attitudes

Question 1

what are attitudes

Answer 1

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

Question 2

what is the definition of attitudes according to Eagly and Chaiken 1993?

Answer 2

attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour and disfavour

Question 3

what are the one component models?

Answer 3

• 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)

Question 4

what are the two component models?

Answer 4

• readiness (a predisposition) to evaluate
• influence responding to attitude objects

Question 5

what are the three component models? (attitudes will be considered to have 3 component models normally) (Rosenberg and hovland)

Answer 5

• cognition - thoughts and beliefs about an object
• affect - feelings and emotions towards an object
• behavioral tendencies - behavioral reactions to the object

Question 6

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

Answer 6

• prejudice
• liking, interpersonal attraction
• self-esteem

Question 7

why are attitudes of interest to social psychologists?

Answer 7

some suggest they influence behavior - social psychologists interested in predicting behavior are interested in attitudes

Question 8

what is stronger: the influence of attitudes on behavior or the influence of behavior on attitudes?

Answer 8

the influence of attitudes on behaviour, is present but weaker than expected
the influence the behavior on attitudes, is stronger than expected

Question 9

what are attitudes for? what is their functional value?

Answer 9

guide our behaviors - can make rapid and automatic evaluation of rewarding or harmful objects confers a substantial survival advantage

Question 10

how does zajonc 1980 view attitudes?

Answer 10

• he argues that attitudes is a basic response to the environment (fight or flight)
• favourable attitude = approach
• unfavourable attitude = avoid

Question 11

how does roskos-ewoldsen and fazio 1992 view attitudes?

Answer 11

• a mental shortcut
• focus attention on salient objects in the environment
• influence the interpretation of information
• automatically guide behavior

Question 12

what is the four functions of attitudes according to katz 1960

Answer 12

• 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”

Question 13

give examples of where attitudes come from i.e. sources of influence

Answer 13

• media, tv, books, newspapers
• emotional reactions to things’
• friends, family
• alcohol
• your own behaviour

Question 14

where do our attitudes come from? (4 answers)?

Answer 14

• cognitive information
• direct experience
• conditioning
• behavioural information

Question 15

how do attitudes arise from cognitive information? name the theory about this

Answer 15

• 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”

Question 16

explain the mere exposure effect (zajonc 1968)

Answer 16

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

Question 17

what are the 3 possible explanations of how attitidues develop?

Answer 17

• exposure
• cognitive experiences and direct experiences
• classical conditioning

Question 17

what is classical conditioning?

Answer 17

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

Question 17

what is janis, kaye and kischner example of classical conditioning?

Answer 17

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

Question 17

what is galizio and hendrick’s example of classical conditioning?

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

explain operant (instrumental) conditioning

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

what is the self-perception theory? (bem 1972)

Answer 19

• 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