Attitudes

Question 1

What are the different component views of attitudes?

Answer 1

One component – affect (evaluation) for or against a psychological object (Thurstone, 1931)

Two components – consists of a mental readiness to act and guides evaluative responses (Allport)

Three components: consist of the affective, behavioural and cognitive components (thought, feeling, and action).

Question 2

What is the ABC model?

Answer 2

ABC model is the three component view of attitudes: Affective, Behavioural and Cognitive components.

Question 3

What problems are there with the three component view of attitudes?

Answer 3

Sometimes our attitudes may consist of one component and not all three.

The idea that in some ways our attitudes and behaviours are entwined assumes that an attitude will lead to a behaviour and that they would be consistent which isn’t always the case.

Question 4

What are the functions of attitudes according to Katz (1960)?

Answer 4

Knowledge
Instrumentality
Ego defence
Value expressiveness

Question 5

Explain why knowledge is a function of attitudes according to Katz (1960)?

Answer 5

It provides a meaningful conception of reality, a sense of predictability and orderliness to the world, a structured environment. E.g. stereotypes helps you think or predict how others will behave in a situation.

Question 6

Explain why instrumentality is a function of attitudes according to Katz (1960)?

Answer 6

Attitudes are a means to an end or a goal. They can help us fulfil a purpose or help us fulfil goals. E.g. choosing a political party based on your economic interests.

Question 7

Explain why ego defence is a function of attitudes according to Katz (1960)?

Answer 7

It can protect one’s self – esteem e.g. when you’ve failed an exam and you adopt the attitude that forms an ego defence like thinking that the exam procedure needs improving.

Question 8

Explain why value expressiveness is a function of attitudes according to Katz (1960)?

Answer 8

Attitudes allow people to display those values that uniquely identify and define them. E.g. a liberal individual asserting parts of their identity such as going out and embracing multiculturalism, diversity and equality.

Question 9

What is the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968) in attitude formation?

Answer 9

Repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object.
E.g. not liking music at first but after a few times listening to it you really like it.

Question 10

What is classical conditioning (Staats, 1957; Zanna et al., 1970) in attitude formation?

Answer 10

The repeated association of a formerly neutral stimulus can elicit a reaction that was previously elicited by another stimulus.
E.g. movies and films play music to show you and reflect how you should be feeling.
Example: Little Albert Experiment – at first little Albert had no reaction to being exposed to a rat but when showing the rat and using a negative stimulus like a loud crash sound, little albert would start crying over time the rat on its own would produce this reaction from him.

Question 11

What is instrumental conditioning (Kimble, 1961) in attitude formation?

Answer 11

When responses which yield positive outcomes or eliminate negative outcomes are strengthened. Over time through positive rewards or punishments attitudes form.
Instrumental conditioning is the same as Operant conditioning
E.g. being rewarded or punished for things by parents.

Question 12

What is observational learning (Bandura, 1973) in attitude formation?

Answer 12

Attitude formation is a social learning process. In modelling, one person’s behaviour is modelled by another. E.g. Looking up to and observing parents, friends, role models etc and being guided by them; imitating their process.

Question 13

What is self-perception (Ben, 1972) in attitude formation?

Answer 13

Our attitudes are informed by our behaviour and making internal attributions for that behaviour.

Sometimes our attitudes are cultivated by our behaviour. Sometimes we do things in life which weren’t really guided by attitude but through self-reflection we may decide that we had an attitude about something.

E.g. “why did I do that” You may read John Grisham books but not have an attitude towards them but in self-reflection you could conclude that you must like his books.

Question 14

How do we measure attitudes?

Answer 14

• Thurstone’s scale of equal appearing intervals
• Guttmans scalagram (uni-dimensional)
• Osgood’s semantic differential (meaning given to a word)
• Likert’s method of summated ratings

Question 15

What is thurstone’s scale?

Answer 15

More than 100 statements ranging from extremely favourable to extremely hostile.

e. g., statements that describe attitudes towards war
- “I would refuse to participate in any way in war”
- “I would immediately go to war and would do everything in my power to influence others to do the same”
- “I would support my country even against my convictions”
- “I would not go to war, unless I was drafted”

• Judge’s order the statements into eleven categories denoting degrees of favourability – e.g. (1) least favourable through to (11) most favourable.
• Two statements selected from each category with the highest inter-judge agreement. Two statements that the judges had a strong agreement about where it should be entered as a category.
• Administer 22 statements on participants – agree/disagree format
• Average sum of agreed statements

Question 16

What is Guttman’s scale?

