Attitudes Flashcards
Attitudes
- Fishbein and Ajzen
- learned predispositions to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable way towards a given object, person or event
Beliefs
- based on our knowledge of the world and link an object to an attribute
- non-evaluative
- objective
Values
- importance or desirability of an object
- it is largely subjective and has preferential patterns attached
- values can turn beliefs into attitudes
3 component model of attitudes
- ABC
- Affective component
- Cognitive component
- Behavioural component
Functions of attitudes
- Katz
- Knowledge function: attitudes are frames of reference that simply the world
- Value expressive function: reflect fundamental self-concepts
- Social adjustment function: help to function in a group setting, social acceptance
- Ego-defensive function: protects from character or personal deficiencies
Cognitive dissonance theory
- Festinger
- discrepancy between different attitudes or attitudes and behaviours then this drives a change in the attitudes or behaviours
1 dollar 20 dollar experiment
-2 groups of people were paid to say a task was fun and interesting when it was actually a very boring task
Oddly, those who were paid lots actually still didnt appreciate the task whereas those who were paid less started to actually enjoy the task
-the 1-dollar group experienced cognitive dissonance as they found the task boring and weren’t being paid much for it, so they changed their attitude and found it less boring
-this highlights counter-attitudinal behaviours
Mechanism for reducing dissonance
- one can make a commitment after which the rimary attitude gets stronger
- removal or denial of the dissonant cognition
- trivializing the dissonant cognition
- adding a new consonant cognition to counterbalance the dissonance
Self-perception theory
- Bem
- self report of attitude after a behaviour is usually an inference of one’s own behaviour and context
Situational attribution
e.g ‘I did it for money, it was boring’
Dispositional attribution
e.g there is not much incentive but I really liked it
Thurstone scale
- 20 statements decided on by judges
- these have been ranked out of 11
- very complicated and boring
Likert scale
- most popular and statistically reliable
- strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree or disagree, agree, strongly agree
Sociometry
- used to measure interperonal attitudes in a repertory grid-like fashion
- ‘who like whom tables’
- create sociograms
Guttman
- introduced scalograms
- accepting all which comes below a statement in a stepwise fashion
