attitudes and attitude change Flashcards
What is an attitude ?
A general feeling or evaluation - positive or negative about some person, object or issue
what do attitudes consist of?
Three component model (Rosenberg and Holland 1960)
Affective
Cognitive
Behavioural
What is affective ?
Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object
What is cognitive ?
Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object
Thought about object in the mind
What is behavioural?
Overt actions/verbal statement concerning behaviour
why can attitudes be complex?
they consist of a simple and complex dimension
how do attitudes becomes stronger ?
They become more extreme positive or negative if they are complex and evaluated consistently and if they are inconsistent the become weaker (Judd and Lusk 1984)
What is Katz (1960) 4 function of attitudes?
- Knowledge function
- Utilitarian function
- Ego defensive
- Value expressive
what is knowledge function?
organise and predict social world : provide a sense of meaning and coherence
what is utilitarian function?
help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcome
what is ego defensive?
protecting ones self esteem from harmful world
what is value expressive?
facilitate expression of ones core values and self concept
What is the mere exposure effect?
Repeated exposure of a stimulus –> Enhancement of preference for that stimulus
For example, ppts were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison and Zajonc 1970)
Where do attitudes come from?
Classical conditioning
- Repeated association –> previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus
link between celebrity endorsement and classical conditioning?
Transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product eg Jun et al 2023
How does attitude come from instrumental learning ?
Behaviour followed by positive consequences –> more likely to be repeated where behaviour that is followed by negative consequences is not
What did Insko show about instrumental conditioning ?
Ppts reported a more favourable attitude towards a topic if they had received positive feedback vs negative on the same attitude a week later
What is Bems (1972) Self perception theory ?
Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self attributions where you can infer attitudes from our behaviour
What are the 5 ways attitudes are revealed ?
- Reliably.- so that measure gives consistent results over time
- Validity - So we are actually measuring attitudes and not something else
- Self report and experimental paradigms - attitude scales and implicit association task
- Physiological measures - skin resistance and heart rate
- Measures of overt behaviour - frequency of behaviour and trends/preferences over various objects
Why do we want to know?
Core of self concept : hobbies, beliefs, politics and music
But there could be a mismatch
Understand why and predict how people behave
What did LaPiere (1934) research about behaviour ?
When a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, the received service 95% of the time without hesitation
However in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards 92% of the establishment replied saying they would not accept members of the Chinese race
what were the problems with La Piere study ?
Specifics (are the same people involved)
Time ( behaviour came first)
Attitude strength & direct experience
What did Wicker (1969) find ?
Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour - the average correlation was .15 in a meta analysis with 42 studies
What did gregson and stacey (1981) find ?
Small positive correlation between general attitudes and alcohol consumption
What did Sheeran et al (2016) find ?
Medium to large sized changes in intentions are associated with only small to medium sized behavioural changes.
What 3 things impacts how well attitudes influence behaviour ?
- How strong the attitude is
- Whether it is formed through direct experience
- How it is measured
What did haddock et al 1999 do?
Found attitudes towards assisted dying was influenced by peoples experience of having direct encounter with assisted dying
What did Davidson and Jaccard (1979) do?
Found women’s general attitudes toward birth control did not predict their use of the contraceptive pill as well as specific attitudes towards using the contraceptive pill within the next two years
What is the theory of planned behaviour ?
Ajzen 1991 - Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes
Attitude towards the behaviour
Subjective norm
Perceived behavioural control
Intention
Behaviour
Does TPB replicate across cultures?
Cho and Lee polled Korean and US ppts and found strong evidence for the theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions
In TPB what did personal control have stronger associations with?
Intentions in an individualistic national culture than a collective
In TPB what did subjective norms have stronger predictive power with?
In a collectivist nation rather than individualistic ones
What is cognitive dissonance (festinger 1957) ?
Unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent or do not fit together
what is the consequence of counter attitudinal behaviour ?
Feel discomfort / dissonance
How can you reduce dissonance?
Changing inconsistent cognition
who came up with the elaboration likelihood model?
Petty and Cacioppo 1986
what is the dual process model in response to the power of persuasion ?
Central route - When message is followed closely considerable cognitive effort expanded
Peripheral route - When arguments not attended to
what does the heuristic systematic model consist of (chaiken 1980) ?
Systematic processing - When a message is attended to carefully ; scan and consider available arguments
Heuristic processing - Use cognitive heuristics eg stats don’t lie
How is Knowledge of attitudes used in the real world?
Political campaigns
Advertising / sales
Encouraging socially valuable behaviours eg organ donation, voluntary
