answer 4

• experience
• social roles and norms - expected to behave in certain ways
• classical and operant conditioning
• observing people in environment

Question 5

measuring attitudes - explicit measures

Answer 5

• to find out someone’s attitudes, we could just ask how positive or negative their feelings are towards a particular thing, also known as a measure of explicit attitudes
• explicit attitudes are a deliberate, controlled, and conscious appraisal process of an object and its evaluation
• works better for some attitudes to others - some are more willing to be more truthful than others

Question 6

measuring attitudes - implicit measures

Answer 6

• implicit attitudes are an automatic, unconscious, and intuitive association between an attitude object and its evaluation
• “Introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate favourable or unfavourable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects” (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995, p.8).
• often measured by the implicit association test, which measures small differences in reaction times

Question 7

are attitudes useful for predicting behaviour?

Answer 7

• the first key reading is an example of a study which asked this question
• “Undergraduate students (N=137) completed various measures about binge drinking (including attitudes) and reported frequency of binge drinking one month later (N=109). Attitude was a significant predictor of behaviour. (Norman, 2011).
• people often behave according to their attitudes (often enough that they’re useful predictor), but not always

Question 8

examples of attitude - behaviour inconsistency

Answer 8

• Young people’s attitudes toward texting and driving had no correlation with whether they actually texted while driving (Atchley et al, 2011)
• people generally report positive attitudes to pro-environmental behaviours, but most people do not behave in ways consistent with their attitudes (Gupta and Ogden, 2009)

Question 9

when do attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 9

1) when social influences on attitudes are minimised
- reduce socially desirable responding
2) when the level of specificity of attitudes and behaviours matches
- general attitudes predict behaviours in general
- specific attitudes predict specific behaviours
3) when attitudes are strong
4) when explicit measures are used to predict deliberate behaviours, and implicit measures to predict automatic behaviours

Question 10

subjective norms

Answer 10

• ‘A person’s…perception that most people who are important to him think he should or should not perform the behaviour in question’ (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, p,57).
• ‘A person’s perception of the social pressures put on him to perform or not perform the behaviour in question’ (p.6)

Question 11

how well does the theory of reasoned action predict behaviour

Answer 11

• “the theory is useful for most individuals and with respect to most social behaviours” (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, p.245)
• Adding norms helps, but there is still a gap in the model’s ability to explain and predict behaviour, especially when the behaviour is not fully under volitional control.

Question 12

perceived behavioural control

Answer 12

• ‘People’s perceptions of the degree to which they are capable of, or have control over, performing a given behaviour’ (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010, p.64)
• “The person’s belief as to how easy or difficult performance of the behaviour is likely to be” (Ajzen and Madden, 1986, p.457)

Question 13

using the TPB to predict binge drinking in students - Norman, 2011

Answer 13

• Undergraduate students (N=137) completed various measures about binge drinking (attitude, subjective norm, perceived control, self-efficacy, intention, habit strength) and reported frequency of binge drinking one month later (N=109)
• Attitude and self-efficacy (but not norms) predicted intentions, and both intentions and habits predicted behaviour.

Question 14

how well does the theory of planned behaviour predict behaviour?

Answer 14

• The TPB has been an extremely influential model for predicting human social behaviour and has been used to study many different behaviours, but seems especially effective at predicting eating and exercise (McEachan et al, 2011)
• For health-related behaviours, the weighted mean correlation between attitudes and behaviour across multiple studies was r=.30 (Conner and Sparks, 2015)
• However, remembering that predicting intentions isn’t the same thing as predicting behaviour – meta-analyses show mean intention-behaviour relationships in the range between .45 and .62 (Ajzen and Fishbein, 2006)

Question 15

the intention-behaviour gap

Answer 15

• even string intentions are translated into behaviour only about half the time (Webb and Sheeran, 2006)
• people might fail to act on intentions for multiple reasons (e.g., forget to act, dont know how to act, encounter obstacles)
• the existence of this gap means the TPB is better at predicting intentions than actual behaviour

Question 16

other problems with the TPB

Answer 16

• better at predicting rational, deliberative behaviours than at predicting spontaneous, unintentional, or habitual behaviour
• does not take into account implicit attitudes and how these can also influence our behaviour

Question 17

another development - the reasoned action approach

Answer 17

• replacement of ‘subjective norm’ with the slightly different ‘perceived norm’, which is a combination of:
  1) injunctive norm - perceptions concerning what should or ought to be done with respect to performing a given behaviour
  2) descriptive norm - perceptions that others are or are not performing behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010)

Question 18

what else cant TPB do?

