Attitudes and persuasion Flashcards
Attitude
A settled way of thinking or feeling about something
Balance theory
Fritz Heider
Cognitive consistency
People prefer elements within a cognitive system to be internally consistent with one another (balanced)
Central processing route
Message recipient fully engaged with the message and information it contains
Classical conditioning
Pavlov’s dogs
Established attitudes available as unconditioned stimuli and when paired with other conditioned stimuli it produces a new conditioned response
Co-occurrence hypothesis
Interaction between processing types
E.g message contains strong and weak points = initial heuristic processing will bias subsequent systematic processing
Cognitive dissonance theory
Mental conflict that occurs when a persons behaviour and beliefs do not align
When a person holds 2 beliefs that contradict one another
Consistency theories
Humans motivated to maintain consistency between their different beliefs and attitudes and between these beliefs and their behaviour
Correspondence hypothesis
Attitudes do predict behaviour
Specific behaviours are predicted from specific attitudes
AKA: principles of compatibility
Deliberative processing
Receive info, critically examine and make an informed decision
Elaboration likelihood model
ELM
Dual process theory describing the change of attitudes
Bicycle helmets
Expectancy-value approach
Motivation for a behaviour or action that is determined by how probable it is that a wanted outcome is achieve and how much the individual values the desired outcome
Fear appeals
Evoking fear when attempting to persuade individuals to change
E.g stop smoking ads
Festingers theory of cognitive dissonance
Inconsistency among beliefs/behaviours leads to psychological discomfort and therefore motivation to change
Reduce dissonance
Restore consonance
Heuristic-systematic model
2 ways individuals can process messages
Explains how people receive and process persuasive messages
Implicit association test
Measures people’s implicit attitudes
Measures the strength of association between a category, concept or person and an evaluation/ stereotype
Implicit attitudes
Attitude activated without conscious awareness by memory of past experiences
E.g woman takes instant to desire to man because he reminds her of horrible uncle or
You like maths but still associate it with negativity
not actively aware of it
Impression management
Processes people use to present a desirable image of themselves to others when in social interactions
Avoid anxiety / embarrassment
Induced compliance experiment
Lying about a study
£1 - higher level of cognitive dissonance as insufficient justification as opposed to £20 group
£1 - change attitude to restore consonance
£20 wouldn’t
Likert scale
Scale used to represent peoples attitudes to a topic
1-7 disagree - agree
Higher = more favourable attitude
* reverse scored before analysis
MODE model
Motivation and opportunities as determinants
Studied conditions under which attitudes towards an object predict behaviour automatically
Multidimensional approach
3 types of responses that are used when we evaluate another persons behaviour or other attitude object
ABC - affective, behavioural, cognitive
Operant conditioning
Method of learning
Employs rewards and punishments for behaviour
Association made between a behaviour and a consequence
Peripheral processing route
Dependent on resources that require little cognitive effort
Peripheral cues e.g what experts say is always correct
Persuasion
How attitudes change as a result of exposure to messages and information about the attitude object
Priming paradigm
Activating an association or representation in memory just before another stimulus or task is introduced
Self-perception theory
People act as observers of their own behaviour and only infer their attitudes from this observation
Bem.
Semantic differential scale
Bipolar adjective scales Statement: ….. Pleasant - unpleasant Bad - good -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 vice versa Higher scores = a more positive attitude towards the statement
Sufficiency principle
People want to have confidence in their attitudes but whether or not this confidence is sufficient depends on sufficiency threshold
Desired confidence - actual confidence
Bigger the gap- more processing needed
Theory of planned behaviour
Intention to behave determined by 3 belief factors:
Attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control
Theory of reasoned action
A persons behaviour is determined by their intention to perform behaviour and this in turn is a function of their attitude toward the behaviour and subjective norms
Unidimensional approach
Attitude = general evaluation of object Evaluation = an emotional judgement - how an individual feels towards an object
