Lecture 7: Attitudes and Attitude-Behaviour Relationships

Question 1

What is an Attitude?

Answer 1

…associations between attitude objects and evaluations of those attitude objects

Question 2

Attitudes have three components - what are they?

Answer 2

Affective - liking or feelings about the attitude objectBehavioural - how we behave toward the attitude objectCognitive - our thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object

Question 3

What are attitude properties?

Answer 3

Valence - evaluation of attitude object as positive or negativeStrength - certainty or probability with which we hold an attitudeComplexity - number of elements in an attitude

Question 4

Why study attitudes?

Answer 4

Attitudes influence social cognition (function as schemas for organising and interpreting information about social objects)Attitudes influence behaviour (we can act in way that consistent or inconsistent with our attitudes)

Question 5

How are attitudes measured?

Answer 5

Explicit measuresImplicit measures Infer from behaviour

Question 6

What are explicit measures of attitudes?

Answer 6

> self-report measures

Question 7

What are the types of explicit measures?

Answer 7

1. Guttman scales (dichotomous yes/no statement which gradually increase in specificity)2. Semantic differentials - choose a position between two bipolar adjectives 3. Likert scales - indicate level of agreement with a statement

Question 8

What are three recurring attitudes that are used to evaluate words or phrases - found by Osgood?

Answer 8

1. evaluation 2. potency3. activity

Question 9

What does Osgood’s evaluation dimension relate to?

Answer 9

adjective pair good-bad

Question 10

What does Osgood’s potency dimension relate to?

Answer 10

adjective pair strong-weak

Question 11

What does Osgood’s activity dimension relate to?

Answer 11

adjective pair active-passive

Question 12

Are Osgood’s dimensions cross cultural?

Answer 12

Yes. found in study of dozens of cultures.

Question 13

What is the difference between 5-7 point Likert scale vs. 10 point?

Answer 13

5-7 point scale can produce slightly higher mean scores

Question 14

Why are negatively worded items used in Likert scales?

Answer 14

To pick out people who just select one number

Question 15

What are implicit measures of attitudes?

Answer 15

measures that provide access to cognitive domain that may not be reached by self-report measures

Question 16

What do implicit measures rely on?

Answer 16

performance on experimental tasks not on introspective awareness

Question 17

What are benefits of implicit measures?

Answer 17

Measure attitudes> not aware of > not willing to report

Question 18

Examples of implicit measures?

Answer 18

1) Implicit Association Test (IAT).2) Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT).

Question 19

What is the problem with self-report measures?

Answer 19

1. self-presentation concerns 2. lack of accessibility to the construct of interest

Question 20

What are assumptions of implicit methods?

Answer 20

Attitudes can be represented as a network of variable-strength associations among person concepts and attributes (including valences)