Attitudes

Question 1

Define Explicit vs Implicit Attitudes

Answer 1

Explicit attitudes: Attitudes that we consciously endorse, and can easily think and talk about (e.g., self-report).

Implicit attitudes: Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and, at times, beyond our conscious awareness.

Question 2

What are some issues that come with measuring explicit attitudes?

Answer 2

1. Social desirability, privacy, embarrassment
2. attitude of interest could be weak or ambiguous, thus hard to measure.

Question 3

How are implicit attitudes measured?

Answer 3

Implicit Association Test (IAT)
- measures the strength of association between two mental representations (e.g. white vs black person) reflected in reaction time.

Question 4

What are some problems with the IAT?

Answer 4

The strength of association may not accurately reflect personal endorsement of an attitude, it could be a cultural expectation instead of an actual attitude (e.g. did you react to sushi because you really liked sushi, or because sushi was more accessible to you because you grew up in japan?)

Question 5

What is the Yale model to attitude change?

Answer 5

who says what to whom
1. The source of the communicator (e.g. does the speaker look attractive, confident, competent?)

2. The message itself (e.g. quality of argument, sequence of argument, duration)
3. the nature of the audience (e.g. the age, intelligence, disposition of the audience)

Question 6

What are some issues with the Yale model and what was the improvement.

Answer 6

1. Too many variables, not parsimonious.
2. late 80s, researchers came up with a process-driven theory; Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).

Question 7

Explain the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).

Answer 7

Persuasive communications can cause attitude change via two channles; motivation and ability of the message recipient.

we are most affected by
1. what the message is about (e.g. quality and logic)
2. Superficial features of the communication process (e.g. who the messenger is)

Question 8

what are the two paths of the ELM?

Answer 8

1. Central path
   - When people are MOTIVATED (personal relevance, do we care about the message?) and/or ABLE to pay attention to the quality of arguments.
   - Evaluate information critically.
   - Persuaded by argument that rationally grounded and logically compelling.
2. Peripheral path
   - when lacking motivation and ability, we look for superficial features.
   - Bypass logic and rationale
   - E.g. a weak argument delivered by an attractive person, length of the message, does it “look” or “sound” logical?

Question 9

What was the Langer’s finding in the photocopier study?

Answer 9

When the experimenter had a small request, the participant didn’t care about the quality of the reason and complied.

When the experimenter had a big request, the participant was more likely to examine the reason more carefully.

Depending on the impact/size of your favors, you might be able to get away with dumb reasons.

Question 10

What is the role of ability in the ELM?

Answer 10

• Mental power to process information
• Are you tired? distracted?
• Is the environment conducive for thinking?
• Do you have necessary knowledge to care?

Question 11

What are the three types of attitudes?

Answer 11

• Affectively-based attitudes (based on gut feeling rather than logic)
• Cognitively-based attitudes (evaluation of facts, logic, rationale)
• Behaviorally-based attitudes (inferences drawn from past actions)

Question 12

Can we use IAT to measure explicit attitudes?

Answer 12

Maybe. But explicit attitudes are not always correlated with implicit attitudes.

Question 13

What is the reactance theory?

Answer 13

When people feel like they are being told what to dom they might react even more negatively (e.g. using fear-mongering tactics to persuade)