ch7: attitudes and attitude change

Question 1

attitude

Answer 1

a mental representation that summarizes an individual’s evaluation of a particular person, group, thing, action or idea

Question 2

tripartative model of attitudes

Answer 2

affective (emotional reactions toward target), behavioral (actions or observable behavior toward target), cognitive (thoughts and beliefs about the target)

Question 3

attitude change

Answer 3

the process by which attitudes form and change by the association of positive or negative information with the attitude object

Question 4

persuasion

Answer 4

the process of forming, strengthening, or changing attitudes by communication

Question 5

two aspects of attitudes

Answer 5

o Direction – favorable, neutral, unfavorable
o Intensity – moderate or extreme

Question 6

self-reports

Answer 6

asking people to say what they think
o Customer surveys, political polls, daily exchange of opinions
o In social psychology – attitude scales – series of questions that provide precise and reliable information about how strongly people agree or disagree with, favor or oppose, or like or dislike any attitude object

Question 7

influence of how questions are worded example

Answer 7

o Ex: people asked to rate a politician on a scale from 0 to 10, on the negative side of the scale but when asked from -5 to +5 more positively

Question 8

observations of behavior to gauge attitudes

Answer 8

how closely people approach attitude objects, how often they choose to use them, how much they’re willing to risk or spend for them, how much time or effort they expend to promote or obtain them, whether they’re willing to try to persuade another person in favor or against the given attitude object

Question 9

explicit attitudes

Answer 9

the attitude that people openly and deliberately express about an object in self-report or by behavior
o When they differ from most people think, or from they think it’s good – can control them to hide or deny

Question 10

ways to ensure that explicit attitudes are truthful

Answer 10

o Guarantee anonymity
o Convincing them that their real physiological reactions are being measured even when that’s not true
 Convinced that their real attitudes can be detected – tell the truth
o Assessing attitudes so subtly that participants don’t notice (Did Putin get an A or C on a math test)

Question 11

implicit attitudes

Answer 11

automatic and uncontrollable positive or negative evaluation of an attitude object

Question 12

fEMG

Answer 12

measures muscle activity in the face – can gauge the intensity and direction of attitudes on sensitive topics

Question 13

IAT

Answer 13

• The time people take to make a particular response to an attitude object or tell researchers if people see the object as positive or negative

Question 14

explicit vs implicit attitudes

Answer 14

o Implicit attitudes just reflect a positive or negative association that people have to an object, might be unaware of it
o Explicit attitudes – more likely to reflect the evaluations that people deliberately endorse

Question 15

how do we know that forming attitudes comes naturally to people

Answer 15

research of studies measuring brain activity show that people evaluate almost everything they encounter and do so very quickly

Question 16

mastery of environment motivation

Answer 16

o Knowledge function – the way an attitude contributes to mastery by organizing, summarizing, and simplifying experience with an attitude object
o Instrumental function – the way an attitude contributes to mastery by guiding our approach to positive objects and our avoidance of negative functions
 Inborn preferences – positive attitudes towards sweet tastes – sources of high nutrition

Question 17

gain and maintain connectedness motivation

Answer 17

o Social identity function – the way an attitude contributes to connectedness by expressing important self and group identities and functions
o Impression management function – the way an attitude contributes to connectedness by smoothing interactions and relationships

Question 18

what do our attitudes let us know

Answer 18

if we should approach and support or avoid and oppose it
o They serve different functions – form multiple attitudes about one and the same object

Question 19

the environment example

Answer 19

allows people to express their underlying values through the attitudes they hold – especially for the attitudes about the environment
o More politically conservative individuals are less supportive of investment in energy-efficient technology than are more politically liberal individuals
o Those who place high value on the status quo and meritocracy – less likely to believe in global warming and less willing to engage in activities designed to reduce it
 Some groups believe that they deserve to dominate others – extends to the belief that humans deserve to dominate the natural world
o When protecting the environment is couched in terms of conservative values – conservatives and those who endorse social inequalities – more pro-environmental attitudes

Question 20

the environment example

Answer 20

allows people to express their underlying values through the attitudes they hold – especially for the attitudes about the environment
o More politically conservative individuals are less supportive of investment in energy-efficient technology than are more politically liberal individuals
o Those who place high value on the status quo and meritocracy – less likely to believe in global warming and less willing to engage in activities designed to reduce it
 Some groups believe that they deserve to dominate others – extends to the belief that humans deserve to dominate the natural world
o When protecting the environment is couched in terms of conservative values – conservatives and those who endorse social inequalities – more pro-environmental attitudes

