Attitudes and Attitude Change Flashcards
Attitude
An evaluation of a person, object, idea
Evaluation
good or bad, like or dislike or neutral
Ambivalent Attitudes
Both positive and negative attitudes at the same time
You do care but having mixed feelings
Explicit Attitude
Consciously endorse – aware of
Implicit Attitude
Involuntary, unconscious - not aware
The Implicit Association Test
Categorization task
- how quickly can you put things in categories. If you’re aware you should be faster in categorizing. If you have Positive attitude towards the object is fast and negative attitude is slow
- harvard test
Where attitudes come from: (3)
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
Observational Learning
Classical Conditioning
The phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response (e.g., your grandmother) is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not (e.g., the smell of mothballs) until the neutral - stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus
Operant Conditioning
The phenomenon whereby behaviors we freely choose to perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment. - Ex. Child plays with a child of another race and is punished.
Observational Learning of Attitudes
Ex. Child observes sister be punished for playing with a child of another race.
Mere Exposure Experiment
Zajonc
- Showed Chinese characters with high or low frequency for 2 seconds each
- Participants told that they represented adjective and asked to Guess the meaning of the symbols
Mere Exposure Effect
“Familiarity breeds liking”
Yale Attitude Approach
- source
- nature of communication
- Audience
- who said what to whom
Two sided message vs. one sided message
One-side – use for non-hostile people
Two-side – use for hostile people
Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion - EOM
A model explaining two ways in
which persuasive communications
can cause attitude change:
centrally and peripherally,
Central Route to
Persuasion
when people are motivated
and have the ability to pay
attention to the arguments in the
communication
Peripheral Route to
Persuasion
The case whereby people do not elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by peripheral cues - when people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics (e.g., who gave the speech)
The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments
Motivation is affected by
- Personal relevance – do you personally care about the argument.
The Ability to Pay Attentionto the Arguments
disability, less intelligence, distracted, if message Is hard to understand
Fear-Arousing
Communications
Persuasive messages that attempt
to change people s attitudes by
arousing their fears
- Ex. showing
pictures of diseased lungs and presenting alarming data
about the link between smoking and lung cancer
Attitude Inoculation
Give people a small dose of arguments against their position
Subliminal advertising
you’re not supposed to see it but being exposed to it often you notice it
