Attitudes Flashcards
Attitude vs Belief
Attitude: global evaluation toward object or issue such as people or places.
Belief: information about something which is fact or opinion.
A-B-C Attitudes
Attitudes composed of three components.
A- Affective: thoughts and feelings towards something
B- Behavioural: behaviour associated with the attitude which is likely to be planned but is not always what happens
C- Cognitive: thoughts and knowledge about something
Not all are essential and can differ in strength.
Dual Attitudes
Implicit: automatic evaluation and response which happens in our mind.
Explicit: conscious evaluation which may portray false info.
Example: asking people who they vote for over the phone
Attitude Formation
Zajonc, 1968.
Tendency for people to like things because they see or encounter them repeatedly and this can influence attitudes. Links with familiarity and ease. Exception: disliking something initially and repeated exposure does not change this.
Attitudes also formed through classical conditioning.
Repeated pairings
Result in attitudes. Exposure to things being repeatedly related. Examples shown in media with celebrities paired with money or plastic surgery or black people and crime.
How does media affect our attitudes?
Shows how prejudice can form.
Reducing Cognitive Dissonance
Change one inconsistent condition.
Add consonant cognition.
Reduce perceived dissonance.
Reduce perceived control.
Effort Justification
Aronson & Mills, 1959.
People seek to justify and rationalise any suffering or effort they have made. Something which requires more effort becomes more attractive to justify the effort such as a group difficult to get into is highly valued. May explain why students rate their uni experience so highly.
Attitudes predict behaviour?
Often believed to be true however can occur the opposite way too as powerful leaders have changed behaviour of people in order to change their attitude.
Theory of Planned Behaviour
How people change behaviour and how they go about it. Believed attitude shaped behaviour seen through people changing behaviour to be healthier like getting fitter and quitting smoking.
Pairings - STUDIES
Gave participants synopsis of person alone with either ‘African American’ or ‘Black’. Synopsis otherwise same. Asked to predict annual salary of this person and education level, socioeconomic status. Black people repeatedly rated lower which shows pairings
Duckworth et al, 2012.
Novel stimuli and paired repeatedly with particular ideas. Overtime participants tested using IAT and showed they evaluated novel items based on previous pairings.
Pegs - STUDY
Students asked to turn pegs in holes for an hour - tedious. Some paid $1 and some $20 to lie about experience. Those paid $1 lied more as they had to balance out thoughts by thinking it was better than it was. Represents idea of cognitive dissonance.
Effort Justification - STUDY
Women participated in two group talks of sex - one involved embarrassment test by reading explicit material and the other was a tedious discussion about animal behaviour. First group experience rated more positively as more effort.