Answer 16

• Contains either favourable or unfavourable statements arranged in a hierarchy – measures a single, unidimensional trait.
• Items are ordered from low to high according to difficulty so that to approve or correctly answer the last item implies approval of all prior ones.

E.g.
I like eating out
I like eating out at restaurants
I like eating out at Asian restaurants
I like eating out at Japanese restaurants I like eating out at Yo! Sushi

Question 17

Why don’t researchers really like Guttman’s scale?

Answer 17

It’s difficult to create a Guttmans scale because if a participant agrees with the last statement it assumes that they agree to all prior ones as well which isn’t always the case as people’s opinions can be very multidimensional. Which is why researchers don’t really use this.

Question 18

What is Osgood’s semantic differential?

Answer 18

Doesn’t measure opinions, but evaluations of an object/person on a set of semantic scales.

Measuring on a continuum to the extent a participant may think how kind or unkind someone is. Then they could aggregate across these relative evaluative components to get their overall attitude.

E.g.
Kind………Unkind
Helpful……..Unhelpful

Question 19

What is the limitation of Osgood’s semantic differential scale?

Answer 19

The limitation here is that its just getting into the evaluative component and any other component would require a different approach.

Question 20

What is the Likert scale?

Answer 20

Statements that respondents indicate their strength of agreement/disagreement using a scale e.g.

Are you in favour of capital punishment?

(strongly approve) 1…2…3…4…5…6…7 (strongly disapprove)

Question 21

What are the strengths of a Likert scale?

Answer 21

• Convenience
• Gives standardised measure – can get a sense of the extent to which somebody has a positive or negative attitude and provides a very standardised score.
• Comparable scores
• Can have a range of positive and negative items (acquiescence bias – the idea that we are very agreeable individuals by our human nature and have a tendency to agree with statements given to us) You could rephrase some questions and statements to be both positive and negative e.g. about capital punishment.

Question 22

What are the problems with Likert?

Answer 22

• Can force people to agree/ disagree with ideas that may not correspond with how they see things.
• Can provide information on the ordering of people’s attitudes on a continuum, but is unable to indicate how close or far apart the different attitude might be. e.g. participant A is 1.5 more positive than participant B is meaningless.
• Social desirability

Question 23

What’s the difference between a Likert scale and a semantic scale?

Answer 23

Semantic scale and Likert scales are very similar. Likert gives the participant a statement to agree or disagree. Semantic differentials are when you give the participant a topic e.g. this module and give them a response option like good or bad/ useful or not useful/ interesting or not interesting so we’re getting an evaluative component rather than a certain belief.

Question 24

Outline and evaluate physiological approaches to measuring attitudes.

Answer 24

This approach consists of comparing physiological readings taken in the presence of a neutral object, with one taken in the presence of the attitude object.

The researcher could measure skin resistance, heart rate, and pupil dilation.

The problems associated with this approach is that people might just be very nervous in lab conditions. Researchers tend to assume that a physiological reaction is negative, but it may be a positive reaction instead.

Question 25

What are implicit measures?

Answer 25

Implicit association test (Greenwald et al., 1998)

Reaction time when (target category) & positive share a side compared with reaction times when (target category) & bad share a side

The idea that beliefs are structured in memory, if you have negative attitudes towards certain groups, those negative ideas will come to mind much quicker and be categorised faster.

Question 26

What are consistency theories?

Answer 26

• Attitudes changes to be consistent with each other
• Attitudes change to be consistent with behaviour

The basic assumption that one important motive behind our behaviour is to feel like we are relatively consistent in the way we think and behave. Having consistent beliefs and behaviours may provide a much stronger sense of meaning about ourselves or the nature of reality.

Question 27

What is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)?

Answer 27

• If a cognition (i.e. an attitude) is in direct conflict with another one (or an action), and the two are related in some way, we experience tension (whether we are aware of it or not).
• Dissonance is uncomfortable (tension)

Question 28

Explain cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)?

Answer 28

Sometimes people may point out our inconsistent behaviour or it could be an unconscious process where we experience a sense of uncomfortableness which we seek to reduce. This leads to adapting attitudes or alternatively adding an extra attitude that tries to explain why the attitudes are inconsistent and this new attitude will explain and reduce the dissonance.

Question 29

How can dissonance be initiated?

Answer 29

Dissonance can be initiated in different ways:

1. Forced compliance
2. Decision-making
3. Effort

All forms will lead to actions that aim to reduce dissonance.

Question 30

Explain Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) experiment.

