Slide Session 5 Flashcards
what are attitudes?
Why are they important?
What are 2 different forms of attitudes and its measurement
Attitudes are defined as evaluations of various aspects in the social world.
Some attitudes are stable and resistant to change, while unstable attitudes show variability depending on the situation.
Attitudes are important because
- they influence our thoughts
- strong and accessable attitudes often affect out behaviour. Therefore, if we know attitudes we can attempt to predict behaviour
A) Explicit attitudes
- are conscious and reportable
- they can be measured by self-report attitude scales
Implicit attitudes
- are uncontrollable and not necessarily consciously accessible
- can be assessed by measuring the reaction time with which we associate social objects with positive ro negtaive descriptive words (E.g. Implicit Association Test for SA Context)
How are attitudes formed?
Attitudes are formed though social learning, the process by which we acquire new information, forms of behaviour or attitudes from other people
- Classical Conditioning
- Instrumental Conditioning
- Observational Learning
- Classical Conditioning
Pairing an unconditioned stimulus (beer logo) with a conditioned stimulus (attractive female) in advertisement.
- Classical conditioning can affect attitudes va 2 pathways
a) direct route
Pairing positive stimuli (different women) with the product
b) indirect route
Pairing a celebrity, that is generally liked, with the product
C) subliminal conditioning: classical conditioning that occurs in the absence of conscious awareness of the stimuli involved (showing coke picture for tenth of a second)
this is closely related to mere exposure, having seen an object, but too rapidly to remember having seem it and can result in attitude formation
2.Instrumental Conditioning
Attitudes are strengthened or weakened by either being rewarded or punished.
- Observational Learning
Occurs when people acquire thoughts and feelings by observing others, e.g. parents or media
- Social comparison plays a vital role here, a process by which we compare ourselves to others to determine whether our view of social reality is correct.
- The attitudes of our reference group (people we identify most with) are the most influential
Outline the Key Study: LaPiere
Key Study: LaPiere (1934)
Aim
To investigate the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
Method
LaPiere travelled round America with a Chinese couple, expecting to meet discrimination as a result of anti Chinese feeling. At the time prejudice against Asians was widespread and there were no laws against racial discrimination. They visited 67 hotels and 184 restaurants. Six months later, after their return, all the establishments they had visited were sent a letter, asking whether they would accept Chinese guests.
Results
They were only refused at one of the establishments they visited, and were generally treated very politely. Of the 128 establishments which responded to the letter, 91% said they were not willing to accept Chinese guests.
Conclusion
Attitudes do not always predict behavior. Cognitive and affective components of attitudes are not necessarily expressed in behavior.
The LaPiere’s study shows that the cognitive and affective components of attitudes (e.g. disliking Chinese people) do not necessarily coincide with behavior (e.g. serving them).
When and why do attitudes influence behaviour?
The social context can have an influence on the link between attitude and behaviour. This depends however on specific factors;
A) Situational Constraints: Can prevent our attitudes from being expressed through our behaviour. Therefore, the link between our attitudes and behaviour is weaker e.g. Not physically assaulting someone even if we don’t like their sexual, gender or racial category.
B) Strength of attitudes
- Strong attitudes are more determinants of behaviour because they are easily accessible and therefore leads to attitude-behaviour consistency.
- Attitude strength depends on its intensity/extremity (vested interests + able to argue in favour of their attitude), see next point
C) Attitude Certainty
- Attitude strength also depends on attitude certainty (attitude correctness through consensus + attitude clarity through restating our attitudes)
Attitude correctiness means - feeling one’s attitude is a valid one to hold
Attitude clarity
- being clear about one’s attitude
D) Personal Experience
Attitude strength also depends on the personal experience (our attitudes based on what we learned directly is stronger) the individual had with the attitude object.
- Attitudes developed from DIRECT personal experience are more easily accessed and exert a stronger effect on behaviour.
How do attitudes guide behaviour?
Attitude is seldom the only factor that influences behaviour
Behavioural intention can either be attitude driven or normative driven
Attitudes can influence behaviour through several mechanisms but it depends on whether we have time to reflect or have to act immediately
A) Theory of reasoned action model (Attitudes through reasoned thought);
Suggests that the decision to engage in a particular behaviour is a result of a rational process in which behavioural options are considered, consequences are evaluated and a decision is reached about whether to act or not. That decision is then reflected in behavioural intention, which strongly influence overt behaviour.
An Implementation plan also improves your chances of intention resulting in behaviour.
B) Attitudes and Spontaneous reactions
When we don’t have time to think about our attitudes we depend on what is illustrated in the Attitude-to-Behaviour process model (Fazio, 1990), which reflect how attitudes influence behaviour.
Intentions play a less important role in this process
What is persuasion?
Persuasion is defined as an effort to change others’ attitudes through the use of various kinds of messages.
What make a communicator successful?
