Lecture 1: Attitude Content and Structure & Direct Measurement

Question 1

attitude (1)

Answer 1

• A person’s summary evaluation (i.e. favorability vs. unfavorability toward) an attitude object.

Question 2

attitude object (2)

Answer 2

• Anything that can be liked or disliked.
• Includes things that are concrete and abstract.

Question 3

multicomponent model (1)

Answer 3

• Proposes that attitudes have three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioural.

Question 4

cognitive components (2)

Answer 4

• Beliefs, thoughts, and attributes we associate with an attitude object.
• What most people focus on when they talk about attitudes.

Question 5

affective components (2)

Answer 5

• Feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object.
• Aren’t completely separate from cognitive components, but are distinct.

Question 6

behavioural components (2)

Answer 6

• Past behaviours or experiences regarding an attitude object.
• e.g. If you’ve enjoyed playing sports in the past, you’ll probably conclude that you like sports.

Question 7

Breckler (1984) (3)

Answer 7

• Found that the three attitude components are empirically distinct.
• Participants, while in the presence of a snake, indicated factors relating to their cognitive, affective, and behavioural attitudes towards snakes.
• Responses were given scores, analyzed, and it was found that the components only moderately correlated.

Question 8

When is the weight of affective or cognitive components stronger than the other? (2)

Answer 8

• For blood donations and liked (in) groups, affective components were more predictive.
• For abortions and comprehensive exams, and disliked (out) groups, cognitive components were more predictive.

Question 9

Abelson et al. (1984) (4)

Answer 9

• Examined the roles of thoughts and feelings in predicting attitudes towards American presidential candidates.
• For each candidate, participants indicated their cognitive, affective, and overall attitudes.
• Favorability of affective and cognitive responses were uniquely predictive of overall evaluations of each candidate.
• Thus, both cognitive and affective components can inform attitudes.

Question 10

Huskinson & Haddock (2004) (8)

Answer 10

• Asked: Are some people more influenced by affect vs. cognition and vice versa?
• Experiment 1: Showed that some people relied more on affect and some on cognition, but many relied on both or neither.
  
  • People who rely more on affect (E-A correlation above median, E-C correlation below median) were called “feelers.”
  • People who rely more on cognition (E-C correlation above median, E-A correlation below median) were called “thinkers.”
• Experiment 2: Thinkers and feelers were presented with a new soft drink, receiving either a cognitive or an affective appeal.
  
  • Affective appeal worked better on feelers, cognitive appeal worked better on thinkers;
  • However, the cognitive appeal worked just as well as the affective appeal on feelers.
  • Says that we can probably just use cognitive appeals all the time, and we should never use affective appeals with thinkers.

Question 11

one-dimensional perspective of attitudes (2)

Answer 11

• Positive and negative elements are at opposite ends of a single dimension.
• Not very useful unless you’re talking about something simple, or you want to find people with very polarizing attitudes.

Question 12

two-dimensional perspective of attitudes (2)

Answer 12

• Attitude is organized along two dimensions: 1) how much negative content there is, and 2) how much positive content there is.
• The scale moves from more negative, to neutral/ambivalent, to more positive.

Question 13

attitudinal ambivalence (1)

Answer 13

• When evaluations of the attitude object include both positive and negative elements.

Question 14

inter-component ambivalence (1)

Answer 14

• Ambivalence between components (e.g. negative cognitive elements but positive affective components).

Question 15

intra-component ambivalence (1)

Answer 15

• Ambivalence within components (e.g. both negative and positive cognitive components).

Question 16

potential ambivalence (1)

Answer 16

• May or may not be consciously perceived by the individual.

Question 17

felt ambivalence (1)

Answer 17

• The feeling of tension that people experience when thinking about an attitude object.

Question 18

simultaneous accessibility (1)

Answer 18

• When potential ambivalence depends on how quickly and uniformly conflicting evaluations come to mind.

Question 19

preference for consistency (PFC) (2)

Answer 19

• When people review past behaviors when making new decisions.
• If preference for consistency is high, they are more likely to ignore new information, biased to past behaviors.

Question 20

Newby-Clark, McGregor, & Zanna (2002) (8)

Answer 20

• Proposes that simultaneous accessibility of potential ambivalence determines the strength of the relation between potential and felt ambivalence.
• Proposes that people high in PFC who are aware of their ambivalence will feel the most discomfort.
• Participants were asked to express their views towards abortion and capital punishment: 1) in a control condition, 2) while only considering the positive aspects, and 3) while only considering the negative aspects.
• Simultaenous accessibility was measured by seeing how quickly and uniformly attitudes came to mind during each measure.
• Increased simultaneous accessibility of potential ambivalence increases the relation between potential and felt ambivalence.
• Whatever produces cognitive inconsistency, an experience of discomfort will result only when that consistency is simultaneously available.
• People will expend effort to maintain chronically low simultaneous accessibility to keep inconsistency low.
• Ambivalence and cognitive dissonance might share similar mechanisms.

Question 21

direct measurement (3)

Answer 21

• Explicitly asking people to introspect.
• Most commonly used because it’s relatively easy to administer and cheap.
• Likert method; semantic differential approach; and open-ended measures.

Question 22

problems with direct measurement (4)

Answer 22

• Individuals may not be aware of their attitudes.
• Subtle differences in item presentation can influence responses.
• Unclear how relative vs. absolute the scores are.
• Subject to impression management.

Question 23

impression management (2)

Answer 23

• Giving responses that present oneself in a favourable way, even if the responses are inaccurate.
• Most common when studying attitudes about sensitive issues or issues relevant to norms of political or social appropriateness.

Question 24

social desirability bias (2)

Answer 24

• Most common form of impression management.
• Presenting oneself in a way that’s most socially desirable.

Question 25

Likert scale (5)

Answer 25

• Presents a series of belief statements indicating a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards a topic.
• Using a scale, respondents indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement towards the statements.
• Need multiple items to: make sure people are answering honestly, that you’re measuring the right construct, and so that you can measure the 3 different attitude components.
• Pros: quick to administer, easy to answer, useful for comparing groups’ or individuals’ attitudes towards a single attitude object.
• Cons: can’t compare scores for different attitude objects because they would be using different scales.

Question 26

semantic differential approach (6)

Answer 26

• Respondents given set of bipolar adjective scales that use general evaluative terms and asked to choose the option best representing opinion.
• Scores across different scales are averaged—allows us to compare scores to different attitude objects;
• Must be careful that the adjectives mean the same thing for the different attitude objects.
  
  • e.g. If you want to compare liking of celery and capital punishment, make sure your participants know that—otherwise people might indicate they like capital punishment more than celery.
• Pros: simple and effective.
• Cons: difficult to measure behavioural components.
• Differential framing approach and content-specific approach.

Question 27

differential framing approach (2)

Answer 27

• Using a semantic differential approach with the same dimensions but different instructions for each component.
• e.g. cognitive: x is bad/good; affective: x makes me feel bad/good.

Question 28

content-specific approach (2)

Answer 28

• Using a semantic differential approach with different dimensions for each of the different components;
• e.g. cognitive: useless/useful; affective: sad/delighted.

Question 29

open-ended measures (4)

Answer 29

• Participants write down all the thoughts, feelings, and behavioural experiences they associate with the attitude object.
• Asked to rate each item they listed in terms of how positive/negative it is. Scores are then averaged.
• Pros: more comprehensive and avoids biasing/restraining answers.
• Cons: time-consuming to fill out and analyze; it can also be difficult for people to articulate their thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviours.