S1 Wk 5 - Attitudes and Identities Flashcards
Rosenberg & Hovland (1960): 3-part model
Attitude object (‘stimuli’) individuals, situations, social issues, social groups, other
Attitude
Affective response
Cognitive response
Overt behaviour
How is attitude conceptualised?
It should be consistent across which three factors
It can be measured (as strong/weak, or positive/negative)
It should be consistent over time (‘reliable)
It can be changed
3 things to take into account when looking at attitude
Personal knowledge
‘Beliefs’ may be well- or ill- founded
Personal values
E.g., ideology, religion
Motivation
Can be for social approval (conformity)
Can be ego defence (Katz, 1960, e.g., denial)
3 ways of measuring attitudes
likert-type scales
semantic differential
implicit association test (IAT)
what is the implicit association test (IAT)
PHASE 1
When you see a word, press the:
Left hand button if the word is PLEASANT or a
FLOWER
Right hand button if the word is UNPLEASANT or an
INSECT
PHASE 2
Same, but with buttons reversed
This is much more difficult
This basic format has been used widely to test implicit prejudice (racism, sexism etc)
75% of ‘Germans’ slow on negative words and
‘Turks’
95% of US ‘whites’ slow on negative words and
‘blacks’
Is the IAT really measuring attitude?
Results seem to be consistent with idea of ‘unconscious bias’ (believed to be behind things like ‘institutional racism’)
Although this is inconsistent with most social cognitive theory
Fiedler et al (2006) critiqued the IAT’s methodology: 3 points
Statistical bias, not racial bias
‘Attitudes’ need to be reliable, but most participants deny holding negative views towards the social groups involved
Participants are ‘fed’ with the stimuli (same effect as ‘leading questions’ in surveys)
Ajzen & Fishbein (1977): 4 necessary degrees of correspondence between attitudes and behaviours
Action
Target
Context
Time
Davidson & Jaccard (1979): contraception study
Birth control (.08)
Oral conception (pill) (.32)
Using oral contraception (.53)
Using oral contraception in next 2 years (.57)
attitudes can be changed by
Lasswell (1948) defined this as:
persuasive communication
who says what to whom, in which channel, and with what effect
typical experimental paradigm what design
pretest-posttest design
1. Pretest (measure existing attitude)
2. Intervention (exposure to persuasive ‘message’)
3. Pottest (repeat same attitude scale as in 1)
state of change model by who and when - 6 steps
- Pre-contemplation: > 6 mths without thinking of stopping
- Contemplation: planning to stop within 1-6 mths
- Preparation: planning to stop within a month
- Action: stopping (between 0-6 mths)
- Maintenance: Have stopped for more than 6 mths
- Termination/relapse
three types of group
Incidental
Low commitment
Minimal impact on individual behaviour
E.g. seminar group 3
Membership
Some stake in group’s fortunes
Moderate positive impact of group
E.g. Psychology students
Identity-reference
Individual incorporates group into social identity
Strong investment in group’s fortunes
E.g. Welsh, French etc
what did Sherif & Sherif (1969) do
Created two random groups of boys at US summer camp
Engineered situations where group membership became salient
Needed to create ‘cooperative’ situations to reduce hostility
the minimal group paradigm - what did Tajfel et al (1971) do
Created even more arbitrary groups
Ostensibly based on picture preference (but actually random)
On mundane task, preference shown for ingroup member
