PSY2001 S2 W1 Attitudes Flashcards
What are Attitudes?
Allport 1935
The concept of attitudes is probably the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American social psychology. No other term appears more frequently in the experimental and theoretical literature
What is Prejudice?
Negative attitudes towards outgroups
What is Self-esteem?
Attitude towards oneself
What is Interpersonal attraction?
Attitudes towards specific others
What is attitude object?
refers to the person, place, issue, thing etc…towards which we hold the attitude
What is the Single Component (Unidimensional) Definition of attitudes?
Petty & Cacioppo, 1981
Generally focused on affect (feelings)
“the term attitude should be used to refer to a general, enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object or issue”
What is the Tri-Component (tripartite) Definition of attitudes?
e.g. Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960
Affective: positive or negative feelings about object
Behavioural: tendencies to act toward object
Cognitive: beliefs and thoughts about object
How do we measure attitudes?
Self-report measures, Attitude Scales, Psysiological Measures & Covert measures
What are some self-report measures of Attitudes?
Focus groups & Interviews
What are some Attitude Scales?
Likert Scales & Semantic differentials
What is an example of a Likert Scale?
Participants rate agreement with series of positive and negative statements about the attitude object.
E.G
1- I enjoy drinking PRIME energy drinks [Strongly Disagree 1234567 Strongly Agree]
2- PRIME energy drinks are too expensive [Strongly Disagree 1234567 Strongly Agree]
> Mean attiude rating
What is an example of semantic differentials?
Participants rate the attitude object according to pairs of opposing evaluative words.
Heavy metal music is…
1. good [1234567] bad
2. pleasant [1234567] unpleasant
3. positive [1234567] negative
> Mean attitude rating
What are covert measures of attitudes?
Sbtle ways to measure attitudes.
Behavioural measures & Affective Measures
What are Behavioural Measures?
Based on behavioural observation, e.g., seating distance, eye contact, body posture, approach and avoidance measures (i.e. more negative attitudes leads to people putting the chairs fair apart).
What is a affective Measure?
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
We are faster to classify things that are related in memory than things that are unrealted.
E.g. Positive attitude to cats= faster response to pictures of cats when they require the same key press as positive words vs. negative words
E.g. . IAT = different stimuli (positive/negative words) and particular catogorie (photos of white people or black people (prejudice))
What are some physiological measures?
Pupillary Response (dilation and constriction)
Facial Electromyography (Facial EMG)
What is Facial Electromyography (Facial EMG)?
Electrodes used to measure facial muscle activity (even very small changes in activity). Activation of zygomatic major muscle (smiling) vs. corrugator supercilli muscle (frowning) indicative of more positive vs. negative attitudes, respectivel.
What are explicit attitudes?
Rydell et al. 2006
attitudes that people can report and whose expression can be consciously controlled
What is the Mere-exposure effect?
Zajonc’s 1968
Tendency to develop more positive feelings towards more familiar objects
How are attitudes formed?
Behavioural approaches (Mere exposure, Evaluative conditioning) & Cognitive Approaches (self-perception)
What are implicit attitudes?
Rydell et al. 2006
attitudes to which people do not initially have conscious access and whose activation cannot be controlled
What are the two emprical examples of mere exposure?
Advertising & Interpersonal attraction
What is the emprical example of advertising for mere exposure?
Fang, Singh & Ahluwalia (2007)
Participants exposed to banner ads at the top of a web article rated their reaction to the banner as more positive when they saw it 20 times vs. 5 times vs. 0 times
What is the emprical example of interpersonal attraction for mere exposure?
Moreland & Beach (1992)
Students rated women who had attended their class as more attractive when the women had attended 15 classes vs. 10 classes vs. 5 classes
What is evaluative conditioning?
Bar-Anan, De Houwer & Nosek, 2010
When people are repeatedly exposed to a neutral stimulus that appears in temporal proximity to an affective stimulus, their subsequent evaluation of the neutral stimulus often becomes more similar to the valence of the affective stimulus
What is the essential information about evaluative conditioning?
