Attitudes Flashcards
What is an attitude?
- an evaluation and categorisation of a target object
Describe the components of an attitude?
Affect - emotion
Behaviour - how you act
Cognition - beliefs about the target
- components tend to be consistent but sometimes inconsistent
How may we measure attitudes?
- self-reports; Likert scales (numerical, labelled anchors)
- Implicit attitude measure: indirect measures of attitudes (no self-reports = IAT = frequency/time for responses)
- non-verbal measures: the degree of physical closeness
- physiological responses: increases heart rate etc in response to the target (no direct control)
Describe LaPiere’s research into inconsistent predicting behaviour from attitudes
- attitudes of prejudice
- took Chinese couple around US
- contacted before and found 90% of 250 restaurants would not serve them
- when they showed up, 1/250 denied service
- inconsistency between the two
Why can predicting behaviour from attitudes be unreliable?
- other determinants (situational constraints; face-to-face)
- attitudes can be inconsistent (different components of attitudes; may agree with one thing but not another)
- attitudes based on second-hand information (the first-hand experience may change)
- mismatch between specific and general
- automatic behaviour can bypass conscious attitudes
What is cognitive consistency?
- motivated to maintain consistency between thoughts, feelings and behaviour
- inconsistency = change to get it back by taking easy-to-change options
Briefly describe Heider’s Balance Theory
- trying to maintain balance between different things
- imbalanced systems can be unstable and thus motivated to change towards balanced ones
- filling/changing attitudes to be consistent and balances
- changing attitude that causes less resistance
- can also create attitudes (e.g. affiliating with political party, you adopt similar beliefs even if unrelated)
- calculate using sign products
How is Heider’s Balance Theory applied to marketing?
- celebrity endorsements
- creating positive attitudes based on a celebrities positive attitude about a product
What is cognitive dissonance?
- inconsistency between thought and behaviour
- creates an aversive state
- requires effort to restore consistency (change attitude)
- will change to what’s easiest to reduce the dissonance and aversion (rationalise, denial, change/dismiss evidence)
- must be resolved
List the three times people may experience cognitive dissonance
- Post-decision dissonance
- Effort justification
- Attitude-discrepant behaviour
What is post-decision dissonance? give example research
- faced with two, possibly equal alternatives you can’t choose between
- before, you see pros and cons of both
- after decision is made, you favour the one you chose
- rationalise; the one picked is suddenly the right one
Research:
- betters on horses= after choice, they had greater confidence in the horse they chose
- protects feelings as the choice can’t be changed
Spreading alternatives paradigm:
- people asked to rank CDs
- told they could keep 4/5 rated
- rated again after
- ppts found the bonuses of the two, rated higher and spread the dissonance
What is effort justification? give evidence
- when you devote resources to something that turns out to be unpleasant or disappointing, you justify the use of resources
- exaggerate the joy
Arsonson + Mills
- female UGs - part of sex discussion group
- to enter, they either had to do nothing, complete a mildly embarrassing test or complete a severely embarrassing test
- participated in boring discussion
- asked how interesting
- women who had done the severe test rated it more favourably than the girls in the other groups
- they had to justify the effort they put in
- similar in sororities and frats
The Ikea Effect: increases liking; proud of building item - cog bias - higher value just cus you made it
What is attitude-discrepant behaviour? give evidence
- behaving in a way that’s not in line with attitudes - induces dissonance
- induced compliance; subtly making people engage in ADB - so leads to attitude change
Festinger and Calsmith (Peg Study)
- ppts given a boring task
- someone asked to pretend it was good (incentive)
- incentive was either $1 or $20
- both pretended in the group to enjoy
- after they were asked again; those in $1 group actually believed it was good and carried this beyond the task
WHy?
- insufficient justification - only $1 so rationalise and change attitude
Give reasons for induced compliance (of ADB)
Insufficient justification
- change the attitude
Threat
-experience less dissonance when external justification
Choice
- ADB only creates dissonance only when freely chosen
About external influences
E.g. Aronson and Carlson - Forbidden Toy - Threat
- kids played freely
- experimenters said they couldn’t play with their 2nd ranked toy
- high threat or low threat condition
- asked to rate again
- mild threat - found the toy less desirable than before
- high threat - found more desirable
- this is because the mild threat = poor justification so attitude changes to rationalise
Describe the self-perception theory
Daryl Bem
- critiquing the cog dissonance theories
- people look at their own behaviours and infer their own attitudes in the context
- make the best judgement for why it occurred
- dispassionate inference process - we don’t experience dissonance but instead, just use or behaviour to infer what attitudes must be present