Answer 18

• The TPB tells us which factors are important, but not whether or how they can be changed.
  
  • ‘Although we can identify the particular beliefs that should be targeted in an intervention, our theory tells us little about how to bring about changes in those beliefs’ (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010, p.407)
• The TPB is about predicting behaviour, not changing it.
  - ‘the TPB is in fact not a theory of behaviour change. Instead it is meant to help explain and predict people’s intentions and behaviour. Nevertheless, the theory can serve as a useful framework for designing effective behaviour change interventions’ (Ajzen, 2014, p.3)

Question 19

how well do attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 19

• attitudes tend to correspond to behaviour, but dont explain everything, and their ability to predict behaviour depends upon how accurately attitudes and behaviour are measured

Question 20

which other factors are important?

Answer 20

• perceived behavioural control and subjective norms are also factors which improve our ability to predict behaviour

Question 21

how well does the TPB allow us to predict behaviour?

Answer 21

• the TPB is useful for predicting rational, deliberative behaviours, but less so far more spontaneous behaviours, and the intention-behaviour gap also decreases its ability to predict behaviour

Question 22

how do these situations make people feel?

Answer 22

• smoking despite being aware of the adverse health effects of tobacco use
• eating meat while also thinking of yourself as someone who cares about animals and the environment
• reading that a celebrity you admire has expressed an opinion you dont agree with

Question 23

cognitive consistency

Answer 23

• Beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviour, and mental representations’ are mutually independent parts of a system that tends toward a state of harmony, balance, or consonance’ (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993, p.455)
• maintaining consistency is an important human motive, especially when inconsistencies threaten our self-view

Question 24

the meat paradox

Answer 24

• “Psychological conflict between people’s dietary preference for meat and their moral response to animal suffering” (Bastian and Loughnan, 2016)

Question 25

when prophecy fails - Festinger, Riecken and Schachter, 1956

Answer 25

• Marion Keech claimed that aliens from the planet Clarion revealed to her the world end in a great flood on december 21st 1956
• Festinger and colleagues infiltrated her cult, whose members believed they would be picked up by a flying saucer before the world was destroyed.
• When the flying saucer did not turn up, the believers were stunned but did not doubt Mrs Keech. At 4am she received a message from the aliens to say the believers of the cult had saved the world because of their great faith.
• This made them believe even more in her prophecy.
• Lead him to develop cognitive dissonance.

Question 26

cognitive dissonance

Answer 26

• a state of emotional discomfort that people experience when they hold inconsistent attitudes or engage in behaviour that is inconsistent with their attitudes or beliefs
• created by Festinger, 1957

Question 27

cognitive dissonance theory - Festinger 1957

Answer 27

• Based on the idea that we are sensitive to inconsistencies between our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours (the principle of cognitive consistency).
• If there is an inconsistency (i.e., a dissonance), we experience this as aversive.
• This aversive experience motivates us to reduce or eliminate the dissonance/inconsistency.

Question 28

causes of dissonance

Answer 28

• insufficient justification - behaving in a way that contradicts our beliefs or attitudes, in the absence of external reward or punishment
• post-decisional dissonance - making a decision that involves rejecting options that had desirable attributes
• effort justification - choosing to put effort into a task that doesnt turn out as well as we hoped it would

Question 29

insuffieceint justification (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959)

Answer 29

• 71 college student volunteers spent an hour performing boring and repetitive tasks.
• Half of them were offered $20 (large external justification) to tell the next volunteer it was very interesting while the others were only offered $1 (small external justification) for lying.
• Later, the participants were asked how much they really liked the task.

Question 30

what is insufficient justification?

Answer 30

• Insufficient justification - when a person finds an internal cause for an explanation to a behaviour because there isn’t an external cause.
• Behaving in a way that contradicts your beliefs will not always cause dissonance; sometimes there’s a good reason.
• For example, if you tell a friend they look good in an ugly outfit, your belief that it is important not to cause pain to people you like provides an external justification for having told a harmless lie.
• But if there is no external justification, people are motivated to reduce dissonance by generating an internal motivation to explain their behaviour, such as changing their attitudes.