Pairing a new, neutral, stimulus (Conditioned Stimulus) with an already positive thing (Unconditioned Stimulus) > positive attitude
Pairing a new, neutral stimulus with an already negative thing > negative attitude
What is the empirical examples for evaluative conditioning ?
Advertising & Healthy eating
What is the emprical example of advertising for evaluative conditioning?
Biegler and Vargas (2016)
demonstrated that participants rated a fictitious anti-flu drug as more effective, safe and beneficial when it was paired with positive vs. negative images.
What is the emprical example of health eating for evaluative conditioning?
Hollands, Prestwich & Marteau, 2011
demonstrated that participants showed more negative implicit attitudes to energy-dense snack foods after images of these snack foods were paired with images of potential adverse health consequences
What is the self-perception theory?
Bem, 1965
We form attitudes by observing our behaviour and the circumstances in which it occurs and making inferences (attributions)
What is the empirical evidence for self-perception as a cognitive approach to attitude formation?
Strack, Martin & Stepper (1998)
Participants that evaluated cartoons while holding a pen in their teeth thought the cartoons were funnier than those who held the pen in their lips..
What is the empirical evidence for self-perception as a cognitive approach to attitude formation?
Ito et al. (2006)
Participants who held a pen in their teeth while looking at photos of Black males showed significantly less implicit bias on the IAT than those who did the same while looking at photos of White males
What is the facial feedback hypothesis?
Facial activity can influence affective responses
Why do we have attitudes?
Kartz 1960
Attitude formation should be understood in terms of the needs that attitudes serve. Different motivations underlie different attitudes, and there is unlikely to be any single cause of a specific type of attitude.
What are Katz’s 4 attitude functions?
Utilitarian/Instrumental
Ego-defensive
Value-expensive
Knowledge/Cognitive Economy
What is the Utilitarian/Instrumental function of attidue?
Katz 1960
Attitudes exist because they are useful.
We are motivated to obtain rewards and avoid punishment. So we develop positive attitudes to objects that help us obtain rewards and reach goals and negative attitudes to objects that bring punishment or prevent us achieving our goals.
What is the Ego-defensive function of attidue?
Katz 1960
Attitudes help protect our self-image
i.e. protect us from unacceptable internal and external threats
What is the empirical example of ego-defensive funciton of attitudes?
Knight Lapinski & Boster (2001)
Students received information suggesting that their self-image as a ‘serious student’ was incorrect or correct.
Students who received self-image inconsistent information rated it more negatively than students who received self-image consistent information.
More negative evaluation > greater message discounting [This message isn’t important, relevant etc
] > source derogation [The source of this message is stupid, not reasonable etc.
]
What is the Value-expressive function of attidue?
Katz 1960
Attitudes help us express values that are integral to our self-concept.
i.e. they help communicate what the type of person we are (e.g., having a positive attitude towards LGBTQ+ solidarity because you value equality)
What is the Knowledge/Cognitive Economy function of attidue?
I.e. they help us:
Organise information and give a sense of predictability in our complex social world.
Act as a frame of reference for sorting new information and streamline information-processing. E.g., “I like fruit. Durians are a fruit, so I’ll probably like them”
What is attitude change?
Cacioppo, Petty & Crites, 1994
“Modification of an individual’s general evaluative perception of a stimulus or set of stimuli”
What is persuasion?
Cacioppo, Petty & Crites, 1994
An active attempt to change a person’s attitude through information
How can we chane people’s attitudes?
Those that model/try to change attitudes through communication
Those that model/try to change attitudes by changing behaviour
How can you change attitudes through communication?
Advert, Arguments & Debates
What approach answers the following question: What characteristics of communications do we need to consider to change people’s attitudes?
The Yale approach to persuasion (Hovland): Who says what to whom and with what effect?
3- Source: Who is trying to do the persuading?
