lecture 6 - attitudes Flashcards

Question

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)

Answer 1

* 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 results in notes higher scores reflect more positive evaluation of the tasks

Answer 2

* 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

Answer 3

* 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

Answer 4

diagam in notes

Answer 5

* Participants listened to message advocating ‘senior comprehensive examinations’ under one of two conditions: * university considering introducing these exams next year (high involvement) * university considering introducing these exams next decade (low involvement) * Message was either * strong (high argument quality) or weak (low argument quality) * Message had been produced by * either local high school class (low expertise) or “Carnegie Commission on Higher Education” (high expertise)

Answer 6

* Strong arguments * Prestigious universities have comprehensive exams to maintain academic excellence * Average starting salaries are higher for graduates of schools with the exams * Weak arguments * The risk of failing the exam is a challenge most students would welcome The difficulty of the exam would prepare one for later competitions in life

Answer 7

* Results * In low involvement condition, source expertise (but not argument quality) affected attitudes In high involvement condition, argument quality (but not source expertise) affected attitudes look at graphs in notes

Answer 8

* Participants listened to a message advocating senior comprehensive examinations under one of four distraction conditions (monitor and record position of Xs projected during message): * No (zero Xs per minute) * Low (4 Xs per minute) * Medium (12 Xs per minute) * High (20 Xs per minute) * Message was either strong or weak Task is to count the x’s, and to record their position (dual task conditon) at higher levels of distraction - ptps who listened to strong message showed less agreement and ptps who listens to weak message showed more agreement, than at lower levels of distraction look at graph in notes

Answer 9

- Attitudes have a behavioural intention component – a motivation or expressed intention to behave in some way or other that is consistent with the affective and cognitive components of an attitude. For example, many people have negative attitudes towards smoking and express the intention not to smoke. But although we may express an attitude about a behaviour, this does not guarantee that we actually behave in a way consistent with this attitude; people who intend not to smoke often smoke. Intentions and behaviour are not the same thing. - People do not always behave as their expressed attitudes and beliefs would lead us to expect. la pieres study has been cited as evidence that attitudes do not always influence behaviour; indeed hundreds of studies of the relationship between attitudes and behaviour suggest, that on average, attitudes predict only 2–3 per cent of behaviour (Wicker, 1969). One way to think of this is that only two or three times out of 100 do people actually do what they say – perhaps we should not be quite so harsh on our politicians. - There are ways in which we can be much more accurate at predicting behaviour from attitudes. Attitude specificity is one important influence on attitude–behaviour congruence. If you measure a person’s general attitude towards a topic, you will be unlikely to be able to predict their behaviour Behaviours, unlike attitudes, are specific events. However, as the attitude being measured becomes more specific, the person’s behaviour becomes more predictable.

Answer 10

- Probably the most systematic account of how attitudes and behaviour are related has been developed by Fishbein and Ajzen (see Ajzen, 1989) in their theories of reasoned action and of planned behaviour. - Someone’s intention to behave in a certain way is strengthened if (1) they have a positive attitude towards the behaviour, (2) they believe many people who matter also have a favourable attitude towards the behaviour, (3) they believe they have the resources and opportunity to engage in the behaviour and (4) the intention is very specific to one particular behaviour.

Answer 11

- Attitudes are cognitively represented in memory and like any other cognitive representations they are likely to have a greater influence on behaviour if they are readily accessible - easily and readily recalled. - Research shows that attitudes affect behavioural intentions and behaviour more strongly if the attitudes are more accessible in memory - Doll and Azjen 1992 Attitudes also vary in strength - a strong attitude is one that has a strong associative link with the attitude object so once activated the attitude has a more automatic link with behavioural intentions and ultimately behaviour - Fazio et al 1986

