Lecture 3 - Attitudes and Attitude Change Flashcards
Attitude
a) A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, events or symbols
(b) A general feeling or evaluation – positive or negative – about some person, object or issue”
(Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p. 150)
Attitude object = something we have an attitude about e.g. person, issue, event, thing
What attitudes consist of
Three-component model (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960)
Affective
Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object
Cognitive
Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object
Behavioural
Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour
Dimensions of attitudes
Simple dimension – “dogs are so sociable!”
Complex dimension (consistent or inconsistent) – “dogs look well cute and friendly” but “I hate the way they smell” (inconsistent – mix of positive and negative)
Attitudes become stronger – more extreme positive or negative – if they are complex and evaluated consistently
Attitudes need to be complex and consistent
If they are inconsistent, they become weaker or moderate as they come more complex (Judd & Lusk, 1984)
Function of attitudes
- Knowledge Function
Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence
Makes the complex world seem simpler
- Utilitarian Function
Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes (e.g., right attitude = no punishment)
Help people with how to behave
- Ego-defensive
Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world (e.g., many other people smoke, justifying the bad habit)
- Value Expressive
Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept (express individuality)
Mere exposure effect (Robert Zajonc, 1968)
Repeated exposure of a stimulus -> enhancement of preference for that stimulus (Zajonc, 2001)
E.g. participants were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison & Zajonc, 1970)
Classical conditioning
Repeated association – previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus
How does this relate to attitudes?
e.g., celebrity endorsement! Transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product (e.g. Jun et al., 2023)
Instrumental conditioning
Behaviour followed by positive consequences = more likely to be repeated
Behaviour that is followed by a negative consequence = less likely to be repeated
E.g., 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
Reinforcement with positive feedback = attitude likely survives
Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972)
Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions
Infer attitudes from our behavior (using self as a mirror)
Behavior influences attitude towards object
E.g. I read at least one novel a week = I must enjoy reading novels
How attitudes are revealed
Can’t be seen (measured) directly
The challenge is to measure them:
Reliably (so that the measure gives consistent results over time)
Validity (so we are actually measuring attitudes and not something else)
Self-report and experimental paradigms
Attitude scales (overt – directly asking)
Implicit Association Task – compares different stimuli together to see how you associate things together (typically used to measure prejudice)
Physiological measures
E.g. skin resistance, heart rate, pupil dilation
Measures of overt behaviour
Frequency of behaviour
Trends and preferences over various objects
Non-verbal behaviour e.g. where you sit
Can attitudes predict behaviour?
“Because attitudes predict behaviour, they are considered the crown jewel of social psychology” (Crano & Prislin, 2006, p.360)
How we think about something is how we’re going to behave towards it
Core of self-concept (hobbies, beliefs, politics, music etc.)
Understand why and predict how people behave
But there could be a mismatch e.g. smokers often dislike smoking, understand the health risks, and intend to quit but continue to smoke
Attitudes and behaviour
LaPiere (1934): Famous study on racial prejudice
When a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels in the US, they received service 95% of the time without hesitation
However, in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards, 92% of the establishments replied saying they would not accept members of the Chinese race
Behaviour and attitude mismatch (serve in person but belief/attitude different)
Problems with the relationship between attitudes and behaviours
A number of problems to keep in mind:
Specifics (are the same people involved i.e. person who responded to letter or server)
Time (behaviour came first i.e. tested behaviour then attitude – cause and effect?)
