attitudes and attitude changes Flashcards
what is an attitude
- a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, events or symbols
- a general feeling or evaluation
what do attitudes consist of
- affective - expressions of feelings towards and attitude object
- cognitive - expressions or beliefs about an attitude object
- behavioural - overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviours
what is a simple dimension
- the attitude stays consistent throughout the whole statement
what is a complex dimension
- can be consistent or inconsistent
- inconsistent meaning they have multiple views and contradict themselves with different attitudes
when do attitudes become stronger
- if they are complex and evaluated consistently
- if they are inconsistent, they become weaker or moderate as they become more complex
what are the functions of attitudes according to Katz
- knowledge function
- utilitarian function
- ego-defensive
- value expressive
what is the knowledge function
- organise and predict social world, provides a sense of meaning and coherence
what is the utilitarian function
- help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes
what is the ego-defensive function
- protecting one’s self esteem from harmful world
what is the value expressive function
- facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept
who proposed the mere exposure effect
Zajonc
what is the mere exposure effect
- repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to enhancement of preference for that stimulus
e.g. pps more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive
what is classical conditioning
- repeated association - previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction only by another stimulus
how does classical conditioning relate to attitudes
- celebrity endorsement - transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product
what is instrumental conditioning
- behaviour followed by positive consequences means it’s more likely to be repeated, behaviour that is followed by negative consequences is not
what did Insko find about instumental conditioning
- showed that pps reported a more favourable towards a topic if they had received positive feedback on the same attitude a week earlier
what is the self perception theory - berm
- gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions
- infer attitudes from our behaviour e.g. i read a book last week so i must enjoy reading
how are attitudes revealed - measured
- self-report and experimental paradigms
- physiological errors
- measures of overt behaviour
why do we want to know about attitudes
- they can predict behaviour
what did Lapiere find on his study of racial prejudice
- when a chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, they received service 95% of the time without hesitation
- however, in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards, 92% of the establishments replied saying they would not accept members of the chinese race
what did Wicker find about the attitude and behaviour relationship
Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour – the average correlation was .15 in a meta-analysis with 42 studies.
what did gregson and stacey find about the attitude and behaviour relationship
Small positive correlation between (general) attitudes and alcohol consumption.
what did sheeran et al find about attitude and behaviour relationship
Medium-to-large-sized changes in intentions are associated with only small-to-medium-sized behavioural changes.
what things impact how well attitudes predict behaviour
- how strong the attitude is
- whether the attitude is formed through direct experience
- how attitude is measured - how specific the questions are, how closely the questions relate to behaviours
what does the theory of planned behaviour propose
- people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes - Ajzen
what components is the theory of planned behaviour made up of
- attitude towards behaviour - positive or negative
- subjective norm - social expectations
- perceived behavioural control - control over actions
- all lead to intention which leads to behaviour
what did chlo and lee find about TPB being replicated across cultures
- polled korean and us pps and found
- personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualist national culture than a collective
- subjective norms had a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation than individualistic
what is cognitive dissonance
- unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent or do not fit in together
- leads to counter-attitudinal behaviour - feeling discomfort
- strive to reduce dissonance - change inconsistent cognition
how can we change attitudes - cognitive dissonance
- change behaviour
- change cognition
- add a new cognition
what 2 routes does the elaboration likelihood model contain
- petty and cacioppo
- central route
- peripheral route
what is the central route in the elaboration likelihood model
when message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effort expended
- argument quality, analytical
- analytical motivated
- high effort
- relatively enduring
what is the peripheral route in the elaboration likelihood model
- when arguments not well attended to, peripheral cues e.g attraction
- not analytical motivated
- low effort
- relatively temporary
what is the heuristic systematic model
- chaiken
- systematic processing - when a message is attended to carefully, scan and consider available arguments
- heuristic processing - use cognitive heuristics e.g statistics don’t lie