Question 21

US vs Korean ads

Answer 21

US ads emphasize rugged individualism, personal success, independence while Japanese and Korean ads emphasize group benefits, interpersonal harmony, family integrity
o Ads that suggest a product can help its own express cultural ideals – more persuasive
o Chinese gen-x consumers with high income and education – equally persuaded by individualist and collectivist ads

Question 22

types of information about the attitude

Answer 22

o Cognitive information – the facts people know and the beliefs they have about an object
o Affective information – people’s feelings and emotions
o Behavioral information – knowledge about people’s past, present, or future interactions with the object

Question 23

what kind of information is counted more

Answer 23

o Important information usually out-muscles unimportant information
 Negative information has an edge over positive information – consequences are more dangerous – more likely to be noticed, weighted more heavily when we combine information, harder to “cancel out”
 Information that speaks to your personal needs, goals, and motives counts a lot more
o Information that is accessible or salient dominates attitude judgements
 Ex: people who have just been led to focus on conservative values have less favorable attitudes toward government spending on welfare programs than people who focused on government responsibility
 Lots of important, salient, or accessible negative or positive information – a more extreme attitude

Question 24

strong attitude

Answer 24

a confidently-held extremely positive or negative evaluation that is persistent and resistant and that influences information processing and behavior
o Difficult to change – meet mastery and connectedness needs, determine behavior much more reliably than weak attitudes

Question 25

ambivalent attitude

Answer 25

– an attitude based on conflicting negative and positive information
o Don’t help much with eh connectedness function, don’t serve the mastery function

Question 26

superficial processing

Answer 26

attitudes based on automatic associations or on accessible or salient information that triggers simple evaluative inferences about the object

Question 27

persuasion heuristic

Answer 27

association of a cue that is positively or negatively evaluated with the attitude object, allowing the attitude object to be evaluated quickly and without much thought
o Taking a peripheral route to persuasion – a wide range of cues can automatically influence attitudes

Question 28

evaluative conditioning

Answer 28

the process by which positive or negative attitudes are formed or changed by association with other positively or negatively valued objects

Question 29

slides paired with novel objects + positive or negative words experiment

Answer 29

o Objects paired with positive are now seen as positive, those paired with negative are now seen as negative

Question 30

mouthwash experiment

Answer 30

students saw a brand of mouthwash paired with a beach (positive) or table (neutral) – 6 images
o Liking the brand much better when paired with positive – still present 3 weeks later

Question 31

alcohol-related experiment

Answer 31

showed students alcohol-related words paired with negative or neutral images
o Negative – more negative implicit attitudes on a AIT and less drinking

Question 32

rating photos of women subliminal experiment

Answer 32

shown photos of a woman, asked how much they liked her
o Not aware but also shown subliminal photos of positive images or scary/negative images
o Influence was very clear

Question 33

smiley vs frowning face experiment

Answer 33

people also like, consume and are more willing to pay for objects they see accompanied by subliminal smiley face than accompanied by a subliminal frowning face

Question 34

business lunch phenomenon

Answer 34

associating a sales pitch or an appeal for a donation with good food may increase its persuasiveness
o Music works the same way

Question 35

ballpoint pen experiment

Answer 35

students much preferred a ball-point pen ad that featured popular rock music vs unpopular classical music

Question 36

smells experiment

Answer 36

students rated a simulated store and its merchandise more favorably when it was filled with a pleasing scent than no scent + littered less in a Dutch train compartments scented with cleaning products vs no smell

Question 37

associations form by accident experiment

Answer 37

when people are feeling good or bad for another reason asking them how they feel about an object might mistakenly make the object take over their other emotions
o Evaluate their lives more positively when the weather is nice
o Gentle reminders of the real source – enough to make people realize that what they’re feeling isn’t relevant to the object

Question 38

fake Turkish words experiment

Answer 38

people shown fake Turkish words and later had to guess if they were positive
o Rated the words they had seen more often as more positive

Question 39

mere exposure effect

Answer 39

people prefer things to which they have been more frequently exposed – one of the most replicated findings in social psychology

Question 40

Eurovision study

Answer 40

contestants did better in the final of Eurovision if they had previously appeared in a semifinal that was seen by voters

Question 41

why is the effect stronger when people are unaware of how frequently they’ve been exposed to the stimuli

Answer 41

things we’ve encountered before are easier to process the second time around, we’re still around to see them again

Question 42

familiar stimuli more persuasive example

Answer 42

o Familiar spokeperson – more persuasive than one being seen for the first time

Question 43

casting a tie-breaking vote experiment

Answer 43

students participate in group decisions – have to cast the tie-braking vote
o Some exposed to one of them during a slide show (subliminal) – chose their side

