Chapter 7- Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing thoughts and Feelings Flashcards
attitudes
- evaluations of people, objects, or ideas
- determine what we do
- result of genes and social experiences
3 components of attitudes
- ) cognitive
- ) affective
- ) behavioral
cognitive component
-thoughts and beliefs that people form about the attitude object
affective component
- emotional reactions toward attitude object
- stems from values and beliefs
behavioral component
- how people act toward attitude object
- stems from people’s observations of how they behave toward an object
cognitively based attitude
- evaluation based primarily of beliefs about properties of attitude object
- based on facts
purpose of cognitively based attitude
-classify positive & negative aspects of an object so we can decide if we want anything to do with it
sources of affectively based attitudes
- values
- sensory reaction (like taste)
- aesthetic rxn (admiring color)
- conditioning
classical conditioning
- stimulus (ucs) that elicits an emotional response (ucr) accompanied by a neutral one
- neutral eventually becomes cs and elicits emotional response (cr) by itself
operant conditioning
-behaviors become more or less frequent depending on whether they are followed by reward or punishment
commonalities of all affectively based attitudes
- ) not b/c of rational examination of issue
- ) not governed by logic
- ) linked to values- change is difficult
self-perception theory
- sometimes people don’t know how they feel until they see how they behave
- infer attitudes from behavior
when do people infer attitudes from behavior
- ) initial attitude is weak or ambiguous
2. ) no plausible explanation for behavior
explicit attitudes
-consciously endorsed and reported
implicit attitudes
-involuntary and uncontrollable
major reasons why attitudes change
- ) social influence -influenced by what other say and do
2. ) justifying dissonance
Yale Attitude Change Approach
-people are most likely to change attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on the source of the communication, the nature of the communication, and the nature of the audience
persuasive communication
- advocates a particular side of an issue
- best way to achieve mass attitude change
Elaboration Likelihood Model
- two ways persuasive communication causes attitude change
1. ) centrally
2. ) peripherally
central route to persuasion
- people motivated and have ability to pay attention to arguments
- listen carefully and think about arguments
- looking for “proof”
- seen most when people are interested in topic or have a personal connection
peripheral route to persuasion
- people don’t pay attention to arguments, but are swayed by surface characteristics
- focus on speaker
- use of mental short-cuts (ex: legit speaker can be trusted)
- common when topic has low relevance/interest to audience
people using central route of persuasion
- engage in effortful cognitive activity
- use careful analysis
- more likely to maintain attitude over time
- more likely to behave consistently to attitude
- less likely to be subject to counter persuasion
fear arousing persuasive message
- attempts to change attitudes by arousing fears
- key is to elicit moderate amount of fear and then teach how to reduce it
- goal is for audience to take central route and analyze
failure of fear arousing communication
- ) succeed at scaring people, but don’t provide recommendations to alleviate
- ) so strong they overwhelm people
Heuristic Schematic Model of Persuasion
- two ways persuasive communications can cause attitude change
1. ) systematically- argument has merit
2. ) using mental shortcuts
mental shortcuts and attitude change
- peripheral route
- Ex: -“How do I feel about it” heuristic- if feel good have good attitude about it
- Ex: experts are always right