Question 31

post-decision dissonance (Brehm, 1956)

Answer 31

• Participants rated products and were allowed or choose one as a gift.
• After receiving the gift participants rerated the products.
• Participants tended to increase the rating of the one they chose, and reduce their ratings of the ones they didn’t choose (a phenomenon known as ‘spreading of alternatives’).

Question 32

what is post decision dissonance?

Answer 32

• Postdecision dissonance - dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives.
• In any decision, the chosen alternative is seldom entirely positive, and the rejected alternative is seldom entirely negative.
• The easiest way to reduce dissonance about whether you made the right choice is by downplaying the negative aspects of the one you chose and the positive aspects of the one you rejected, i.e., changing your attitudes.

Question 33

effort justification (Aronson and Mills, 1959)

Answer 33

• Students volunteered to join a group that would be meeting regularly to discuss various aspects of the psychology of sex.
• To be admitted to the group, they volunteered to go through a screening procedure, which was either demanding and unpleasant, mildly unpleasant, or no screening at all.
• Participants then listened in on a discussion being conducted by the members of the group, which was extremely dull.
• After the discussion was over, each participant was asked to rate it in terms of how much he or she liked it and how interesting it was.

Question 34

what is effort justification?

Answer 34

• Effort justification - the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain.
• If you put in a lot of effort to achieve something and the outcome is not as good as you hoped, this creates dissonance. One way of reducing this dissonance is by changing your attitudes.

Question 35

factors influencing the experience of dissonance

Answer 35

• The more important our beliefs or decisions are to us, the greater the dissonance.
• Dissonance is most powerful and most upsetting when it threatens our self-image.
• Decisions cause greater dissonance when they have significant consequences and when they are not easily undone.

Question 36

if possible we will avoid experiencing dissonance at all

Answer 36

• conformation bias is our tendency to actively seek out information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, and ignore information that contradicts them

Question 37

what methods can we use to reduce dissonance?

Answer 37

• You can change your attitudes or behaviour so that no conflict exists, but this can be difficult.
• The alternative is to try and decrease your perception of conflict.
• Add extra information that decreases the inconsistency.
• Decrease the importance of one of the conflicting cognitions.

Question 38

dealing with dissonance - adding new information

Answer 38

• Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs, or that makes the conflicting behaviour or belief seem more logical or justifiable.
• Seek out information that contradicts the dissonant belief, e.g., that eating meat does not contribute to global warming.
• Add cognitions or behaviours consistent with your attitude (attitude bolstering; Sherman and Gorkin, 1980).
• Self-affirmation, or thinking about your other positive qualities.

Question 39

dealing with dissonance - reducing importance

Answer 39

• rationalise e.g., “its okay if i only do it occasionally”
• devalue conflicting knowledge
• deny responsibility for the dissonant behaviour (Gosling et al, 2006)

Question 40

how do students deal with dissonance about drinking

Answer 40

• Qualitative study on 19 students who had experienced memory loss from drinking in the past year
• Students experienced dissonance because they viewed blackout drinking as a negative health behaviour, but continued to engage in it
• Students tended to add new cognitions as a way of reducing the cognitive dissonance, e.g. “other students do this more than I do”, “it’s out of my control”
• Wombacher et al, 2019

Question 41

cognitive dissonance - what is it?

Answer 41

• An unpleasant state that we experience when our attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours are inconsistent with one another, and which motivates us to reduce this inconsistency.

Question 42

what causes it?

Answer 42

• Some situations that might cause dissonance are being forced to behave in ways that contradict our attitudes, putting time or effort into something that doesn’t pay off, and making difficult decisions.

Question 43

what do people do to reduce it?

Answer 43

• We can either change one of the things causing the inconsistency, or we can decrease the conflict by adding consistent information or devaluing inconsistent information.

Question 44

can we use attitudes to predict behaviour?

Answer 44

• Yes, although attitudes are better at predicting some behaviours than others, and we can predict behaviour more effectively if we also consider other factors such as norms and perceived behavioural control.

Question 45

how do attitudes change?

Answer 45

• One important process is cognitive dissonance. We feel discomfort when our attitudes and our behaviours are not consistent, which motivates us to reduce the inconsistency; one way to do this is by changing our attitudes.