Question 44

familiar phrases experiment

Answer 44

presented with a message telling them to begin financial planning for retirement
o Familiar phrases (don’t put all of your eggs in 1 basket) vs literal arguments (don’t pretend a problem doesn’t exist) – familiar phrases more effective, more easily processed + make people feel good about them

Question 45

fake news experiment

Answer 45

when you tell someone that something they’ve heard isn’t true, the past they’ve heard before becomes more familiar
o Ex: repeatedly telling older adults that a consumer claim was false helped them remember it as false in the short term, but after 3 days more likely to be remembered as true
o The same for younger adults but after 7 days
o More effective to say – vaccines are safe

Question 46

attractiveness example ads

Answer 46

• Advertisements often pair an attitude object with a popular or attractive figure
  o Attractive people are well liked and others are more likely to agree with them
  o Ex: attractive confederates were able to get many more people to agree to sign a petition – even when they’re upfront about using their good looks

Question 47

3 mimicking studies

Answer 47

• Ex: students who encountered a computer-generated avatar programmed to mimic their head movements – more persuasive
• Ex: preferences for and consumption of a novel sports drink – increased when consumers mimicked by an investigator
• Ex: servers who mimic their customers’ order verbally – bigger tips

Question 48

expertise heuristic

Answer 48

agreeing with those who know

Question 49

reasons for expertise heuristic

Answer 49

• Communicators with good credentials – offer compelling arguments, people often associate them with opinions that should e respected
  o Health experts – more persuasive when advocating for increased condom use to prevent HIV than laypersons
  o More pronounced when the recipient has little knowledge or no pre-existing attitude on the topic
• To be an expert, communicators must be competent (proof of the communicator’s accomplishments or status in a particular field)
• Ex: participants told that either a judge or drug dealer recommended lenient treatment of delinquents
  o Found the judge more persuasive
• Fast talkers – convey an image of expertise as long as they understand the point
  o Harder for people to tell a strong appeal from a weak one and boosts the weak ones’ persuasiveness
  o Limits: if it’s too fast – persuasion undermined + when people care about the topic
• Communicators also must be trustworthy
  o Earn persuasion points by presenting both sides of the issue – they seem well-informed, fair-minded and credible
  o Also the goal with “slice of life” endorsement especially when it’s “accidental”

Question 50

when are people especially impressed

Answer 50

when communicators seem to speak or act against their own best interest

Question 51

judgments about faces

Answer 51

• Ex: children as young as 5 and adults as old as 85 – make similar judgements equally quickly regardless of the face’s culture
  o Mature-looking faces were judged to be more competent (higher cheekbones, more angular jaws, squarer shape, less distance between eyebrows and eyes)

Question 52

message length experiment

Answer 52

• Ex: 60% waiting in line at a copy machine let the person go ahead when she said she wants to make only 5 copies
  o 94% if she adds she’s in a rush
• When relying on this heuristic, content doesn’t matter – “because I have to make some copies”

Question 53

systematic processing

Answer 53

beyond the immediate evaluations associated with communicators and messages – quality of the information provided
- Central route to persuasion – thinking carefully about the central merits of the attitude object

Question 54

attending to information

Answer 54

• Advertisers go to great lengths – getting the audience’s attention – first crucial step in bringing about persuasion
• TV ads have the upper hand – the use of both vision and sound – ads are more attention grabbing
  o Online ads – colorful and animated
• Uninformed attempts to attract attention can backfire
  o Ex: people pay more attention to violent and sexually explicit media
  o But the more attention viewers direct to tv content, the less they seem to have for the persuasive appeals broadcast during breaks
   Memory for those products is much worse

Question 55

comprehending information

Answer 55

• Ex: adults misunderstood 30-40% of the information presented in 30-second tv segments
• When messages are easy to understand – people can recognize compelling or weak content and act accordingly
  o But when they’re complex or difficult – miss the true attributes
• Ex: ads for prescription drugs
  o Benefits of the drugs at a comprehension skill of a 12-year-old, but side effects 15-year-old

Question 56

reacting to information

Answer 56

• People might even generate arguments of their own depending on their reaction
  o Range from merely registering agreement to developing information even further
• Elaboration – the generation of favorable or unfavorable reactions to the content of a persuasive appeal
• Ex: messages favoring the use of animals in medical experiments to students who opposed
  o Produced as many affective responses as cognitive ones
• Metacognition – thoughts about thoughts or about thought processes
• Ex: people who were led to feel like they produced a lot of reactions to a persuasive appeal are more persuaded
• People producing positive elaborations in which they’re confident are more persuaded than those having equal numbers of not-so-confidently held positive reactions

