Lecture 3- Attitudes Flashcards
What is an attitude?
A general feeling or evaluation (pos or neg) about a person, object, issue
Describe the 3 component model (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960)
Affective- Expression of feelings towards an attitude object. Cognitive- Expression of beliefs about an attitude object. Behavioural- Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour
What is an example of a simple dimension attitude?
Dogs are sociable
What is an example of a complex dimension attitude?
Can be consistent or not
eg dogs look cute but smell awful
How can attitudes become stronger?
Attitudes may become stronger aka more extreme pos/neg if they are complex and evaluated constantly
Describe the function of attitudes theory (Katz, 1960)
Knowledge function
Utilitarian function
Ego defensive
Value expressive
What is the knowledge function in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?
Knowledge function- Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence.
What is the Utilitarian function in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?
Utilitarian function- Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes (e.g right attitude = no punishment).
What is the Ego defensive in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?
Ego defensive- Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world eg justifying habits
What is the Value expressive in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?
Value expressive- Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept.
What is the Mere Exposure Effect (Robert Zajonc, 1968)?
Where attitudes come from?
-Repeated exposure of a stimulus -> enhancement of the preference for the stimulus
Eg participants were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison & Zajonc, 1970).
What is classical conditioning?
Where attitudes come from?
-Attitudes learnt from others
-Repeated association in which a previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited by another stimulus eg food+bell
Eg Relates to attitudes in regard to celebrity endorsement in which you transfer positive image of celebrity to the product (Jun et al., 2023).
What is Instrumental conditioning?
Where do attitudes come from?
-Attitudes learnt from others
-Behaviour followed by pos consequences means more likely to be repeated compared to neg consequences following behaviour.
Eg Insko (1965) showed that participants reported a more favorable attitude towards a topic if they had received positive feedback (vs negative) on the same attitude a week earlier.
What is self-perception theory (Ben, 1972)
-Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions as you infer attitudes from our behavior eg reading lots of books means you must enjoy reading.
How can we reliably/valid measure attitudes?
Use precise methodology eg
-Self report/ experimental paradigms
-Physiological masses eg heart rate
-Measures of overt behaviours eg frequency
Why do we want to know attitudes but what is a potential downside?
-Helps understand and predict how people behave BUT- could be mismatch eg smokers know risks but continue
What is self-concept?
Hobbies, beliefs, politics
Describe the LaPiere (1943) study on racial prejudice
-Chinese couple visited +250 restaurants and received service 95% of time w/o hesitation. -However, after letter of inquiry, 92% replied saying they would not accept Chinese members.
What considerations are needed regarding the LaPiere (1934) racial prejudice study?
Specifics (same people involved?)
Time (behaviour came first)
Attitude strength (yes/no does not show life complications)
What were the results of the Wicker (1969) study?
Attitudes weakly correlated w/ behaviour as average correlation was 0.15 in meta analysis of 42 studies
What were the results of the Gregson + Stacy (1981) study?
Small pos correlation between general attitudes and alcohol consumptions.
What were the results of the Sheeran et al (2016) study?
Medium to large sized changes in intentions are associated w/ only small to medium behavioural changes.
What can be said about how attitudes relate to behaviour?
Suggests attitudes do predict but relationship is weaker then suggested
What are the 3 impacting attitudes predicting behaviour?
1) How strong the attitude is?
2) Is it formed by a direct experience
eg Haddock (1999) found attitudes towards assisted dying influenced by having direct encounter
3)How its measured such as question specificity
eg Davidson and Jaccard (1979) found women’s general birth control attitudes did not predict use of pill
Describe the theory of planned behaviour (TPB)
-Proposes people make decisions as result of rational thought processes
-Brings together the idea of attitude, social expectations and our own control over actions
Describe the Cho & Lee (2015) study on TPB culture replication
Polled US and Korean ppts and found strong evidence for theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions.
What were the 2 boundary conditions in the Cho & Lee (2015) study?
-Personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualistic national culture than a collective. -Subjective norms had a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation than individualistic ones.
How does the TPB Cho and Lee (2015) study support other work?
-Individualistic culture = behaviours determined by self-perceptions or internal beliefs. -Collectivistic cultures = behaviours determined by social group pressures.
What is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
Considered an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent.
What is the process of cognitive dissonance?
-Counter-attitudinal behaviour feel discomfort / dissonance.
-Strive to reduce dissonance can reduce dissonance by e.g., changing inconsistent cognition.
What are the 3 strategies to combat cognitive dissonance?
-Reduce cognition importance eg know loads of people who smoke and haven’t got lung cancer. -Add a new cognition eg believe you are addicted so stress will be equally bad if quit. -Change behaviour eg stop smoking
What are the 2 dual process models in the power of persuasion?
-Elaboration Likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
-Heuristic- systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
Describe the Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
Systematic processing- When message is attended to carefully, scan and consider available arguments (engage more)
Heuristic processing- Use cog heuristics eg stats don’t lie
Describe the Elaboration Likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
-Central route= When message is closely followed, considerable cog effort is expended eg argument quality, analytical. Contains info
-Peripheral route= When arguments are not well attended to, peripheral cues eg attraction
What is the difference between ‘the Elaboration likelihood model’ and the ‘Heuristic-systematic model’?
The ELM suggests pathways are independent, but they could be active at same time.
