Lecture 1: What are attitudes? Flashcards
What is Allport’s (1935) definition of an attitude?
An attitude is a mental & neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individuals response to all objects & situations w/ which it is related
What is Fazio’s (1990) definition of attitude?
An attitude is a mental association between an object & an evaluation of it
What is Zanna & Rempel’s (1988) definition of an attitude?
Overall evaluation of an object that is based on cognitive, affective, and behavioural information
They can vary in intensity & valence
Why are attitudes important?
Our attitudes influence how we think and what we do
Real world examples of importance of attitudes - product advertising, health, politics, environment
What are basic issues of measuring attitudes?
Attitudes can’t be directly observed
Usually we can’t see attitudes
Assumes people know their attitudes (explicit measures)
What is an example of explicit measurement of attitudes
Self report: Ppts respond to direct questions about their opinions
Example of explicit measure of attitudes
Likert scales: People rate the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements that express +ve or -ve sentiments toward an object
Stages of Likert scale construction and measurement
- Construct many different attitude items
- Ppl respond to selected items using 5 point scale
- Items should be correlated with each other, if they aren’t they are measuring different constructs and shouldn’t be included in the measure
What are semantic differential scales? (Explicit measure of attitudes)
People rate an attitude object on several bipolar adjective scales e.g., bad or good
What is item analysis?
process of statistically analyzing assessment data to evaluate the quality and performance of your test items
If items correlate with each other they are measuring the same thing (construct)
What are some things to consider with explicit measures of attitudes?
- Explicit measures are based on the notion that people have a good awareness of their own attitudes
Bias; Ppl may respond in a filtered way (impression management) - These issues have led to implicit measures of attitudes
- Explicit measures predict behaviour
What is evaluative priming?
An evaluative priming measure (or exercise) is a research technique that exposes the “implicit” associations between different concepts by “priming” participants with words or images and having the participants sort the words or images into categories following the priming stimulus.
What are implicit measures of attitudes?
Give examples
any procedure for evaluating attitudes in which a person is not consciously aware of the fact that his or her attitude toward something or someone is being assessed
Examples:
- evaluative priming
- IAT
- Psychological measures
What did Fazio et al (1995) study about evaluative priming?
Measured the extent to which the presence of an attitude object primes positive vs negative evaluations
An evaluative priming task to measure implicit racism
Conducted research on evaluative priming and its potential role in implicit racial bias
They presented participants with either positive or negative evaluative primes (e.g., “good” or “bad”) before asking them to rate the positivity or negativity of target words, which were either race-related (e.g., “black,” “white”) or control words (e.g., “table,” “book”)
Critical Evaluation of Fazio & Olson’s evaluative priming study
Lab study - does not reflect real world attitudes or complex social situations
Small effect sizes
Some studies have not been able to replicate their study
What did Fazio et al (1995) find about evaluative priming ?
Participants responded faster to +ve words after being primed with +ve evaluations compared to -ve evaluations, and faster to -ve words after being primed with -ve evaluations compared to +ve evaluations
This effect was found for both race-related and control words.
However, the researchers also found that participants responded faster to negative race-related words after being primed with negative evaluations compared to positive evaluations
This effect was more pronounced for white participants than black participants, suggesting a potential implicit bias against black individuals.
Overall, Fazio and Olson’s study suggested that evaluative priming can play a role in implicit racial bias, with negative evaluations being more strongly associated with negative race-related words for white participants than black participants. However, it should be noted that this study is only one among many that have investigated implicit racial bias, and its findings should be considered in the context of the broader literature on this topic
What is the implicit association test? (Greenwald et al., 1998)
measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., Flowers, Insects) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., safe, dangerous)
build association between key + object - when compatible, should be quicker at trial + slower when incompatible
What are some strengths & limitations of implicit measures?
+
People don’t respond in a filtered way
bridge the gap between implicit attitudes and behavior
Over the years they’ve tweaked the scoring algorithms
-
Is it an implicit attitude or just a personal association
ability to predict behavior is quite weak
What are psychophysical measures?
Facial Electromyography (EMG) measures electrical activity in the zygomatic (smiling) and corrugator (frowning) muscles in the face
What are two examples of measuring reliability?
Internal consistency: Whether the individual items in a measure are assessing the same construct, often assessed using Cronbach’s alpha
Test retest reliability: Consistency in scores across time, often assessed using Pearson’s correlation
What are three types of validity?
Convergent validity: Related to other measures of the same construct
Discriminant validity: Unrelated to measures of irrelevant constructs
Predictive validity: Predictive of future behaviour
What are some features of strong attitudes?
-stable over time
-resistant to change
-likely to influence information processing
-likely to guide behaviour
What are some features of strong attitudes?
-stable over time
-resistant to change
-likely to influence information processing
-likely to guide behaviour
What are some features of attitudes?
Attitudes are overall evaluations of attitude objects that differ in intensity, valence & influence our actions
Attitudes have a core role in understanding how we think & do
They can be measured both implicitly & explicitly