Answer 30

• Participants given a boring task for 1 hour
• Have to persuade another person that the task was interesting, educational, worthwhile.
• Paid either $1 or $20
• Participants getting $20 didn’t arouse any sense of dissonance as they told the lie for money.
• However, there was dissonance for the participants getting $1 as they weren’t getting paid very much for the job they had to do.
• Control participants (who weren’t given any money) and the $20 participants both rated how interesting the experiment was at the same level.
• Participants who were given $1 had no incentive to lie as the money was so little so this roused a sense of dissonance. To reduce this tension, they changed their attitude towards the study and started to genuinely believe that it was an interesting study and worthwhile.

Question 31

Explain how decision-making (Brehm, 1956) leads to actions that aims to reduce dissonance.

Answer 31

• Participants asked to rate eight products (e.g. coffee maker, toaster, radio) from (1) definitely not desirable – (8) definitely desirable.
• After rating these objects, participants were informed that their payment would be one of these products:

o Participants offered choice between two highly desirable products (e.g., rated 5> on the scale) – high dissonance

o Participants offered choice between one highly desirable (>5) and one lower in desirability (e.g., at least 3 points lower) – low dissonance

o Participants given one product that was highly desirable – control.

• Participants then provided with factual information about each product and asked to rate them again.
• There was no real change in the control group or the low dissonance group as they already liked the product and it was an easy choice.
• For the higher dissonance group attitudes towards their chosen product became more positive and their attitude towards the rejected product became more negative.
• Essentially, they are changing their attitudes to make the decision less difficult in their mind. Although it was difficult to choose in the first place participants became very confident in the item that they chose.

Question 32

What is the effort justification paradigm?

Answer 32

When people have a goal, even if their attitude was very negative to begin with, over time because they are doing it a lot and have spent a lot of time/effort on it, some tension arises which can be overcome by adapting their attitude to view it as possible.

Question 33

What is self-perception?

Answer 33

• Attitudes informed by behaviour
• We make inferences about our own attitudes, based on behaviour, in the same way that we make inferences about the attitudes of others.
• Can explain compliance – a change in behaviour or expressed attitudes in responses to requests, coercion or group pressure

Question 34

What are the techniques of inducing compliance?

Answer 34

Foot-in-the-door techniques. E.g. They start off with small requests e.g. Pret offering a free month of coffee for a subscription to them and then those requests getting larger and larger (paying for the subscription).

Question 35

What are the Theories of Attitude Change: The Yale Attitude Change Approach (Hovland et al., 1953)

Answer 35

According to this approach, attitude change/persuasion is influenced by 3 factors:

• Source – originator of communication (who is communicating the information and the features of that person)
• Message – features of the communication itself (what is actually being said)
• Audience – characteristics of who is receiving the message (who is receiving the message and the features of that person)

Question 36

According to the Yale Attitude Change Approach (Hovland et al., 1953) what features of the ‘source’ determine if attitudes will be influenced?

Answer 36

Depending on the sources:
• Credibility
• Expertise
• Trustworthiness

E.g. We often see doctors as having a high level of expertise and are more likely to passively accept what they say. Less likely to be convinced by what an average person you meet is saying.

• Appearance
• Attractiveness
• Similarity

Less rational but because we often value attractiveness in our culture and want to be close to people that are popular, so they have more influence in our attitudes.

Question 37

According to the Yale Attitude Change Approach (Hovland et al., 1953) what features of the ‘message’ determine if attitudes will be influenced?

Answer 37

• One sided vs. two sided messages
Effectiveness may depend on the audience (those with high IQ’s are more critical and could be influenced by a two-sided argument)
• Repetition
e.g. trump repeating ‘fake news’ If he said it once the audience might ignore it but the repetition causes them to think there must be some kind of truth to it)
• Fear arousal
E.g. in the Covid-19 era we can tap into people’s fears and change their attitudes about how they should behave. Or talking about the risk of heart attacks from smoking can induce fear and change your attitude.

Question 38

What is the relationship between fear and attitude change?

Answer 38

An inverted U-curve.

Low levels of fear don’t affect attitudes.
As we increase fear, attitudes change.
It reaches a point where it tapers off and you can increase fear but there’s no influence on attitudes. Perhaps due to people feeling overwhelmed by how they can cope with such prospects.
E.g. a fear of corona virus and catching the disease may not amount to any changes in attitude as people feel that they can’t cope with it.
It’s better to instil some fear (yes you could catch it and die but you can overcome this by social distancing) as this could alleviate some of that problem and make it not as scary. Too much fear could induce a sense of fatalism, especially in the context of life-threatening diseases.