Hovland, Janis and Kelley focused their research on persuasion by developing the “Who-says-what-to-whom”approach
communitcators are most successful if
1. They are credible, experts, confident, likeable speakers
- Delivering messages that are
a) not overtly designed to change attitudes
b) moderately fearful and paired with specific methods of behavioural change in the case of health messages
c) framed in a positive manner
Describe the modern theories of persuasion by Petty and Cacioppo
- The elaboration-likelihood model (ELM) states that we process information from persuasive messages in two distinct ways:
A) Systematic processing - involves the careful consideration of message content and ideas and travels vial the so-called central route
Three reasons for engaging in systematic processing are:
1. Knowledge
2. Time
3. Motivation
Also: If information is important/ relevant/ interesting
B) Heuristic processing
- involves the use of simple rules of thumb or mental shortcuts and travels the so-called peripheral route
- Two reasons for engaging in heuristic processing are:
1. Lack of ability/ knowledge
2. Low Motivation
3. Distraction
Also: If information is not important/ relevant/ interesting
How can we resist persuasion?
- Reactance
- is the negative reaction to a threat towards one’s personal freedom, it often increases resistance to persuasion. - Forewarning
- refers to advance knowledge that one is about to become the target of an attempt at persuasion.
- it influences cognitive processes that play a role in persuasion.
- It gives time to formulate counter-arguments
- However, forewarning can sometimes influence attitude change towards the position advocated, e.g. if the persuader is an expert. - Selective Avoidance
- Refers to a tendency to direct attention away from information that challenges existing attitudes.
& 4. Selective Exposure
- refers to the tendency to avoid information that contradicts our attitudes, while actively seeking information consistent with them. - Actively defending our attitudes
- Naturally we actively counter argue against views that contradict our own.
- This can also strengthen our current attitude. - Individual difference
– People differ in their vulnerability to persuasion
- These 5 factors imply self-regulation
- which means engaging our willpower to control our own thinking
- However, if we are in a state of ego-depletion – people are tired or our self-regulation resources are low we may be more easily persuaded e.g. working hard for 7 days without a break and need to work for 2 more days towards a deadline but now a friend attempts to persuade you to join for dinner. You may just decide to go.
Cognitive Dissonance
When is it highest
is an unpleasant internal state that results when individuals notice inconsistency between their attitudes, or between their attitudes and their behaviour.
Cognitive dissonance is highest when we have few reasons for engaging in attitude-discrepant behaviour
Outline the famous experiment about cognitive dissonance
By Festinger and Carlsmith
- Participants were given a boring task
- They were then asked to fill in for a research assistant to greet new participants and tell them that the experiment was an interesting one
-50% were told that they would receive 20 $ reward
- 50% were told that they would receibe 1 $ reward
Afterwards, they were asked to evaluate the experiment
- the people that had received the 1 $ reward were more likely to rate the experiment as interesting.
Thus, they had a greater need to reduce their dissonance by changing their own attitudes
—> Less-leads-to-more-effect
What is less-leads-to-more-effect
1) less-leads-to-more-effect refers to the fact that offering individuals small rewards for engaging in counter-attitudinal behaviour (attitude-discrepant behaviour) often produces more dissonance (because their actions can’t be justified) and therefore a possible attitude change (changing the cognition that is causing an unpleasant internal state) THAN offering them larger rewards
2) This less-leads-to-more-effect is more likely to occur when a) people feel they have free choice, b) feel personally responsible and c) the reward isn’t big enough to be considered a bribe.
3) Therefore, the pressure should be just enough because when the pressure is too much people make external attributions to their behaviour, hence dissonance is not generated and no attitude change occurs.
What are alternative strategies for Resolving Dissonance?
Direct methods to reduce dissonance: They focus directly on those attitude-behaviour discrepancies that are the cause of dissonance;
1) Attitude change,
2) Future behaviour change
3) Acquiring new information and
4) Trivialization (the attitude or behaviour in question is unimportant)
Indirect way to reduce dissonance: We leave the attitude-behaviour discrepancies in tact because it contains important self-beliefs or attitudes;
1) Self-affirmation - Using Tactics to make ourselves feel better as to restore a positive self-evaluation that are threatened by the dissonance
2) Consuming alcohol or other substances
When Dissonance Is a Tool for Beneficial Changes in Behavior
The findings of Stone, Wiegand and Cooper suggest that using dissonance to make our own hypocrisy salient can indeed be a powerful tool for changing our behavior in desirable ways.
For maximum effectiveness, however, such procedures must involve several elements:
1. People must publicly advocate the desired behaviors (e.g., using condoms),
2. they need to be induced to think about their own behavioral failures in the past,
3. and they must be given access to direct means for reducing their dissonance (i.e., a method for changing their behavior).
When these conditions are met, dissonance can bring about beneficial changes in behavior.
