Attitudes Flashcards
What is attitude?
An evaluative reaction towards something or someone which can be positive or negative based on the individual’s beliefs or feelings.
What is important about knowing one’s attitude? Provide an example in which attitudes can shape someone’s behaviour.
Important when determining how someone may act or feel towards something; possible to predict behaviour.
An example of attitude affecting behaviour is if someone believes that women can’t game as well as men, which can result in toxic and rude behaviour towards women gamers as they feel they are useless.
What can affect attitude formation?
Mere-exposure effect: when exposed repeatedly, the individual tends to positively rate or like the stimuli.
Classical conditioning: a learned association between stimuli and response, can be positive or negative.
Operant conditioning: Being rewarded or punished for a behaviour can affect future behaviour; to do it again or not.
Direct experiences: Experiencing something/someone can influence whether you like it or not.
Observational learning: No direct experience needed, can model behaviour based on what we saw (e.g., Bandura).
What are some theories on how attitudes are poor predictors in behaviour?
- Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Fishbein and Azjen, 1985)
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)
Explain how the Theory of Planned Behaviour provides evidence that attitudes are a weak predictor of behaviour. Cite the source, and give an example to back this up.
Fishbein and Azjen’s (1985) Theory of Planned Behaviour follows that behaviour is predicted with:
- Subjective norms (what others think about the behaviour)
- Attitude towards the behaviour (own belief about the behaviour, positive or negative).
- Perceived control: ability to perform behaviour.
For example, an individual might want to become a nurse, but deems that others will shame him for it as he is a male, and nurses are perceived as a woman’s job. Subjective norms influenced the individual to not apply to being a nurse.
Another example is stopping smoking. An individual might decide to stop smoking as they were able to stop before. Perceived control allows change of their behaviour as they believe they can stop again.
This shows that behaviours can be influenced by different factors, to which attitudes is only partial to that. Other influential factors include societal pressures (what others think), and perceived ability to do so.
What are some evaluations of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)?
- Only takes into account of intentional behaviours: assumes that behaviour is always thought out in depth (what do they think about me, what should I do, can I do it?) and does not consider spontaneous behaviours which require little thought and time.
Explain how the Cognitive Dissonance theory provides evidence that attitudes are a weak predictor of behaviour. Cite the source, and give an example to back this up
Festinger (1957)
Cognitive dissonance theory is when an individual experiences inconsistencies/contradictions between their attitudes and behaviours. Thus, to counter this dissonance, individuals may shift their attitude to justify their behaviour to ease dissonance.
- This means that their behaviour is not predictable as having a belief does not always lead to a specific behaviour.
For example, someone who dislikes drinking may drink to socialise with friends. And this creates dissonance, resulting in the individual to shift their attitudes towards drinking- ‘Drinking is okay occasionally, as long as it’s within control’.
This shows that though an individual may have a specific attitude towards something does not always correspond to their behaviours.
What are some limitations of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory?
- Cultural differences (Myers et al., 1999) states that cognitive dissonance may be a Western element which seeks to be resolved, whereas in East Asia, facing such contradictions is part of life and does not require any action.
- Only suggests that dissonance is solved through attitude change and nothing else- what about those who merely pick a belief and not try to blend the beliefs together?