Question 39

According to the Yale Attitude Change Approach (Hovland et al., 1953) what features of the ‘audience’ determine if attitudes will be influenced?

Answer 39

• Distraction
Inverted U curve shape (Rosenblatt, 1966)
The extent to which you are paying attention to the message, high levels of distraction will lead to low levels of persuasion. Those paying high levels of attention will be more critical and resistant to changing their attitudes. People who are in the middle and paying some attention may be most susceptible to persuasion.

• Self-esteem
Inverted U curve shape
Low self-esteem is often related to anxiety and may find it more difficult to attend to the information – getting back to the distraction issue and so are unlikely to change their attitude. Furthermore, those with a high self-esteem have very resistant attitudes and are unlikely to change them because they are very confident in what they believe. People with moderate levels of self-esteem tend to be the ones who are more likely to be malleable in their attitudes.

• Lifelong openness – individuals to some extent susceptible throughout life.
One possibility is that there is a high level of susceptibility in early adulthood as well as later life but during mid-life your attitudes are fairly resistant. When you are young your more impressionistic and attitudes aren’t so crystallised.
Another idea is that there’s just generally a lifelong sense of openness to attitude change, so some possibility that people are willing to change their attitudes throughout their life.

Question 40

When is attitude change more effective?

Answer 40

Attitude change more effective if active participator rather than passive recipient (Lewis, 1943)

• American housewives to feed families unusual but highly nutritious foods to see if they would change their eating habits
• 32% of women in discussion group went on to serve the new food compared with only 3% in the lecture group (Lewin, 1943)
• Used extensively in community health issues

Question 41

What is the attitude behaviour problem (La Piere, 1934)?

Answer 41

• Difference between prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behaviour. He observed the difference in people who have prejudicial attitudes and whether they actually engaged in discriminatory behaviour.
• Mixed-race group of diners
• 249/250 allowed the group in and served them
• 90% of replies indicated that they would decline the booking
• This is a really large discrepancy as almost all of the diners were served even though 90% of the servers indicated that they wouldn’t accept the booking.

Question 42

What does action, target, context, time (Azjen & Fishbein, 1977) mean in terms of the correspondence between attitude and behavioural measure?

Answer 42

Attitudes are often a very broad inference but how we behave in a given moment is more situational and context specific. So, we might find very weak links between attitudes and behaviour because we’re just not measuring them in a very good sense.

E.g. Women’s use of birth control pills (Davidson & Jaccard, 1979)
They found that the more specific the attitude was (e.g. a certain type of birth control), the stronger the correlation between their attitude and behaviour. Whereas when it was a broader attitude towards birth control in general, it didn’t predict their behaviour very well.

Question 43

Give an example of how the correspondence between attitude and behavioural measure depend on the domain of behaviour?

Answer 43

E.g. Political party – high; blood donation – low (Kraus, 1995)
It’s very easy to act on your attitudes towards a political party, for example voting for that party on election day. So, you can expect a very strong correlation. However blood donation is different as you might have a very positive attitude towards blood donation but this doesn’t mean you would donate blood yourself and so this would create a poor prediction of your behaviour.

Question 44

How does the role of individual differences show the correspondence between attitude and behavioural measure?

Answer 44

Role of individual differences e.g.
Self-monitoring: low self-monitors have higher attitude-behaviour correlation (Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982)

People with low levels of self-monitoring are less likely to engage in self presentational tactics and more likely to enact upon their attitudes in an implicit, intuitive sense. Their attitude and behaviour are likely to be very similar.
In comparison those with high levels of self-monitoring may be much more likely to be aware of socially desirable effects and wanting to be self-presentational.

Question 45

What is the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974)

Answer 45

Theory of reasoned action which suggests that it’s not necessarily attitudes that just determine our behaviour but also the subjective norms of what we think other people do (what they think and what we think other they expect of us) is also going to influence our behaviour.

We have our attitude towards our behaviour and we also have subjective norms and the two will lead to our behavioural intent but whether that ends up translating to a behaviour will depend on several other factors.

So, the reasons why attitudes don’t always strongly predict behaviour is because firstly there are other components involved but it also may just lead to a behavioural intent instead of a behaviour.

Question 46

What is the theory of planned behaviour?

Answer 46

This is an extension of the theory of reasoned action. It adds in the idea of perceived control and whether we feel it’s within our ability to engage in some behaviours.

E.g. the subjective norm would be that exercise is the right thing to do but you might find that exercise is beyond your control as you are out of shape and think you can’t go out for a run or join a football game.