Answer 12

- Another factor that influences the attitude–behaviour relationship is the extent to which an attitude is an important aspect of the kind of person we are. - Self-defining attitudes, ones that define our identity, particularly our social identity as a group member, are more likely to be expressed as behaviour. More specifically, attitudes are more likely to express themselves as behaviour if the attitudes (and associated behaviour) are normative properties of a social group with which people identify (Terry and Hogg, 1996). To test this idea, Terry and Hogg (1996) measured attitudes and intentions relating to taking regular exercise and adopting sun-protective behaviours. They found a much tighter attitude–intention link among student participants who identified strongly with a student peer group for whom they felt regular exercise and adopting sun-protective behaviour was a strong group-defining norm

Answer 13

- People often attempt to persuade us to change our attitudes. - Social psychological research on persuasion has taken its form from an early and highly influential programme of research by Hovland et al (1953). Hovland and colleagues famously asked, ‘Who says what to whom and with what effect?’ This a question which identifies the three key aspects of persuasive communication: the source of the communication, the content of the message and the audience or target of the communication.

Answer 14

- Credibility and attractiveness are two aspects of the source of a message that have a major effect on persuasiveness. A message tends to be more persuasive if its source is credible. - Source credibility is high when the source is perceived as knowledgeable and is trusted to communicate this knowledge accurately. .

Answer 15

in one study, people developed a more favourable attitude towards different types of medicine when the information appeared in the prestigious medical journal New England Journal of Medicine than when it appeared in a mass-circulation tabloid (Hovland and Weiss, 1951). Research by Bochner and Insko (1966) showed that credible sources are not only more persuasive but they can also induce the greatest amount of attitude change. Bochner and Insko took advantage of the fact that their student participants believed that eight hours of sleep a night was required to maintain good health. They then exposed them to one of two sources of opinion, a high credibility Nobel Prize-winning sleep physiologist or a less credible YMCA instructor, who said that less sleep was optimal. Both sources shifted the students’ attitudes when the sources advocated between seven and three hours’ sleep, but when they advocated one or two hours the credible source was significantly more effective than the less credible source at changing attitudes.

Answer 16

- For example, physically attractive people are more likely than physically unattractive people to persuade others to sign a petition (Chaiken, 1979). Individuals who are asked to endorse products for advertisers are almost always physically attractive or appealing in other ways. Since people tend to like people who are similar to them more than people who are not, similarity should have the same effect. However, this does not seem to be the case. People are more persuaded by similar others when the issue is a matter of taste (e.g. musical preference), but more persuaded by dissimilar others when the issue is a matter of fact (e.g. who won the Tour de France in a particular year) (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981).

Answer 17

- As you would expect, aspects of the message itself are important in determining its persuasive appeal. - For example, is an argument that provides only one side of an issue more effective than one that presents both sides? The answer depends on the audience. If the audience either knows very little about the issue or already holds a strong position with respect to it, one-sided arguments tend to be more effective. If the audience is well informed about the issue, however, a two-sided argument tends to be more persuasive (McAlister et al, 1980). - Most communicators tend to avoid negative comments about individuals and stereotypes of groups and prefer to emphasise positive aspects, although there are notable presidential examples. Audiences tend to report disliking communicators who say they dislike others (Ames et al, 2010) and audiences tend to dislike even more those communicators who inappropriately criticise or insult others. Communicators tend to avoid negative stereotyping, possibly for this reason, at the cost of accuracy (Bergsieker et al, 2012). Bergsieker et al found that communicators were more likely to emphasise the positive characteristics of ambivalent groups – for example, high in intelligence, low in kindness; or the opposite – and avoid the negative stereotypes associated with them or negative statements which are factually correct.

Answer 18

research has found that political leaders and political party activists use more abstract language when addressing audiences that are sympathetic with, and share their, views. The concrete or abstract content of the message can influence sympathetic and non-sympathetic listeners differently. For example, political messages that contain abstract language are considered more persuasive by sympathetic audiences but ones containing concrete language are considered more persuasive by audiences that do not share the individual’s view (Menegatti and Rubini, 2013). Some research also suggests that some media are more persuasive than others and that these media might have some important, real-life consequences such as how we are evaluated at a job interview. For example, Schroeder and Epley (2015) found that when people pitched for jobs to professional recruiters and hypothetical employers, they were more likely to be judged as competent, thoughtful and intelligence if the recruiters could hear the pitch rather than read a pitch (such as via a CV or a letter of application).

