Chapter 7 - Attitudes and Attitude change

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

An attitude is a

person’s enduring evaluation of people, objects, and ideas.

Question 2

• Where Do Attitudes Come From?

Answer 2

Although some attitudes may have a genetic component, they are based mostly on our experiences. Cognitively based attitudes
, Affectively based attitudes, Behaviorally based

Question 3

Cognitively based attitudes

Answer 3

are based mostly on people’s beliefs about the properties of the attitude object

Question 4

Affectively based attitudes

Answer 4

are based more on people’s emotions and values; they can be created through classical conditioning or operant conditioning.

Question 5

Behaviorally based attitudes

Answer 5

are based on people’s actions toward the attitude object.

Question 6

Explicit Versus Implicit Attitudes

Answer 6

Once an attitude develops, it can exist at two levels. Explicit attitudes are ones we consciously endorse and can easily report. Implicit attitudes operate outside of
conscious awareness.

Question 7

Predicting Spontaneous Behaviors

Answer 7

Attitudes predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are relatively accessible. Attitude accessibility refers to the
strength of the association between an object and an evaluation of it.

Question 8

Predicting Deliberative Behaviors

Answer 8

According to the theory of planned behavior, deliberative (nonspontaneous)
behaviors are a function of people’s
attitudes toward the specific act in question, subjective norms (people’s beliefs about how others view the behavior in question), and how much people believe they can control the behavior.

Question 9

Subjective norms

Answer 9

people’s beliefs about how others view the behavior in question

Question 10

How Do Attitudes Change?

Answer 10

Both internal and external factors influence our attitudes.
- Changing attitudes by changing behaviour

• emotion and attitude change
• attitude change and the body

Question 11

Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior:

Answer 11

Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited One way that attitudes change is when people engage in counterattitudinal advocacy for low external justification. When this occurs, we tend to find internal justification for our behavior, bringing our attitudes in line with our behavior.

Question 12

• Persuasive communication and attitude change

Answer 12

According to the Yale Attitude
Change approach, the effectiveness of a persuasive communication depends on aspects of the communicator, or source of the message; aspects of the message itself (e.g., its content); and aspects of the
audience.
- Elaboration Likelihood model
- central route to persuasion
- peripheral route to persuasion

Question 13

• Elaboration Likelihood model

Answer 13

specifies when people are persuaded more by the strength of the arguments in the communication and when they are persuaded more by surface characteristics

Question 14

• central route to persuasion

Answer 14

When people have both the motivation and ability to pay attention to a message, they take the central route to persuasion, where they pay close attention to the strength of the arguments.

Question 15

• peripheral route to persuasion

Answer 15

When they have low motivation or ability, they take the peripheral route to persuasion, where they are swayed by surface characteristics, such as the attractiveness of
the speaker.

Question 16

How do emotions influence attitude change?

Answer 16

1. Fear-arousing communications can cause lasting attitude change if a moderate amount of fear is aroused and people believe they will be reassured by the content of the message.
2. Emotions can also be used as heuristics
   to gauge one’s attitude; if people feel good in the presence of an object, they often infer that they like it, even if those good feelings were caused by something else
3. the effectiveness of persuasive communications also depends on the type of
   attitude people have. Appeals to emotion and social identity work best if the attitude is based on emotion and social identity.

Question 17

Attitude change and the body

Answer 17

People’s confidence in their thoughts about an attitude object affects how much they will be influenced by a persuasive communication. People’s confidence can be affected by such things as whether they are
nodding or shaking their head while listening to a persuasive message.

Question 18

Describe how advertising changes people’s

attitudes.

Answer 18

Advertising works by targeting affectively based attitudes with emotions, by targeting cognitively based attitudes with facts, and by making a product seem personally
relevant.

Question 19

How to resist persuasive messages?

Answer 19

• Attitude Inoculation
• Being Alert to Product Placement
• Resisting Peer Pressure - Teaching kids how to resist peer pressure ahead of time can make them less vulnerable to it later on.
• When Persuasion Attempts Backfire: Reactance Theory

Question 20

Attitude innoculation

Answer 20

Making people immune to
attempts to change their attitudes
by initially exposing them to small
doses of the arguments against
their position

Question 21

Reactance Theory

Answer 21

The idea that when people feel
their freedom to perform a certain
behavior is threatened, an unpleasant
state of resistance is aroused,
which they can reduce by performing
the prohibited behavior

According to reactance theory, people experience an unpleasant state called reactance when their freedom of choice is threatened. Attempts to manage people’s attitudes can backfire if they make people feel that their choices are limited.

