Textbook 6. Attitudes & Attitude Change Flashcards
Three things in common with affectivlry based attitudes
- They do not result from a rational examination of the issues
- they are not governed by logic example persuasive arguments about the issues solved and change and effectively best attitude
- they are often linked to people’s values so that trying to change them challenge their values
Where do implicit and explicit attitude come from
There is evidence that implicit attitudes are routed more in peoples childhood experiences where is explicit attitudes are routed more in the recent experiences
Study researchers asked a sample of married women about their attitudes towards birth control pills ranging from general the woman’s attitude toward birth control to more specific attitude towards using birth control pills during the next two years
Two years later the women were asked whether they had use birth control pills at any time since the last interview the woman’s general attitude did not protect their use of birth control at all the general attitude did not take into account other factors that could have influence the decision more specific the question was asked about the active using birth control pills the better this attitude protected her actual behaviour. Therefore the theory of planned behaviour holds that only specific attitudes towards the behaviour in question can be expected to predict that behaviour
Subjective norms
Their believes about how the people they care about you with the behaviour in question for example we know Kristen can’t stand heavy-metal music but we know that her best friend Malcolm really wants to go to heavy metal concert a close friend use her behaviour we might think she might go
Perceived behavioural control
The ease in which people believe they can perform the behaviour of people think it is difficult to perform the behaviour such as sticking to a hard exercise program they will not form a strong intention to do so
In what culture would Personal attitudes be stronger protector of quitting smoking and what culture would social norms be the stronger predictor
Social norms did not vary across cultures as a predictor of quitting smoking but personal attitudes in individualistic cultures did predict quitting.
100% of participants agreed with the statement I want to have sex with someone I just met I would have no objections if my partner suggested that we use a condom however only 56% of the people who engage the cast and sex are used a condom in the most recent sexual encounter and only 29% of women and men that engage in casual sex in the past year before they have always used a condom. why would people with positive attitudes towards condom use risk their lives by not using condoms
Subjective norms for example one study found that 65% of students in high school believes that their sexually active friends used condoms. People on spring break it is more acceptable to have casual sex while on vacation this is accompanied by a lower rate of condom use. It’s me anticipate a negative reaction from our partner you’re less likely to use condoms.
Perceived behavioural control. those who were embarrassed about buying condoms bought them less often than those who were not embarrassed making the behaviour difficult to perform. People can feel awkward about bringing up the topic of condoms during sex the more difficult and find it the less likely you are to use them.
Behavioural intentions. Participants who were in a bad mood were less likely to use a condom than those in a good mood. Woman with lower self-esteem were more likely to not use a condom alcohol intoxication is associated with lower condom use.
Therefore even the most positive of attitudes towards condom use do not guarantee that people will practice safer sex
The two routes to persuasion two words for each route
The central or systematic processing route
The peripheral or heuristic Processing route
When are you most and least likely to change in attitude to reduce dissonance
We are likely to take this route when the attitude in question isn’t particularly important to us if the attitude matters and we’ve just focussed on how important it is we are less likely to reduce dissonance by changing that attitude therefore maybe we change dissonance by changing behaviour
Step asked women to read the attractiveness and desirability of several kinds of appliances such as toasters and electric coffee makers each woman was told that award for having participated she could have one of the appliances she was given a choice between two of the products she had created equally attractive then her place was given to her 20 minutes later each woman was asked to re-read all the products
After receiving the lines of their choice the woman it’s attractiveness is somewhat higher than they had done the first time only that but they drastically lowered the reading of the plans they have decided to reject other words following a decision to reduce decisions we change the way we feel about the chosen and not cognitively spreading them apart in our own minds to make ourselves feel better about the choice we made. This is post decision dissonance
The decision to behave more people have a chance to cheat whether or not they do affects the direction of their dissonance
If people cheat they can reduce the dissonance by deciding that she isn’t actually that if people decide not to cheat they reduce their dissonance by deciding that she is absolutely horrible this is an actual changed in the system about you with either a selfie or hardening of their attitudes towards cheating on exams depending on whether they decided to cheat or not
FMRI and dissonance
Recently areas of the brain virtually shut down people were confronted with dissonant information. The motion circuits of the brain light up happily when consonants was restored. The brain repays them by activating areas involved Witt pleasure when they justify their behaviour
University students volunteered to join a group that would be meeting to discuss various aspects of the psychology of sex. To be admitted they volunteered to go through the screening process. group A he had a demanding and unpleasant process group B had a mildly unpleasant process and groups C was admitted with no screening. once in the group began listened to a very dull and boring discussion after the discussion was over each participant was asked to rate it in terms of how much they liked it how interesting it was and how intelligent the participants were
Participants who underwent a little or no effort to get into the group did not enjoy the discussion very much participants who went through a severe initiation succeeded in convincing themselves that the same discussion though not a scintillating as they hoped was started with interesting and provocative titbits and therefore was a worthwhile experience they justify their effort for initiation process by interpreting all the ambiguous aspects of the group discussion in the most positive manner possible
University students were induced to spend an hour performing a series of really boring and repetitive tasks the experimenter told them that the purpose of the study was to determine whether people would perform better if they had been told in advance that the tasks were interesting and formed that they had been randomly assigned to the control condition that is they had not been told anything in advance he explained the next participant young woman who is just arriving in the room was going to be in the experiment to condition the experimenter said that he needed to convince her that the task was going to be interesting and enjoyable since it was much more convincing if a fellow studentRather than the experimenter delivered this message
Half the students got $20 an ally got one dollar after the experiment was over the interview as the light colours how much they enjoyed the task students who had been paid $20 for lying the activities as doll and boring students were paid one dollar for lying read it the task as significantly more enjoyable in other words people who had received an abundance of external justification for line told ally but didn’t believe it where is those who told a lie without a great deal of external justification succeeded in convincing themselves that what they said was closer to the truth
Experiment focussed on highly implicit prejudice in the Staten experimental group 1st wrote essays about why it was important to treat my Nordie students fairly they were later instructed to write about two situations in which they reacted negatively and they thought they should have this created a feeling of hypocrites and dissonance.
This group showed evidence of a reduction in purchase behaviour in the hypocrisy condition recommended less of a bunch of cut to the Asian student association they did participants in a controlled
