Lecture 1 - What are Attitudes? Flashcards
Allport (1935) Definition of an attitude
An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experince, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individuals response to all objects and situations with which it is related
* an attitude is somhing in our head
* attitudes are guided by the things weve done, seen or read (experiences weve had)
* whatevrr our attitudes or opinions are, it changes what we think and what we d.
Fazio (1990) Definition of an Attitude
An Attitude is a mental association between an object and an evaluation of it
* we have an object, we either like or dislike it
* the strength of that association can vary. Strong positive evaluation leads to a highly accessible attitude
Zanna & Rempel (1988) Definition of an attitude
An attitude is an overall evaluation of an object that is based on cogntiive, affective and behavoural information
* we either like or dislike something based on thougts, emotion and behaviour
An overall defintion of an attitude
An overall evaluation of an object that is based on cognitive, affective and behavioural information
* attitudes can differ in INTENSITY (weak vs stong) and VALENCE (hate or love)
Why are attitudes important?
Our attitudes infleunce how we think AND what we do
Real world importance of attitudes
- Product advertising
- Politics
- Health
- Environment
Basic issues of measuring attitudes
- attitudes cannot be directly observed - have to ask people to report on their attitudes
- attitude measures can be explicit (direct) or implict (indirect)
Explicit measures of Attitudes
Self reports
* Questionnaires in whihc Ps respond to direct questions about their opinions
* people need to think about their attitude and provide an answer
Specific scales in sefl reports when measuring attitudes explicitly
Likert Scales:
* people rate the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements that express +ve or -ve sentiments toward an attitude object
e.g. strongly agree, agree, neither, disagree, strongly disagree
Example of an Explicit measure
Rosenberg self esteem scale
* measuring self-esteem. Attitude towards ourselves.
How do we end up with an explicit measure?
- huge pool of items to assess the construct we are measuring (e.g. self esteem)
- get people to look at the items and see if they CORRELATE - if they do not correlate then they must be measuring something else.
- we then get rid of poor items to create a pool of smaller, relevant items
What are semantic differential scales?
This is an explicit measure that looks at many attitudes (we ask individuals about their attitudes towards Canadians Vs French)
* semantic differential scales looks at more than one dimension (good V bad, Favourable V unfavourable, Like V dislike).
* dimensions should be correlated (if I think Canadians are good, I should think they are favourable.
From this we create one index: this person has a strong +ve attitude towards Canadians
The same semantic differential dimensions can be completed for different ibjects then we can compare favourability
Things to consider with Explicit measures
- awareness of attitude (-ve)
- impression management (-ve)
- Explicit measure predict behaviour (+ve)
Types of implicit measures
- Evaluative Priming
- Implicit association test
- Psychophysological measures
What is evaluative priming?
This is based on the notion that when we know our attitude on a topic, the attitude is highly accessible, this results in a quicker response time.
Fazio et al., (1995) used this idea as a way to come up with an implicit measure of attitudes.
Evaluative priming is examining the extent to which the prescence of an attitude primes +ve or -ve evaluations.
Fazio et al., (1995) study design and results
Interested in measuring racial attitudes
Trial 1:
* Ps had to indicate if a word was +ve or -ve as quickly as possible
* they then showed another stimulus (black or white male)
* they were interested the TIME in response to
1. Black person –> +ve word
2. Black person –> -ve word
3. White person –> +ve word
4. White person –> -ve word
If someone held racial biases, response time to the +ve word ‘Wonderful’ would be inhibited (slowed down) if wonderful is preceded by a black person. Response time to the -ve word ‘annoying’ would be excited (sped up) if annoying is preceeded by a black person.
How does the IAT work?
Example - Greeenwald et al., (1998), assessing gender attitudes
Phase 1:
* showing people male and female names
* istructing Ps to press a certain key for a female or male name
Phase 2:
* showing people names and +ve or -ve words
* instructing ps to press a key for a +ve or -ve word
Phase 3: first key trial
* if a male name and +ve adjective shows, press a certain key
* if a female name and -ve adjective shows, press another key
Phase 4: reverse the adjectives
* if a male name or -ve adjective comes up, press one key
* if a female name or +ve adjective comes up, press another key
If things are compatable, they should be fast
Issues of IAT
- you can fake IAT’s BUT there are tools in place to control this
- always a relativity
- you get a distibution of scores - you then use these scores to predict another outcome
- Olsen & Fazio (2004): what do IAT’s measure? implicit measure or cultural associations?
Overcoming the issues of an IAT
Due to the fact that IAT’s may be measuring cultural associations, we should have something in place that measures personal associations:
* Alternative scoring algorithms (Greenwald et al., 2003)
* IAT scores can have substantive effects (Greenwald et al., 2015)
Using physiological measures as an IAT
EMG has been used to assess individuals Implicit measures of attitudes.
* measures electrical activity in the zygomatic and corrugator muscles in the face (smiling and frowning).
* different types of muscles move depending on like or dislike.
Reliability issues!!
What is Reliability
- The degree to which test scores are free from errors in measurement
- How good/how well did they measure the same thing?
What is internal consistency?
Whether the individual items in a measure are assessing the same construct. Often assessed using Cronbach’s Alpha
What is Test-retest reliability?