Question 22

What is the Thurstone scale and how is it calaculated? (equal appearing intervals)

Answer 22

First formal measure of an attitude
• Generate a large number of items about the attitude object
• Have judges rate each item on a scale of how favourable/ unfavourableit is towards the attitude object
• Compute median and interquartile range for each statement
• Select statements that are at equal intervals across the range of medians and that have small interquartile ranges.
• Randomly order statements in the scale.
• Score on the scale = average of scale scores of all the items that person agreed with
(Lect 12 @ 7min - listen)

Question 23

Describe the Likert Scale

Answer 23

• Generate a large number of items about the attitude object
• Have judges rate each item for how much they agree or disagree with the statement
• Compute correlations between all pairs of items
• Exclude statements that are not strongly correlated with the others.
• Randomly order statements in the scale.
• Score on the scale = average of scale scores of all the items that person rated
(Lect 12 min 15) - more efficient to construct than thurstone (why?)

Question 24

What is the relationship between what people say they will do, and what they actually do?

Answer 24

• Accessible attitudes are a better predictor of behaviour
• can be mismatch between what someone imgaines/envisages and the reality of a situation
• Eg. La piere (1934) - mismatch between attitudes and behaviour - allowing chinese residents to stay at hotel/restaurants

Question 25

Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzein 1975)

Answer 25

what if attitudes don’t directly predict behaviour but instead predict intention
- Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) suggests that a person’s behavior is determined by their intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of their attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms

Question 26

Theory of planned behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzein)

Answer 26

• how attitudes predict deliberative behaviors
• According to this theory, when people have time to contemplate how they are going to behave, the best predictor of their behavior is their intention, which is determined by three things: their attitude toward the specific behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (see Figure 7.2).

Question 27

Theory of planned behaviour

Answer 27

3 things affect behaviour via behavioural intention:
- Attitude toward the behavior: People’s
specific attitude toward the behavior, not
their general attitude
- Subjective norms: People’s beliefs about
how other people they care about will view
the behavior in question
- Perceived behavioral control: The ease
with which people believe they can perform
the behavior
v
Behavioural intention
V
Behaviour

Question 28

Ajzen and Madden (1986)

Answer 28

Addition of perceived behavioural control improves the model’s predictive power.
Study 1: – Class attendance (strong volitional control)
– Perceived behavioural control had a strong effect on intentions to attend class. No direct link between perceived behavioural control and class attendance.

Question 29

SUBJECTIVE NORMS

Answer 29

In addition to measuring attitudes toward the behavior, we also need to measure subjective norms—people’s beliefs about how others they care
about will view the behavior in question (see Figure 7.2). Knowing these beliefs can be just as important as knowing the person’s attitudes when it comes to trying to predict someone’s intentions

Question 30

PERCEIVED BEHAVIORAL CONTROL

Answer 30

Finally, as seen in Figure 7.2, people’s intentions
are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior—
perceived behavioral control. If people think it is difficult to perform a behavior, such as
remembering to use a condom when having sex, they will not form a strong intention to
do so. If people think it is easy to perform the behavior, such as remembering to buy milk
on the way home from work, they are more likely to form a strong intention to do so.

Question 31

Briñol and Petty (2003) conducted a study in which participants tried on headphones while listening to a persuasive editorial. Half of the participants shook their heads side-to-side while listening; the other half nodded up-and-down while listening. Which group of participants expressed the greatest agreement with the
arguments expressed in the editorial at the end of the study?
a. The head-shakers who heard weak arguments in the
editorial
b. The head-shakers who heard strong arguments in the
editorial
c. The head-nodders who heard weak arguments in the
editorial
d. The head-nodders who heard strong arguments in the
editorial

Answer 31

d. The head-nodders who heard strong arguments in the

editorial

Question 32

cultural truisms,

Answer 32

beliefs that most members of a society accept uncritically, such as the idea that we should brush our teeth after every meal.