Lecture 6- Attitudes

Question 1

What’s the definition of attitude?

Answer 1

Stable positive or negative evaluations

Question 2

What are the three components of attitude?

Answer 2

• cognition: the thought component
• affect: the feeling component
• behaviour: the action component

Question 3

What is the mere exposure effect (Zajonc)?

Answer 3

Things become more likeable the more we are exposed to them because we view them as safer and also information is just easier to process the more ‘practice’ we have

Question 4

When does the mere exposure effect work better?

Answer 4

When we are not aware that we have seen the object/ person before e.g. priming

Question 5

What are two types of conditioning that could be responsible for attitude formation?

Answer 5

-Instrumental conditioning: learning in which behaviours become
more or less probable depending on their consequences
-Classical conditioning: learning through association

Question 6

What is a behaviorists approach to attitudes?

Answer 6

Attitude are behaviour, that is the only way we can see them.

Question 7

What is an example of classic conditioning influencing our attitudes?

Answer 7

Celebrity endorsements for products e.g. smoking

Question 8

What did Olson and Fazio (2006) show?

Answer 8

• They used an implicit attitude measurement.
• This invovled flashing the face of an African American and then a word (e.g. disgusting or fabulous). The question was then is this word positive or negative?
• The idea is that If you have a positive attitude to the face shown then you will be fast to say the word is positive if it is and slow to say it’s negative as the prime (face) actives that area of your semantic network. This test therefore reveals hidden attitudes.

Question 9

What is the theory of reasoned action?

Answer 9

It is a possibility for how attitudes are formed.

It involves combining beliefs about outcomes with evaluations of those outcomes to result in an attitude.

Question 10

Describe Lapierre’s (1934) study. What does it reveal?

Answer 10

Chinese couple and restaurant. Almost everyone treated them fine despite saying that they wouldn’t.

Discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors. Is it really worth measuring attitudes if they don’t predict behaviour well? However this study was not controlled very well.

Question 11

What is the idea of attitude accessibility? How does strength of association increase and what is the consequence of this?

Answer 11

• Attitudes are an association in memory e.g. representation of pizza is connected with positive feelings/ emotions in network.
• Strength of association increases with: attitude rehearsal and direct sensory experience
• The strongest attitudes are automatically accessible and highly accessible attitudes can predict behaviour + facilitate decision making

Question 12

How can the theory of reasoned action be revisited to predict behaviour?

Answer 12

Look at web in powerpoint

Question 13

What is the closest thing to behaviour which allows prediction?

Answer 13

Behavioural intention

Question 14

What is important about attitudes when predicting behaviour accurately?

Answer 14

Specificity, the more you know the more you can predict

Question 15

What is Fazio’s MODE model (integrative framework)?

Answer 15

• Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants of the attitude behaviour relationship
• When motivation and opportunity (cognitive resources) are high, attitudes will be reasoned out and thus won’t reflect behaviour well
• When either is low, people will rely on their most accessible attitudes to determine behaviour