attitudes Flashcards
what are attitudes
a set of emotions and beliefs that might influence behavior towards, for example, a particular object, event or group of people - the evaluation we make about something
what is the definition of attitudes according to Eagly and Chaiken 1993?
attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour and disfavour
what are the one component models?
- Louie Thurstone - developed one of the formal techniques to measure attitudes (through religious beliefs)
- rensis likert 1932 - developed a Likert scale, choose a number one the scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree)
what are the two component models?
- readiness (a predisposition) to evaluate
- influence responding to attitude objects
what are the three component models? (attitudes will be considered to have 3 component models normally) (Rosenberg and hovland)
- cognition - thoughts and beliefs about an object
- affect - feelings and emotions towards an object
- behavioral tendencies - behavioral reactions to the object
what are the specialised terms that are applied to these certain types of attitudes:
- attitudes to minority groups
-attitudes to specific individuals
- attitudes about oneself
- prejudice
- liking, interpersonal attraction
- self-esteem
why are attitudes of interest to social psychologists?
some suggest they influence behavior - social psychologists interested in predicting behavior are interested in attitudes
what is stronger: the influence of attitudes on behavior or the influence of behavior on attitudes?
the influence of attitudes on behaviour, is present but weaker than expected
the influence the behavior on attitudes, is stronger than expected
what are attitudes for? what is their functional value?
guide our behaviors - can make rapid and automatic evaluation of rewarding or harmful objects confers a substantial survival advantage
how does zajonc 1980 view attitudes?
- he argues that attitudes is a basic response to the environment (fight or flight)
- favourable attitude = approach
- unfavourable attitude = avoid
how does roskos-ewoldsen and fazio 1992 view attitudes?
- a mental shortcut
- focus attention on salient objects in the environment
- influence the interpretation of information
- automatically guide behavior
what is the four functions of attitudes according to katz 1960
- knowledge: provide information about our enviroment in the form of mental short cuts
- utilitarian/instrumental: minimise damage/losses and maximise gains (i.e. as zajonc)
- value-expressive: provide a social role by communicating social values
- ego-defensive: protect one’s self-confidence by resisting damaging “truths”
give examples of where attitudes come from i.e. sources of influence
- media, tv, books, newspapers
- emotional reactions to things’
- friends, family
- alcohol
- your own behaviour
where do our attitudes come from? (4 answers)?
- cognitive information
- direct experience
- conditioning
- behavioural information
how do attitudes arise from cognitive information? name the theory about this
- theory of reasoned action (fishbein and ajzen 1975)
- what we know about an object is encompassed as beliefs - attitudes are a product of series of beliefs
- for example: “cycling to university is good”….”being healthy is good”
explain the mere exposure effect (zajonc 1968)
exposure to a novel object can induce a positive attitude
- participants did study ostensibly about learning a foreign language
- briefly presented Chinese characters
- had to postulate whether the character had positive or negative meaning
- each character presented either 0, 1, 2, 5, 10 or 25 times
results: more times participants saw a character, the more positive rating they gave that particular charachter
what are the 3 possible explanations of how attitidues develop?
- exposure
- cognitive experiences and direct experiences
- classical conditioning
what is classical conditioning?
a previously neutral object evokes a positive or negative evaluation because it is consistently paired with an object which “naturally” evokes a positive or negative reaction e.g Pavlov’s dog
what is janis, kaye and kischner example of classical conditioning?
janis, kaye and kischner 1965 - the effects of drinking soft beverages whilst trying to be persuaded
- participants read a persuasive message
- those drinking a liked soft drink were more persuaded i.e pleasant evaluation of the soft drink was paired with message
what is galizio and hendrick’s example of classical conditioning?
- examined persuasiveness of messages in teh form of folk songs
- songs presented to participants either accompanied with guitar music, or unaccompanied (no music)
- found that lyrics accompanied by music were more persuasive i.e pleasant feelings from nice guitar music were paired with message
explain operant (instrumental) conditioning
- behaviors associated with rewards increase in frequency while behaviours associated with negative outcomes such as punishment reduce in frequency
- attitudes will increase in frequency when paired with a positive response and decrease when paired with a negative response
what is the self-perception theory? (bem 1972)
- people derive attitudes about themselves based on their own behaviour
- e.g if you helped an old woman across the road you may consider yoursle fto be a helpful person
- only works where either new, weak or ambiguous attitudes already exist
