Lecture 6 - Attitude Change

Question 1

Overview of this lecture

Answer 1

 Overview
 Importance of studying attitude change
 Applications in politics, marketing, health education,
environmental education, etc.
 Many different approaches to studying attitude
change
 I will focus on two contrasting approaches
 Cognitive dissonance theory
 Elaboration likelihood model

Question 2

Tell me about cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 2

 We experience dissonance whenever we are aware of
acting in a way that is inconsistent with our attitudes

 A key way to reduce dissonance is to bring one’s attitudes into line with one’s actions

 Attitudes should therefore generally be consistent with
behaviour

Question 3

More about CDT

Answer 3

Festinger 1957

Concerns the relationships between
cognitions
 A cognition is any bit of information we have
about ourselves or the world around us
 Relationship between cognitions can be
consonant, dissonant, or irrelevant

Question 4

What is evidence for CDT?

Answer 4

Festinger and Carlsmith 1959

Participant performed boring tasks

Participants in experimental conditions were then
invited to help by telling the ‘next participant’ that the
tasks were interesting
 These participants were offered $1 or $20 for giving this
help
 Participants in the control condition did not have to ‘lie’
and were offered no money
 All participants were later asked to evaluate the
experimental tasks

• More exposure to cognitive dissonance rated the task less postively than those exposed to less cognitive dissonance

Question 5

What are some ways of inducing cognitive dissonance?

Answer 5

Getting people to engage in counter-attitudinal
behaviour (induced compliance or ‘forced’ compliance)
 Later research showed that what is dissonance-arousing is the
sense that you are personally responsible for bringing about
undesirable consequences
 Getting people to make choices between alternatives
that are roughly equal in attractiveness
 e.g., consumer decisions
 Exposing people to information that is inconsistent with
their attitudes and/or behaviour
 e.g., health education

Question 6

Tell me about a contrasting perspective (ELM)

Answer 6

 In cognitive dissonance theory the main focus is on how
behaviour influences attitude change
 The Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo,
1986) and similar theoretical models focus on the non-
behavioural factors that determine attitude change
 The ELM is an example of a ‘dual-process’ theory of
attitude change
 Key feature is the distinction between a ‘central route’
and a ‘peripheral route’ to attitude change

Question 7

MORE NEEDED TO ADD