lesson 3 - attitudes and attitude change

Question 1

what is an attitude?

Answer 1

“(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).

Question 2

What 3 components does an attitude consist of?

Answer 2

Rosenberg & Hovland’s 3 component model:
- Affective
- Cognitive
- Behavioural

Question 3

Defining the 3 components in Rosenberg & Hovland’s model

Answer 3

Affective: Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object. E.g., eating meat – the thought of eating meat makes me feel sick.
Cognitive: Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object. E.g., it is unhealthy and wrong to eat meat.
Behavioural: Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour. E.g., I will only eat vegetarian food.

Question 4

Dimensions to attitudes - how do they become stronger/weaker

Answer 4

• Simple dimension: ‘dogs are sociable’
• Complex dimension (consistent or inconsistent) – “dogs look well cute and friendly” but “I hate the way they smell”.
  *Attitudes become stronger – more extreme positive or negative – if they are complex and evaluated consistently.
  *If they are inconsistent, they become weaker or moderate as they become more complex (Judd & Lusk, 1984).

Question 5

What is the function of attitudes? Katz 1960 (4)

Answer 5

1. Knowledge
2. Utilitarian
3. Ego-defensive
4. Value expressive

Question 6

What is the function of attitudes? Katz (elaboration)

Answer 6

1. Knowledge Function: Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence.
2. Utilitarian Function: Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes.
3. Ego-defensive: Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world.
4. Value Expressive: Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept.

Question 7

where do attitudes come from?

Answer 7

Attitudes can come from learning from others (social learning)
Mere exposure effect (Robert Zajonc, 1968)
* Repeated exposure of a stimulus –> enhancement of preference for that stimulus (Zajonc, 2001).
* For example, participants were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison & Zajonc, 1970).

Question 8

what is classical conditioning

Answer 8

*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 positive image of the celebrity to the product.

Question 9

what is instrumental conditioning?

Answer 9

*Behaviour followed by positive consequences
- more likely to be repeated; behaviour that is followed by negative consequences is not.
- e.g., Insko (1965) showed that participants reported a more favourable 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.

Question 10

self perception theory Bem 1972 explains where attitudes come from

Answer 10

*Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions:
*Infer attitudes from our behaviour:
e.g., I read at least one novel a week
I must enjoy reading novels.

Question 11

challenges with measuring attitudes

Answer 11

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)

Question 12

Measuring attitudes:

Answer 12

Self-report and experimental paradigms:
- attitude scales
implicit associations task

Physiological measures:
- e.g., heart rate, pupil dilation.

Measures of overt behaviour:
- frequency of behaviour
- trends and preferences over various objects
- non verbal behaviour

Question 13

why do we want to research attitudes?

Answer 13

• predict behaviour
  -Core of self-concept – hobbies, beliefs, politics, music, etc
  -Understand how people behave.
  -But there could be a mis match – people may not act how they believe, e.g., Smokers often dislike smoking, understand the health risks, & intend to quit but continue to smoke…

Question 14

Racial prejudice study - Chinese

Answer 14

*When a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, 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.
*Mismatch between intention and behaviour.

Question 15

Factors to keep in mind - racial prejudice study

Answer 15

Specifics (are the same people involved – e.g., person responding to the letter is likely to be the manager, person serving customers likely to be an employee)
- Time (behaviour came before attitude was asked)
- Attitude strength & direct experience (simply yes / no does not account for the complications of life)

Question 16

The relationship between attitudes and behaviour

Answer 16

*Wicker (1969): Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour – average correlation was .15 in a meta-analysis with 42 studies;
*Gregson and Stacey (1981): Small positive correlation between (general) attitudes and alcohol consumption.
*Seems that attitudes do predict, but the relationship is weaker than first envisaged.

Question 17

Factors that influence the extent to which attitudes predict behaviour

Answer 17

• strength of the attitude
• if the attitude is formed through direct experience.
  *e.g., Haddock et al., (1999) found attitudes towards assisted suicide were influenced by people’s experience of having direct encounter with assisted suicide.
  *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.
  -How closely the questions (intentions) relate to the behaviours.

