Attitudes Flashcards
What are attitudes?
A mental state of readiness that exerts influence on individuals response to object and situations to which it is related (Allport, 1935)
What are the components of attitudes?
Thought, feeling and action: affective, behavioural and cognitive components
What is the affect of attitudes?
Done to evaluate an unfamiliar person
What is subliminal exposure?
Affect-arousing image prior to seeing pictures of a person
Who looked at subliminal exposure?
Krosnick et al., (1992)
What is the cognition of attitudes?
Stereotypes that will reflect the beliefs of a social group
What did Riek et al, 2006 find out from cognitions?
Negative stereotypes are a predictor of prejudicial attitudes
Who looked at behaviour and attitudes?
Brinol & Petty (2003)
What did Brinol and Petty do?
Asked to evaluate new headphones
when performing various movements
Up-down motion (nodding head) vs.
side-to-side motion (shaking head)
while listening to arguments through
headphones
What did Brinol and Petty find?
More likely to agree when participants
nodded vs. shook head
What are the two attitude structures?
One dimension and two dimension
Who looked at attitudes and their structures?
MacDonald and Zanna 1998
What is the procedure of MacDonald and Zanna
Participant feminist attitudes –
ambivalent vs. non-ambivalent. Primed to think about positive agentic or negative interpersonal qualities of feminists. Rated job application from a
feminist
What were the findings from MacDonald and Zanna?
There is an increased likelihood of being hired whether ambivalent or not, when there is positive priming
What are the functions of attitudes?
Knowledge= providing meaningful realities
Instrumental= maximising rewards and minimising punishments
Ego defence= protection one’s self-esteem
Value expressve= express one’s identity and core values
What are the 4 direct ways to measure attitudes?
Thurstone’s scale of equal appearing intervals, Guttman’s scalogram, Osgood’s semantic differential, Likert’s methodof summated ratings
What is the procedure of the Thurstone scale?
Generating 100 statements ranging in intensity, judges order statements into 11 categories denoting in intensity, 2 statements from each category used that have high inter-judge agreement, administer 22 statements in an agree/disagree format, average sum of agreed statements
What is the procedure of the Guttman’s scale
Statements arranged in a hierarchy where there is an agreement with statement implying approval of prior statements
Measures a single, unidimensional trait
What is the procedure of Osgood’s semantic differential?
Does not measure opinions but evaluations of objects/person on a set of semantic scale
What is the likert scale?
Statements that respondents indicate their strength of agreement/disagreement using a scale
What is the strengths of the likert scale?
Convenient and easy to administer, provides standardised measure that can produce scores that
can be compared, can have a range of positive and negative statements
(acquiescence bias)
What are the limitations of a likert scale?
Can force people to agree/disagree with ideas that may not correspond with how they see things, acquiescence bias, social desirability
What are the indirect measures of attitudes?
Physiological measures and implicit association test
What is the procedure of physiological measures?
Comparison of physiological reading taken in the presence of a neutral
object, with one taken in the
presence of the attitude
object
What are the problems of physiological measures?
Sensitivity to variables other than attitudes and denotes intensity but not direction
What is the procedure of implicit association test?
Implicit attitudes correlate with explicit measures. Implicit attitudes will have a stronger predictive validity in socially sensitive domains
What did Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975, say about attitude formation?
Attitudes are learned rather than innate: socialisation process
What are the 5 ways attitudes are formed?
Mere exposure effect, classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, social learning theory, self-perception theory
What is the mere exposure effect?
That repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object
What did Zajonc, 1968, find in mere exposure effect?
Repeated exposure to an object results
in greater attraction to that object
What did Moreland & Beach , 1992 find in the mere exposure effect?
Confederate women who attended classes more often evaluated more positively
What did Bornstein, 1989, in the mere exposure effect?
Repeated exposure diminishes effect, 10 exposures
What is classical conditioning?
Repeated association of a formerly neutral stimulus
can elicit a reaction that was previously elicited by another stimulus (Staats, 1957)
What is evaluative conditioning?
A stimulus will become more or less likely when it is paired with a stimulus that is positive or negative
What did Kimble, 1961, find with instrumental conditioning?
Responses which yield positive outcomes or eliminate negative outcomes are strengthened
What did Rushman and Teachman, 1978 find with instrumental conditioning?
Reinforcement influences child prosocial behaviour
How can instrumental conditioning be accelerated or slowed?
The frequency, temporal spacing and magnitude of the reinforcement
What is vicarious learning?
Attitude formation is a social learning process. It can occur indirectly. Observation of the outcomes of others’ behaviour
Who found the self-perception theory?
Bem, 1972
What is the self-perception theory?
Our attitudes are informed by our behaviour and making internal attributions for that behaviour
What is cognitive development?
When the number of related effects increases and it becomes an attitude
When do attitudes predict behaviour
Action of behaviour being performed, target of the behaviour, the context in which it is performed, the time frame in which the behaviour is performed
Who looked at when attitudes predict behaviour?
La Piere, 1934
What is the aim and procedure of La Piere, 1934?
Looked at the difference in prejudiced attitude and
discriminatory behaviour with a mixed-race group of diners
What were the findings of La Piere?
249/250 allowed the group in and
served them. 90% indicated that they would decline
the booking
Who looked at the role of self-monitoring on attitudes?
Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982)
What did Snyder and Kendzierski, 1982, find?
Low self-monitors have higher attitude-behaviour
What happens when the attitude is stronger?
The more likely it is accessible and is more important to us
Who looked at the theory of reasoned action?
Fishbein and Ajzen, 1974
What is the theory of reasoned action?
People’s behaviour is dependent on their intentions
What is the theory of reasoned action informed by?
Subjective norms (other people’s beliefs about the behaviour and motivation to comply) and attitudes towards the behaviour (beliefs about the behaviour and the evaluation of the outcome)
What is the theory of planned behaviour?
Predicting behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if the person believes they have control over that behaviour
What does thinking more about an attitude do?
Increase the likelihood that will influence your behaviour