Answer 19

- Research on the audience or target of the communication identifies a number of factors that influence how easily persuaded people may be. One finding is that people who have very low or very high self-esteem are less easily persuaded than people with average self-esteem, because the former are either too anxious to pay attention or too self-assured to be influenced (Rhodes and Wood, 1992). There are no straightforward sex differences in persuadability, but complex interactions (Carli, 1990). For example, Covell et al. (1994) studied the effect of tobacco and alcohol advertisements on Canadian adult and adolescent males and females and discovered a sex difference among the adolescents only – female adolescents were more influenced than male adolescents by advertisements that were strongly image oriented. As with sex, there is no clear relationship between age and persuadability – some research finds no age effect whereas other studies find that younger and older people are more easily persuaded than people in their middle years (Visser and Krosnick, 1998).

Answer 20

- Petty and Cacioppo (1986) have proposed the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to account for attitude change through persuasion (Figure 15.3). According to this model, persuasion can take either a central or a peripheral route. - The central route requires a person to think critically about the argument being presented, to weigh its strengths and weaknesses, and to elaborate on the relevant themes. - At issue is the substance of the argument, not its emotional or superficial appeal. The peripheral route, on the other hand, refers to attempts at persuasion in which the change is associated with positive stimuli – a professional athlete, a millionaire or an attractive model – which actually may have nothing to do with the substance of the argument. - Selling products by associating them with attractive people or by implying that buying the product will result in emotional, social or financial benefits are examples of the use of peripheral attitude change technique

Answer 21

People can systematically consider all aspects of a message, or they can very superficially rely on simple heuristics such as thinking that longer arguments or arguments with more statistical facts and figures must be more true, or that all messages from politicians are lies. People are more likely to resort to heuristic processing if they have limited time to process the message or if they are in a good mood. So, to change attitudes towards consumer products it is quite effective to bombard hurried people with advertisements that put them in a good mood and present statistical/scientific information from people dressed as scientists. This encourages heuristic processing and encourages the heuristic that messages backed by science must be true. One difference between the elaboration likelihood model and the heuristic–systematic model is that whereas a message is processed either centrally or peripherally at any one time, it can be processed systematically and heuristically at the same time.

Answer 22

- Far more attempts at persuasion fail than succeed. Researchers have identified three major factors: reactance, forewarning and inoculation. - Reactance refers to a tendency to resist persuasion, or even move one’s attitudes in an opposite direction, when a deliberate persuasion attempt is detected. People do not like to have their personal freedom limited by being pressured to change their attitudes. When people are forewarned of an influence attempt they are less easily influenced, particularly as regards attitudes that are considered important. - Forewarning allows people to generate defensive counterarguments to protect their attitudes McGuire and Papageorgis (1961) conducted a study where student participants who strongly endorsed truisms such as ‘It’s a good idea to brush your teeth after every meal’, were exposed to a strong attack on these truisms and then had their attitudes remeasured. Some participants were prepared for the attack by being provided with supporting arguments defending their position, some were inoculated by being exposed to a mild form of the attack, and some were not prepared at all. Supportive defence and inoculation reduced attitude change relative to no defence, but inoculation was significantly more effective.

Answer 23

- Most of us believe that although we can induce someone to do something, getting someone to change an attitude is much harder. However, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance and supporting experimental evidence indicate otherwise. Under the right conditions, when people are coerced into doing something or are paid to do something, the act of compliance – simply engaging in a particular behaviour at someone else’s request – may cause a change in their underlying attitudes. - Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that dissonance occurs when a person’s behaviour has undesirable outcomes for self-esteem; there is a conflict between the person’s belief in their own worth and the fact that they have done something that damages this belief. The person will then seek to justify the behaviour.