Consistency in scores accross time, often assessed using pearsons correlation
* explicit measures show evidence of greater test-retest reliability (Gawronski et al., 2017)
What is Validity?
- The extent that a scale assesses the constrict it is designed to measure
- How well does it measure what it is meant to be measuring?
What is convergent validity?
When something is related to other measures of the same contruct
* e.g. our new measure of self-esteem gives similar results to an old, accepted measure of self-esteem
What is Discriminant Validity?
This is when our measure is unrelated to measures of irrelevant constructs
* e.g. our new measure of self-esteem does not correlate/ isnt related to scores on a about physical health - checking that other constructs are unrelated
Predictive validity
predictive of the future
Strong attitudes are…
- stable over time
- resistant to change
- likely to influence information processing
- likely to guide behaviour
What are the three properties of an attitude
- Content
- Structre
- Function
Content of an attitude
This explains what leads to an attitude:
* Cognitions (how I think about my attitudes)
* Affect (How does a certain thing make you feel?)
* Behaviours (actions of others or yourself may inform a certain view)
C, A and B all contribute to our attitude. Mostly CAB are related. But, these things are not completely redundant (blood donation example)
How can we measure content of an attitude?
We can measure the cognitive and affect aspects of an attitude through:
semantic differential scales
COGNITION: useful-useless, valuable-worthless
AFFECT: delighted-sad, relaxed-angry
We can measure cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects of an attitude through:
thought listing - people list and evaluate their…
1. thoughts about the attitude object
2. feelings about the attitude object
3. behaviour towards the attitude object
Behaviour is more open ended. We can ask people.
Are Cogntion, Affect and Behaviour the same?
NO.
* When you measure these things, they emerge separate from eachother in factor analysis. They arent redundant to eachother (Breckler, 1984 showed this)
* They correlate with eachother but they arent the same
Evidence that Cognition, Affect and Behaviour are not the same
Using a regression analysis we can see that these three things independently predict an attitude to different degrees.
* There is a lot of evidence that they are related but independent
People differ in how much their attitudes are guided by cognitive and affective information
Structure of an attitude
Unidimensional view
Bidimensional view
What is the Unidimensional View?
Unidimensional view:
* attitudes toward something are +ve or -ve.
* we ask people ot evaluate an object along a line, youre eithe rone or the other.
* neutral represents two things, either you dont care or you dont know
What is the Bidimensional view?
Bidimensional view:
* this is when you tease the negative apart from the positive. Objects can reflect varying amounts of positivity and negativity towards an object.
* people can evaluate objects on both +ve and -ve dimension
* bidimensional views allow us to measure the ambivalence (not good at all/not bad at all is different to extrememly good and extremely bad
Kaplan (1972) comments on the bidimensional view
This measure can assess
* each dimension seperately
* overall attitudes
* ambivalent (mixed) attitudes
Implications of the Bidimensional view
Ambivalence is linked with how much attention we devote to relevant information - if its something were conflicted on, we will spend more time on it.
Windsor-Shellard & Haddock (2014) - evidence of the usefulness of the bidimensional view
Looking at peoples potential ambivalence about their own sexual orientation and looking at the implications of that. So this bidimensional view allows us to get a sense of ambivalence and why that might be important
The function of an attitude
What do attitudes do for us?
Seminal Theory (Smith et al., 1956)
The Psychological needs that attitudes fulfil
1. object appraisal - attitude helps with daily life - knowing what we like and dont like (this has been seen as the primary function)
2. social-adjustive fucntion - holding an attitude based on those around you. Helps to navigate your social network
3. Externalisation - attitudes protects us from oursleves - not liking gold because we are bad at it.
Seminal Theory (Katz 1960)
Proposed another set of taxonomies showing the functions of an attitude. They explained that the 4 primary functions of an attitude are:
1. Knowledge (links to object apprisal - having an attitude gives us knowledge that we can use to navigate the social world
2. Utilitarian (links to object appraisal)
3. Ego defence (links to externalisation - i might not like something because theres someone we know who dosnt like it and that makes you feel good about yourself
4. Value-expression - attitudes I hold may express my core values
How do we measure the functions of an attitude?
- Self-report measurement (e.g. Attitude function inventory - a self report questionnaire with items assessing functions of attitudes toward an attitude object
not a very strong SR
Individual differences in the functions of an attitude
Snyder & DeBono (1985):
* high self monitors: sees oneself as a flexible and adaptive individual. People who might change the way they present themselves for one group compared to another
* low self monitors: sees onself as a person who values consistency between behaviour and internal values, attitudes and dispositions (how they think about themselves and present themselves remains constant)
These researchers found that those high in self monitoring, are more likely to fulfil the social adjustive function. Whereas individuals low in self-monitoring were more consistent, their attitues may be more value expressive in nature
Object appraisal function of an attitude
Object appraisal is a primary need that is fulfilled by an attitude. Knowing if we like ot dislike something helps us
* accetable attitudes serve an orienting function
LaPierre (1934)
Travelled with a young Chinese couple. At the time America was heavily anti-Asian. He wondered if they would be refused service - they weren’t. After the travelling he sent letters to the establishments asking if they would refuse to serve Asian individuals, in which they all indicated they would - gap between attitudes and behaviour.
* methodological issues with this study
