Attitudes (VL 4) Flashcards
Attitudes – Definition
Relatively enduring organizations of beliefs, feelings and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols
Three components of attitudes
- Affective: The person´s emotions and affect towards the object
- Behavioral: How a person tends to act towards the object
- Cognitive: Consists of thoughts and beliefs the person has about the object
Theories of Attitudes
- Learning theory
- Balance theory
- Cognitive Dissonance theory
Learning theory
- Assumes that a person´s attitudes are based on principles of:
o Association: link in memory between stimuli that are related
o Reinforcement and punishment: person learns to exhibit a particular response
o Imitation: matching thoughts, feelings and behaviors - Transfer of affect: changing an attitude by transferring it to the affect associated with another object (ex. transferring emotions from a sexy model to the car standing by)
Learning Theory - Evaluation
Views people as passive recipients to external forces, model works well when people are unfamiliar with the material
Learning Theory - Cognitive consistency approach
people are striving for coherence and meaning in their attitudes
Heider´s Balance Theory (1946)
- Need to maintain consistency among our feelings and beliefs about what goes together
- Considers mutual evaluations of two people towards each other and of each towards an attitude object eight possible configurations of two people and one object
- Imbalanced structures tend to become balanced by a change in one or more elements (imbalanced systems are unstable)
o Balance: all evaluations are positive, or one is positive and two are negative
o Imbalance: One or three evaluations are negative
Heider´s Balance Theory - Evaluation
Research generally supports predictions; balance pressures are much weaker when we dislike a person than when we like him/her
Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger 1957)
- Concerned with discrepancies between people´s attitudes and their behaviors
- Dissonance: aversive motivational state that results when our behavior is inconsistent with our attitudes
- -> greatest when attitudes and behavior are important to the self (ex. smoking is bad, but you do it anyway)
- Creates psychological tension that people are motivated to reduce
Cognitive Dissonance Theory - Three ways of reducing dissonance
- Changing our behavior (often difficult)
- Trivializing the dissonance
- Changing the attitude
Cognitive Dissonance Theory - Theory of psychological reactance
Non-chosen alternative becomes more attractive (only for a short time)
Dissonance effect
After a short while, opposite kicks in and the liking for the chosen alternative increases and the liking for the non-chosen alternative decreases
Factors increasing dissonance for performing counter attitudinal behavior
- Small threat of punishment
- Behavior is freely chosen
- There is an irrevocable commitment
- Negative consequences were foreseeable
- Person feels responsible for consequences
- Effort is expended
- Questioning self-relevant expectations
Which characteristica do attitudes have, that show a high attitude-behavior consistency?
- Stable
- Important
- Certain
- Consistent between cognition and affect
- Easily accessed
- Formed through direct experience
Strong attitudes
- Are typically stable, personally relevant, held about personally important issues about which one feels extreme and certain
- Are often tied or embedded to other beliefs
- Are often formed through direct experience and become highly accessible as a result
- Are most likely to predict behavior (when accessible in memory)
- Attitudes that are expressed more frequently are more accessible and tend to become more extreme
- Maximum attitude behavior consistency occurs when attitude and behaviors are measured at the same time (ex. wish for children) –> longer time intervals diminish attitude-behavior correlations due to changes in situations, people and attitudes
The theory of reasoned action – Fishbein and Azjen (1974)
- Has been widely used to predict a variety of behaviors
- Takes the attitude towards a behavior and the subjective social norm into account to conclude a behavioral Intention and resulting the behavior
The theory of reasoned action – Attitude towards a behavior
- degree to which performance of the behavior is positively or negatively valued
- is determined by the total set of accessible behavioral beliefs (that links behavior to various outcomes and other attributes)
- Strength of belief is weighted by the evaluation of the outcome or attribute function of the sum of belief times evaluation
- Expectancy-Value Model
The theory of reasoned action – Subjective social norm
- Perceived social pressure to engage or not to engage in a behavior
- Determined by a total set of accessible normative beliefs concerning the expectations of important referents
- Strength of normative belief is weighted by motivation to comply with the referent in question
The theory of planned behavior – Ajzen and Madden (1986)
- Adds an additional variable to the model of the Theory of reasoned action
- Added Variable: Perceived behavior control – people´s belief in their ability to control their outcomes
Methods for self-reported measures of attitudes
- Thurstone´s method of equal-appearing intervals
- Likert´s method of summated ratings
- Guttman´s scalogram
- Osgood´s semantic differential
Likert-type scale - Key features
- Respondent rates agreement or disagreement with attitude statements.
- All statements are clearly favorable or clearly unfavorable.
- Researcher must identify nonvalid items and eliminate them.
Likert-type scale - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Relatively easy to construct
- Clear and simple to answer
- Reliable scores
- More complex to construct
Thurstone scale - Key features
- Respondent indicates agreement with items.
- Items include favorable, neutral, and unfavorable statements.
- Score is based on those items with which respondent agreed.
Thurstone scale - Advantages and Disadvantages
- More complex to construct
- Clear and simple to answer
- Neutral items are included
Semantic differential scale - Key features
- Respondent rates attitude object on evaluative dimensions.
- All dimensions reflect the good-bad dimension.
- Score is sum of the respondent´s ratings.
Semantic differential scale - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Very simple to construct
- Clear and simple to answer
- Very direct measure of evaluations
Opinion Survey - Key features
- Respondent answers just one or two items on each issue.
- Responses are usually yes, undecided, or no.
- Researchers sometimes obtain a representative sample.
Opinion Survey - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Very simple to construct
- Useful for gathering information about public opinion
- Usually not detailed enough for use in psychological research
Problems with measuring attitudes using overt, explicit methods
- People may not say whats on their mind because they are either unwilling or unable to do so
- Archival Data
- (Unobstrusive) behavioral measures
- Analyses of language, non-verbal behavior
- Physiological responses
- Bogus Pipeline procedure
- Implicit association test
Nonverbal Measures of Attitudes
- Behavioral measures
- Physiological measures
- Implicit measures
Behavioral measures - Key features
- Observe respondent´s actions toward attitude object.
- Favorable actions (approach, smile) are assumed to reflect favorable attitudes.
Behavioral measures - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Unobtrusive (respondent unaware)
- Not possible for all attitude objects
- Assumes inevitable link between attitudes and behavior
Physiological measures - Key features
- Assess respondent´s physiological reactions to object.
- Examples include arousal symptoms and facial EMG
Physiological measures - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Time-consuming to obtain
- May reflect intensity but not direction of attitude
- May not be very sensitive
Implicit measures - Key features
- Respondent´s reaction times are used to infer automatic responses.
- Example is the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
- Implicit attitudes are assumed to influence the speed with which the attitude object can be paired with good or bad things.
Implicit measures - Advantages and Disadvantages
- Respondent cannot easily distort answers
- Shown to predict spontaneous, nonverbal reactions to attitude object
- Time-consuming to obtain