Question 57

accepting or rejecting the advocated position

Answer 57

• If systematically processed information about the attitude object stimulates favorable cognitive or affective elaborations – persuasive
  o Unfavorable reactions – fail to persuade
• Greater numbers of carefully processed weak arguments – more negative responses than would result from a few
• Ex: students with different number of arguments in favor of instituting comprehensive examinations for grading uni students
  o Strong arguments (favorable elaborations) vs weak arguments (unfavorable elaborations)
  o Some heard 3 weak arguments and others 9 weak arguments + some heard 3 strong or 9 strong
  o When processing systematically – 9 strong were the best
  o Weak – boomerang effect – direction opposite than intended
   People’s reactions about the attitude object can be even more important than the content of the information – people persuade themselves

Question 58

power plant experiment

Answer 58

read a message promoting nuclear power plants + equally strong message arguing against them
o Those who reacted to the first one with lots of issue-relevant thinking were less influenced by the second one

Question 59

what does systematic processing depend on

Answer 59

people’s motivation and their cognitive capacity to think carefully about the content of the message – superficial can occur without them

Question 60

ELM

Answer 60

• Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) – a model of persuasion that claims that attitude change occurs through either a peripheral route or a central route that involves elaboration, and that the extent of elaboration depends on motivation and capacity

Question 61

mastery motivation

Answer 61

• When we’re being held accountable for our preferences and are concerned about making the correct decision – mastery motives will predominate, issues of accuracy central
• Accountable message processors and those anxious to avoid being wrong – process persuasive communications more thoroughly, think more about the information, are more concerned with integrating new information
• Some people naturally prefer puzzling over difficult problems, resolving inconsistencies, searching for the right answer – high need for cognition
  o More likely to put effort into processing persuasive communications
• Ex: read a strongly or weakly argued editorial
  o Higher need for cognition – more likely to respond favorably to strong arguments and be unmoved by weak ones
  o Low – more on heuristic cues
• Often triggered when the evidence seems mixed

Question 62

connectedness motivation

Answer 62

• Ex: presented high and low self-monitors image-focused appeals or value-expressive appeals
  o High self-monitors had more positive attitudes toward voting when the message focused on image
  o Low self-monitors – when focused on value expression
• Both high and low monitors – attention to information that furthers their goals
  o Both groups see those functionally relevant arguments as more compelling
• Even transitory goals that highlight our connections to others – similar effects
  o Ex: when students given the goal of having a pleasant interaction – likely to express similar opinion

Question 63

me and mine motivation

Answer 63

• When information is relevant to something that affects us, we want to know all about it
• Ex: asked groups of students to listen to a speech dealing with the issue of whether exams should be required for graduation
  o Some heard a speech with strong and valid arguments for and some heard weak ones
  o Some told that it’s a speech by a Princeton University professor, others told that it’s a nonexpert + some told that they’re thinking of implementing it for their school or not
  o Not affect them – processed superficially – expertise heuristic
   Does affect them – pay careful attention to the quality of the arguments
• Appeals that advocate positions or provide product benefits that match people’s needs or their views – more carefully processed and more compelling
  o Some people have a prevention focus or promotion focus – avoiding losses vs gain appeals

Question 64

europeans vs asians about coffee

Answer 64

European Americans and Asian Americans to read about coffee
o European – message that focused on the personal self
o Asians – find the health warning more relevant – relational obligations

Question 65

the ability to process

Answer 65

• Sometimes people don’t have to mental resources to take in and evaluate all available information
• Difficulty understanding all the complex and rapidly presented information offered
• Ex: students read a plea-bargain that they disagreed with
  o When more complex – couldn’t comprehend and evaluate the information, and their attitude ended up reflecting the expertise heuristic
• Young children often have enough ability to understand a message, but lack critical capacity to evaluate it
  o None of the children of age 6 mentioned persuasion when asked for the purpose of ads – to offer them a break, provide information
  o 36% of 10-year-olds
• Ex: children who see a commercial – more likely to ask their parents for the toy, more likely to have a negative attitude of a parent who refuses to buy it, more likely to play with a not-so-nice boy who had it than the nice boy who didn’t
• Caffeine seems to increase systematic processing
• Ex: students consumed a drink with or without it and then read a persuasive message comprised of strong and weak arguments
  o More persuaded by the strong ones, this difference was much more pronounced in the caffeine condition
• Intoxication can reduce cognitive capacity and lower people’s ability to carefully and critically evaluate information
  o More favorable attitudes toward drinking and driving, more likely to report engaging in unprotected sex