4- Message: What is the content of the message, and how is that content expressed?
5- Audience: To whom is the message targeted?
What are two source characterisitcs?
Yale Approach
Attractiveness & Credibility
What is Attractiveness ?
Source Charactersitcs (Yale Appraoch)
A substantial amount of research finds that more attractive sources are more persuasive than less attractive sources
What is credibility?
Source characteristics (Yale Appraoch)
A substantial amount of research finds that high credibility sources are more persuasive than low credibility sources
What is a message characterisitc?
Yale Appraoch
Fear appeals
What are fear appeals?
Persuasive messages that arouse fear (common in public health campaigns).
A substantial amount of research finds that messages containing strong ‘fear appeals’ are more persuasive than messages containing lower or no fear appeals.
What is a limit to fear appeals?
Ruiter et al., 2014
in some cases, research has found that fear appeals are less persuasive or may backfire.
“Reactance is the motivation to restore behavioural freedoms when they are threatened” (Brehm, 1966)
Messages that threaten behavioural freedom (e.g. those that use controlling language) prompt feelings of anger and other negative cognitions and can lead to reduced persuasion
What are audiance characterisitcs?
Yale Approach
A variety of individual difference factors affect the likelihood of persuasion.
Need for cognition, Self-monitoring & Regulatory focus/fit
What is need for cognition?
Audiance characterisitcs (Yale Appraoch)
individual’s tendency to engage in effortful cognition. E.g., Cacioppo et al. (1983) found that argument quality had a larger effect on persuasion in individuals high in need for cognition).
Some people like thinking some don’t People who have high need cognition high quality argument is more persuasive.
What is self-monitoring?
Audiance characterisitcs (Yale Appraoch)
DeBono, Leavitt, & Backus (2003) found that high self-monitors were more positively influenced by attractive product packaging than low self-monitors.
Awareness
What is regulatory focus/fit?
Audiance characterisitcs (Yale Appraoch)
Whether individuals have a ‘promotion’ or ‘prevention’ focus and how that fits with the regulatory orientation of the message (e.g., Cesario et al. (2004) found enhanced persuasion when there was high regulatory fit)
Fear appeals work better on who?
Women
What is a limit (a but) of the Yale appraoch?
It’s not that simple.
“Existing literature supported the view that nearly every independent variable studied increased persuasion in some circumstances, had no effect in others, and decreased persuasion in still other contexts”
So rather than looking at whether certain characteristics increased persuasion, researchers started to look at how persuasion works
What is the elaboration-likelihood model?
A range of conditions and factors aid motivation and ability to engage in the high effort central route.
1-Motivation
2-Ability
How is motivation linked to the elaboration-likelihood model?
People are more likely to be persuaded by central route cues if, for example, they are in a negative mood, have high personal involvement, and score highly on individual difference variables such as Need for Cognition
How is Ability linked to the elaboration-likelihood model?
People are more likely to be persuaded by central route cues if, for example they have sufficient time to process the message, sufficient cognitive resources, and are not distracted
The mere-exposure explanation for attitude formation suggests that:
Greater exposure to the attitude object results in more positive attitudes
Within the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, the route taken when people are motivated and able to think carefully about the content of a persuasive message is known as:
The central route
Janey needs to purchase a winter coat. She’s not really interested in clothes and only has 10 minutes to find and order something online. The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion predicts that whether or not Janey is persuaded to buy a particular coat is dependent on ?
How attractive the model who is featured wearing the coat is
What are attitudes?
Summary
Positive or negative feelings about a person, object or issue
What do some definitions of attitudes include?
Summary
Affective, belief and behavioural components
How can attitudes be measured?
Summary
using both explicit and implicit measures, which differ in terms of whether they are automatically activated and whether they can be self-reported
What are some explanation for how attitudes form?
Summary
mere exposure, evaluative conditioning, and self-perception
What does Katz functional approaches to attidues suggest?
Summary
that attitudes serve four key needs or functions
