Lecture 2: Attitudes, information processing and behaviour Flashcards
What are the stages that an attitude can influence information processing?
- Attention
- Encoding
- Memory
What did Allport (1935) say about information processing?
(The starting point)
Our attitudes “determine for each individual what he will see and hear, what he will think and what we will do …; they are our methods for finding our way about in an ambiguous universe.”
What did Festinger (1957) say about Information processing?
(The starting point)
He argued that we use an open-minded information search strategy before we make a decision, but are more selective after a decision is reached.
Knoblock-Westerwick and Meng (2009) study that assessed Festinger’s (1957) ideas (ATTENTION)
They were interested in whether Ps attitude measured previously infleunced what articles they selected.
Two session experiment:
1. Measured Ps attitudes towards various issues (e.g. increasing minimum wage). Looking at the favorability (+ve and -ve) and the strength (strong or weak) of such attitudes.
2. 6 weeks later, Ps returned. They browsed magazine articles that were about some of the issues from session 1.
Results:
* Ps were significantly more likely to select attitude congruent articles compared to attitude incongruent articles
* Also, Ps spent more time reading the attitude congruent articles over the attitude incongruent articles
Results suggest that our attitudes influence what we attend to
Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio (1992) study that assessed the notion that our attitudes influences what we see in our environment: (ATTENTION)
- Prior experiment, they assessed Ps accessibility of their attitude towards 180 stimuli
- During the experiment, Ps saw a blank screen and then a quick display of objects. Ps were asked to write down the objects that they saw.
Results:
* There’s a significant difference between the amount of objects remembered and the level of accessibility e.g., coffee would very accessible in your mind
Conclusion:
We are more likely to notice (during brief exposure time) things for which we have stronger, more accessible attitudes.
What did Fazio say about accessibility?
An attitude is an association between some attitude object and our evaluation of it
* An object that is highly accessible is where the link is really strong. Presenting an attitude object, and the evaluation of such object is quick, suggests that such attitude object is highly accessible
Encoding influencing information processing of an attitude
Our attitudes influence how we encode information that we notice. Some people may see the same event and code it differently
Attention influencing information processing of an attitude
Attitudes may influence the information we select or attend to in our environment
Hastorf and Cantril (1954) study on attitudes affecting how people encode information:
Think Cardiff vs. Swansea
(ENCODING)
- Two cohorts of students from different university’s watching clips of a football game, supporting different teams.
- Students were asked to assess the penalties carried out.
Results:
* Students from university A were more likely to see penalties carried out by university B and vice versa.
They saw the same play but what they thought what happened in that play was influenced by their attitude (the extent to which they like their university)
Vallone et al (1985) study on attitudes affecting how people encode information (ENCODING)
- They showed Ps actual news coverage of reporting that was carried out about the conflict in the middle east. All Ps saw same news footage
The experimenters selected Ps with different views about the conflict in the middle east (pro-Israelis, pro-Palestine, neutral views)
Asked all Ps about their impressions of the play - who was responsible
Results:
Found that peoples interpretations of that information differed
* People with pro-Israeli attitudes found that the reporting was bias against Israel and more favorable towards the Palestinian perspective
* The same was found but Vice versa for people with pro-palestine attitudes
Conclusion:
Our viewpoint influence how we encode/process the exact same information
What is the Reverse correlation paradigm?
This allows us to assess the visual image Ps have in their head of a certain type of group. For an example, lets go with Ps mental image of a typical female
- Starting off with a BASE FACE - an average of a series of white male and female faces merged together
- Then we cover that base face with random white noise
On a single trial, you are asked to assess between two pictures, “which looks the most female?”. Same picture (base face) covered by two opposite patterns of white noise.
On the next trial, the same base face is presented with different opposite white noise.
- It then averages all the ‘more feminine’ faces picked to get 1 persons visual imagery of a female
- We can then assess all the individuals classification images, average these out to get an average ‘most feminine face’ across all Ps.
Proulx et al., (2022) study using the reverse correlation paradigm.
Design of study only:
They used this paradigm to see if peoples political views might influence how you perceive a member of their ingroup vs outgroup:
They were interested at looking at:
* Are the mental pictures we hold in our head of our ingroup ‘nicer’ than people we associate with our outgroup.
- They then developed a scale to differentiate among liberal individuals. Differentiating people who are more progressive Vs traditional LIBERAL in their views.
- They then asked students to complete the reverse correlation paradigm by them selecting the face of a liberal (ingroup) or conservative (outgroup)
Once all the participants liberal and conservative faces were generated, these were averaged to get:
* an average liberal and conservative face gathered by traditional liberals
* an average liberal and conservative face gathered by progressive liberals
Proulx et al., (2022) study using the reverse correlation paradigm.
Results of study only:
A new group of participants, given no context of how they were created, assessed these faces on different dimensions (nice, pretty, approachable etc.)
They found that:
* those from the ingroup (liberal faces) were rated more positively on all dimensions
* those from the outgroup (conservative faces) were rated more negatively on all dimensions
Conclusion:
Our political views influence the pictures we have in our head of groups. And this has complications.
Memory influencing information processing of an attitude
Researchers have looked at the extent to which we are likely to remember information that is either consistent or inconsistent with our views.
Eagly et al., (1999) study on memory effect on attitude
Carried out a meta-analysis and found a small congeniality effect of attitudes on memory
* we are more likely to remember things that are attitude congruent vs attitude incongruent
They also found that this congeniality effect was larger when the topic was relevant to our core values (value relevant)
What is ambivalence?
The state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone
i.e you aren’t sure
Maio et al., (1996) study on attitude strength influencing information processing.
Design of study only:
Had Ps read an editorial that advocated increased immigration from Hongkong into Canada. They had different versions of these editorials:
* Strong vs weak views.
They gave these to people who had ambivalent vs non-ambivalent attitudes towards the topic.
They were interested in whether an ambivalent attitude relates to dissonance, and whether this causes us to think about the info more carefully.
Maio et al., (1996) study on attitude strength influencing information processing.
Results of study only:
- When people are ambivalent (mixed emotions towards a topic), they are showing argument quality effect - they were processing information much more carefully when ambivalent.
strong measure caused ambivalent people to be more favourable towards residents of Hong Kong & immigration from Hong Kong than would weak message. - When people are not ambivalent (either a positive OR negative emotion towards a topic) did not differentiate between whether they read the strong or weak arguments.
Attitudes can effect how carefully we scrutinize information
Is there a relation between attitudes and behavior?
* What studies can be used to answer this question?
- LaPierre (1934) - found almost no relationship between attitudes and behaviour
- Wicker (1969) - found .15 of a correlation betwwen attitudes and behaviour
- Kraus (1995) - found a slightly stronger correlation of .38 between attitudes and behaviour.
LaPierre (1934) study that assessed “is there a relation between attitudes and behaviour?”
- Lapierre was an American academic who travelled around the US with an Asian-American couple and would go to hotels and restaurants where they would ask to be seated for a meal or accommodation.
- They measured whether they were given service.
- A few months after, he wrote to all establishments they visited and asked “would you serve an Asian Americans couple?” (very high prejudice during this time.
He found that there was no relationship between the behaviour and the attitude assessed months later.
Methodological criticisms of LaPierre’s (1934) study:
- What if the person who served the couple was not the person who responded on the question asked.
- The question asked “would you serve an Asian-American couple?” but an academic was present. Should have asked “would you serve an Asian-American couple while an American academic is present?” (principle of compatibility)