Question 66

alcohol myopia

Answer 66

alcohol reduces people’s capacity to systematically process and focuses them on superficial cues in the environment
 Would believe in safe sex if those cues were made salient

Question 67

the opportunity to concentrate

Answer 67

• Distraction can decrease the effectiveness of strongly persuasive communications because we’re not able to elaborate them
• The opposite effect on weak communications – difficult to counter flawed arguments or demolish shaky logic

Question 68

the role of feeling good in judgements

Answer 68

• Unless people rely on their current mood to make the judgement, the role that feeling good plays in persuasion is complicated
  o Sometimes makes persuasion less or more likely to occur

Question 69

arousal influence on judgement

Answer 69

o As arousal increases from low to moderate – consideration of persuasive appeals also increases from superficial to some optimal level
o But as arousal climbs – the resources to process become less available – systematic processing isn’t possible
o Arousal is extreme – no processing is possible

Question 70

how emotions influence 2 theories

Answer 70

o Information model – emotions signal a benign environment about which no additional processing is necessary
 Negative emotions convey that something is wrong and require additional processing
o Other theories – the quality of perceived certainty or control is the crucial motivational driver of emotions
 Certainty vs uncertainty emotions (anger vs fear)

Question 71

the influence of fear

Answer 71

• Fear is evoked by a personally relevant threat that creates anxiety – uncertainty and lack of control
  o Motivated to pay attention and start processing
  o Ex: students who were told they were likely to suffer repetitive strain injuries from laptop use – better able to distinguish between appeals with strong and weak arguments

Question 72

tetanus experiment

Answer 72

students read a message advocating regular cancer check-ups with reasoning errors
o Those who were more fearful – superficial processing – detected fewer errors, recalled fewer arguments, elaborated message content less

Question 73

happy vs sad vs angry for judgement

Answer 73

• Happy people faced with persuasive appeals aren’t impressed by strong compared to weak messages, but are persuaded by expert sources
  o Sadness – opposite – people process very carefully
  o Anger – mixed evidence

Question 74

motivational and capacity factors when emotions are experienced

Answer 74

o Some researchers suggested that the key motivating factor of emotions is their hedonistic value – how good or bad they make you feel
o People feeling good may not want anything to interfere, people feeling bad want to

Question 75

mix of processing

Answer 75

o Persuasion-relevant information can play multiple roles in changing attitude – superficially or systematically
o People might engage in both types of processing about the same message simultaneously
 Heuristic cue + processing can suggest the same attitude or different ones (attenuation – careful processing wins)
o When message content isn’t convincingly strong or weak, processing can be biased by heuristic cases
 If thinking is biased, the attitudes will be too

Question 76

first and second (and third) line of defense with attitude-inconsistent information

Answer 76

• First people often try to ignore information that challenges our preferred views and deal only with information that supports them
• When it is encountered, second line of defense – reinterpretation (any information that is close to an established attitude is viewed as resembling the attitude exactly – assimilation)
  o Information that is pretty discrepant – often seen as even more inconsistent – contrast
• Finally, attitudes create biases in how information is processed – inconsistent information is resisted

Question 77

capital punishment experiment

Answer 77

undergrads who supported or opposed capital punishment – study that supports it or not
o Judged the study that’s consistent with their views – much more convincing, favored supportive information by accepting it at face value while criticizing opposing ones
o Long-lasting bias – people remember compelling arguments that support their attitudes, but can only recall weak arguments that oppose it

Question 78

Clinton vs dole experiment

Answer 78

o Asked students which one they favored – after the debate saw that they won

Question 79

told to resist a message experiment

Answer 79

• Ex: students told to resist a persuasive message everyone was able to do so
  o Some told that it was strong and compelling – felt more certain about their og opinion
  o When people believe they did a poor job defining their views – lose confidence in it

Question 80

when are people less likely to resist a persuasion attempt

Answer 80

when they don’t care about it

Question 81

what happens when attitudes are important

Answer 81

people are motivated to resist the threat to self-image and self-interest
o Motivated to build up an informational base that supports their views

Question 82

how can influence of subliminal cues be overcome

Answer 82

by conscious processing – occur only when they’re consistent with consciously held goals

Question 83

thirsty study

Answer 83

students arrived at the study thirsty, not drinking anything for 3 hours – some allowed to drink, some not
o Exposed to words related to thirst + given the opportunity to drink
o Still thirsty student drank more when primed, control not

Question 84

subliminal achievement study

Answer 84

: students subliminally exposed to words related or not to achievement and then expressed preferences about studying
o Only those high in achievement showed the effect of priming