Question 18

Theory of planned behaviour:

Answer 18

Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Ajzen, 1991):
Behaviour is a function of:
1. attitudes –> what do I think?
2. subjective norms –> what do others think (particularly those close to you)
3. perceived behavioural controls –> can I do it?
However there is a gap between intention and behaviour. But this can be overcome through implementation intention (a plan)

Question 19

what is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 19

“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 → feel discomfort / dissonance.
*Strive to reduce dissonance
- can reduce dissonance by e.g., changing inconsistent cognition. Reduce by changing one component – e.g., fear of gym but desire to go, deal with fear and go to the gym or decide against going to the gym.

Question 20

Can we change attitudes? (experiment)

Answer 20

*Boring task
*3 different conditions - $1, $20 or no money.
*Ps asked to lie to next participant to say task was fun when it wasn’t.
*Next ps asked if they enjoyed the task.
*Consistent beliefs – saying they like it and truly believe they do. expressed greater enjoyment than controls as a result of the influence of the other person on attitudes.

Question 21

The power of persuasion: Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

• what is elaboration
• high vs low

Answer 21

elaboration is how much consideration you put into a decision.
high elaboration involves weighing up information carefully prior to making a decision. This is associated with central route processing.
low elaboration involves very little conscious thinking time to make a decision. This is associated with peripheral route processing.

Question 22

Dual process models: heuristic systematic models (Chaiken, 1980):

Answer 22

careful processing vs the use of mental shortcuts
Systematic processing – When message is attended to carefully; scan & consider available arguments

Heuristic processing – Use cognitive heuristics - e.g., ‘statistics don’t lie’

Key difference is pathways – Elaboration. Likelihood Model suggests pathways independent, whereby these could be active at the same time!

Question 23

How is knowledge of attitudes used in the real world?

Answer 23

*Political campaigns – e.g., videos of celebrities talking about climate change.
*Advertising / sales
*Encouraging socially valuable behaviours, e.g., Organ donation, Voluntary work, Environmental responsibility.

Question 24

Real world examples of changing attitudes: smoking

Answer 24

Changing attitudes and behaviours – smoking
*‘Smoking seriously harms you and others around you.’
*‘Smoking kills.’
*It depends… (Hansen et al. 2010):
*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.
*If smoking is a coping mechanism for stressful situations, they will smoke in response to the slogans which means they are not effective.

Question 25

Theory of planned behaviour: when is it typically used?

Answer 25

• by businesses (e.g., to encourage customers to use online shopping)
• in public health planning (e.g., healthy eating campaigns)

Question 26

advantages and disadvantages to the theory of planned behaviour

Answer 26

Advantages:
- allows us to make predictions about behaviour
- can gather data to identify the biggest barriers to changing people’s behaviour.

Disadvantages:
- model fails in some situations, does not tell us how to address the gap between intention and behaviour
- does not consider other behavioural factors like emotion
- model does not tell you what action to take

Question 27

how is cognitive dissonance resolved

Answer 27

• change behaviour
  or
• change cognition
  or
• add a new cognition

smoking example: either stop smoking, trivialise concerns about the health risks of smoking and continue smoking or add another element, e.g., I do smoke but I have a healthy diet and exercise regularly

Question 28

elaboration likelihood model, Petty and Cacioppo
what factors determine if elaboration is likely to be high

Answer 28

• motivation
• ability
• opportunity
  if one or more is low, use peripheral processing.
  h/e the two processing routes are not binary, they can be used at the same time

Question 29

central vs peripheral route processing

Answer 29

• central processing is a result of a carefully evaluated decision. thus, requires critical thinking, creates long lasting views and behaviour reflects attitudes.
• peripheral processing is a decision made without any real thinking time. decisions are based on the positive or negative views of other people, people do not have enough time to think about significant life decisions, they also do not cling on to attitudes as strongly.

Question 30

shampoo example of the elaboration likelihood model - petty and cacioppo

Answer 30

advertising:
adverts try to target central and peripheral processing.
central: emphasises the unique formula of a new shampoo, discusses the benefits for hair and the environment with the natural ingredients used
peripheral: celebrity or social media influencer endorsement of the product, advertisers will choose an individual that the target audience admire.

Question 31

advantages and disadvantages of the elaboration processing model, Petty and Cacioppo

Answer 31

advantages:
- provides a framework to assess how best to persuade
- can use both routes at the same time

disadvantages:
- does not tell us which route to use
- assumption that the central route is stronger and harder to alter.
- no guidance on how to persuade a low elaborator