Attitudes and behaviour Flashcards
What are the components of attitudes?
- Valence
-Strength
-Moral conviction
-Ambivalence.
What are the four functions of attitudes?
- Utilitarian
- Knowledge
- Ego defense
- Value expression.
What are the main sources of attitude formation?
- Cognitive
- Behavioral, (affective, heritability)
- Society’s influence
- Self-persuasion
What is the mere exposure effect?
The tendency for repeated exposure to an object without reinforcement to increase liking for the object.
What are two possible causes of the mere exposure effect?
-Uncertainty reduction and misattribution of perceptual fluency to liking.
As uncertainty = unfamiliar
Unfamiliarity = feelings of unpleasantness.
What is effort justification?
Convincing oneself they liked something AFTER they have done it, especially if it required significant effort.
What are the two main types of attitude measures?
Explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes.
What are two limitations of measuring explicit attitudes?
- Inaccurate measurement due to socially desirable responses
- Assumption that we have conscious access to our attitudes.
What is the IAT?
The Implicit Association Test, which assesses participants’ ability to associate targets with good/bad meanings.
What is the dual knowledge system view of attitudes?
It suggests both explicit (symbolic system) and implicit (associative system) attitudes are needed to understand attitude formation and expression.
What is the compatibility principle?
It states that measures of attitude and behavior must be matched for accurate prediction.
- General attitudes will predict general behaviour across most domains.
- Specific attitudes will predict narrow measure of behaviour limited to one domain.
What are the three components of the theory of planned behavior?
- Attitude (evaluation of behaviour)
-Subjective norm (perception of what others will think of you doing behaviour).
-Perceived behavioral control (perception of how difficult it would be to perform the behaviour.
All link to behavioural intention, and thus then behaviour.
What are some factors that influence perceived behavioral control?
- Environmental conditions
- External threat
- Lack of alternatives
- Biological needs and addictions
- Lack of time,
- Low self-efficacy.
What are five characteristics of strong attitudes?
- Extremity ; endorse extreme positions
- Importance ; individuals care greatly about it
- Accessibility ; how easy to activate (come to mind).
- Direct experience
- Value-expressive, higher level of commitment (volunteering).