Attitude strength & direct experience (simply yes / no does not show the complications of life)
Attitude <-> behaviour relationship
Other researchers do find similar effects:
Wicker (1969): Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour – the average correlation was .15 in a meta-analysis with 42 studies (there is an association but a weak one)
Gregson and Stacey (1981): Small positive correlation between (general) attitudes and alcohol consumption
Sheeran et al. (2016): Medium-to-large-sized changes in intentions are associated with only small-to-medium-sized behavioural changes
Seems that attitudes do predict, but the relationship is weaker than first envisaged
Does predict it but depends
Things that impact how well attitudes predict behaviour
1) How strong the attitude is:
Weaker attitude may not predict behaviour to the same extent
2) Whether it is formed through direct experience:
e.g., Haddock et al., (1999) found attitudes towards assisted dying was influenced by people’s experience of having direct encounter with assisted dying
3) How it is measured:
How specific the questions are
e.g., Davidson and Jaccard (1979) found women’s general attitudes toward birth control did not predict their use of the contraceptive pill as well as specific attitudes towards using the contraceptive pill within the next two years
It matters how closely the questions (intentions) relate to the behaviours
E.g. in the study, contraception wasn’t a good predictor but using the pill was
Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Azjen, 1991)
Multiple components
If I predict I can do something, I will actually do that behaviour
What you believe influenced by context e.g. positively reinforced by friends strengthens attitude
Brings together what you believe, social context and behavioural control (the three intersect to determine whether we do something)
Does the TPB replicate across cultures?
Cho and Lee (2015) polled Korean and US participants and found strong evidence for the theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions
Personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualistic national culture than a collective
Subjective norms has a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation than individualistic ones
These findings support other work showing:
Individualistic culture = behaviours determined by self-perceptions or internal beliefs
Collectivistic cultures = behaviours determined by social group pressures
Cognitive dissonance
Festinger, 1957
“Unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions [thoughts] that are inconsistent or do not fit in together” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p. 216)
Counter-attitudinal behaviour à feel discomfort / dissonance
Strive to reduce dissonance à can reduce dissonance by e.g. changing inconsistent cognition (change how you think about something)
Festinger (1957)
Counted dice (boring)
Experimenter asked participant to tell other participant it was fun (given a dollar or someone else was given two dollars)
Control lied then said it wasn’t enjoyable, $1 reported finding experiment enjoyable, $20 more ambivalent
In the $1, they have cognitive dissonance (said they liked it when they don’t, acting like they like it so say they like it) but $20 could justify behaviour because they’d made money (didn’t have dissonance)
Strategies to change attitudes
Strategy 1 = reduce importance (change cognition) e.g. ‘I know lots of people who have smoked all their lives and they haven’t got lung cancer’
Reduces dissonance – behaviour and attitude in sync
Strategy 2 = add an element (add a new cognition) e.g. ‘I’m addicted. I can’t help it. I need to smoke or the stress I’ll suffer will be just as unhealthy’
Rationalising dissonance
Strategy 3 = change one element (change behaviour) e.g. ‘I’ll stop smoking’
The power of persuasion
‘Who says what to whom and with what effect?’ (Hovland et al., 1953)
Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
Central route = when message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effort expended (really thinking about it)
Look at argument quality; being analytical, high effort, relatively enduring
Peripheral route = when arguments not well attended to; look to peripheral cues (e.g., attraction), low effort, relatively temporary
Attitude change better if you have time to think about arguments
Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)
Systematic processing – when a message is attended to carefully; scan & consider available arguments
Heuristic processing – use cognitive heuristics - e.g., ‘statistics don’t lie’
The key difference between the theories is pathways – The Elaboration Likelihood Model suggests pathways independent, whereby these could be active at the same time
How knowledge of attitudes is used in the real world
Political campaigns
Advertising/sales
Encouraging socially valuable behaviours, e.g. organ donation, voluntary work, environmental responsibility
Real-world example
Changing attitudes and behaviours: smoking
‘Smoking seriously harms you and others around you’
‘Smoking kills’
Which warning is most effective?
Hansen et al. (2010)
It depends
If smoking is a source of self-esteem for someone, this type of ‘mortality salient’ message actually makes them want to smoke more!
If their smoking behaviour is not linked to their self-esteem, this isn’t the case
Self-esteem e.g. ‘smoking allows me to feel valued by others’
Feel stress because death is salient, so smoke to cope with stress