Answer 24

verified this observation by having participants perform very boring tasks, such as putting spools on a tray, dumping them out, putting them on the tray again, dumping them out again and so on. After the participants had spent an hour on exercises like this, the experimenter asked each participant whether they would help out in the study by trying to convince the next person that the task was interesting and enjoyable. Some participants received $1 for helping out; others received $20. Control participants were paid nothing. The experimenters predicted that participants who were paid only $1 would perceive the task as being relatively interesting. They had been induced to lie to a ‘fellow student’ (actually, a confederate of the experimenters) for a paltry sum. Like the vacuum cleaner sales representative, they should convince themselves of the worth of the experiment to maintain their self-esteem. Poorly paid participants did in fact rate the task better than did those who were well paid. Clearly, our actions have an effect on our attitudes. When faced with inconsistency between our behaviour and our attitudes, we often change our attitudes to suit our behaviour.

Answer 25

- Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance accounts for another relation between behaviour and attitudes: our tendency to value an item more if it costs us something. For example, some people buy extremely expensive brands of cosmetics even though the same ingredients are used in much cheaper brands. Presumably, they believe that if an item costs more, it must work better. Following the same rationale, most animal shelters sell their stray animals to prospective pet owners, not only because the money helps defray their operating costs, but also because they assume that a purchased pet will be treated better than a free pet.

Answer 26

Aronson and Mills (1959) verified this phenomenon. The experimenters subjected female college students to varying degrees of embarrassment as a prerequisite for joining what was promised to be an interesting discussion about sexual behaviour. To produce slight embarrassment, they had the participants read aloud five sex-related words (such as prostitute, virgin and petting – remember that this research was conducted in the 1950s) to the experimenter, who was male. To produce more severe embarrassment, they had the women read aloud 12 obscene four-letter words and two sexually explicit passages of prose. The control group read nothing at all. The ‘interesting group discussion’ turned out to be a tape recording of a very dull conversation.

Answer 27

Festinger’s theory predicts that the women who had to go through an embarrassing ordeal in order to join the group would experience some cognitive dissonance. They had suffered an ordeal in order to take part in an interesting discussion that turned out actually to be very dull. These negative and positive experiences are inconsistent and dissonance arousing, and should make them view the ‘discussion’ more favourably so that their effort would not be perceived as having been completely without value. The results were as predicted: the participants who had been embarrassed the most rated the discussion more favourably than did the control participants or those who had experienced only slight embarrassment. We value things at least partly by how much they cost us. One controversial implication is that people might value social goods like education and national parks more highly if they personally paid (more) for them.

Answer 28

- Bem (1972) proposed an alternative to the theory of cognitive dissonance. Bem noted that an observer who attempts to make judgements about someone’s attitudes, emotions or other internal states must examine the person’s behaviour for clues. Bem suggested that people analyse their own internal states in a similar way, making attributions about the causes of their own behaviour by analysing the situation in which the behaviour occurs to determine the motivation. - Perhaps self-perception and cognitive dissonance occur under different conditions, producing attitude changes for different reasons. - One factor that may determine whether dissonance or self-perception processes come into play involves the idea that attitudes have ranges of acceptable behaviour. For example, a pacifist might agree with using force to protect a helpless child from attack but would not agree with using force to react to a personal insult. - According to Fazio et al (1977), a pacifist who used force to protect a child might change his attitudes through self-perception (the behaviour falls within the latitude of acceptable behaviours), whereas a pacifist who struck out in retaliation for an insult would experience dissonance (the behaviour falls outside the latitude of acceptable behaviours). - Using a slightly different logic, Cooper and Fazio (1984) suggest that when counter-attitudinal behaviour has undesirable consequences, we go through an attributional/self-perception process where we decide whether the behaviour was voluntary. If it was, then we experience dissonance.