The Three Witches Flashcards
What are the Three Witches of Attitudes?
Content, Structure, Function
What is the definition of Content in the Three Witches?
The type of information we incorporate into our attitude
What is the multicomponent model (Content)
Attitudes are summary evaluations of an object that have cognitive (beliefs), affective (feelings) and behavioural (actions) components
What is the cognitive component to CAB
The thoughts,beliefs and attributes we hold towards an attitude object
How can we measure the cognitive component of CAB
Semantic differential scale and thought-listing
What is the affective component of the CAB
Feelings and emotions linked to the attitude object
How can we measure the affective component of CAB
semantic differential (delighted-sad, relaxed-angry) and thought listing
How did Breckler and Wiggins (1989) measure both affective and cognitive components of an attitude. What did they find about the speed of judgements?
Using the semantic differential scale but changed the wording. E.g
Cog- ‘Blood donation is….(good/bad)
Aff - Blood donation makes me feel (Good/bad)
People faster with affective judgements
What is the behavioural component of CAB
Based on previous behaviours and experiences regarding the attitude object
How can the behavioural component of CAB be measured? What is the positive and negatives to this measure?
Thought listing - list and evaluate actions
Limitation - people may find it hard to articulate thoughts, feelings etc. Social desirability
Advantage - Measure behavioural component unlike semantic diff. More personally salient
What is self-perception theory?
People don’t always have access to their opinions on different attitude objects especially if feelings are vague or uncertain. Basing attitude on past behaviours
What other measure of CAB did Rocklage and Fazio (2015) use?
Evaluative Lexicon
- Ptps free write about a particular attitude object
- Doesn’t separate cog and affective attitudes
- Looks at adjectives used and rates on emotionality and valence
- Can see WHAT component the ptp uses to base their attitude on most
- Good for large scale application
How have CAB components been proven not to be the same?
(Breckler, 1984)
Emerge separately in factor analysis
- Ptps reported attitude toward snakes
- Asked if names were cruel or kind
- Made them feel anxious or happy
- If they’d like to hold the snake
ONLY CORRELATED MODERATELY
What is the causal attitude network
Conceptualizes attitudes as networks consisting of evaluative reactions (CAB)
Considers interactions (e.g belief (cog) that snakes are dangerous causes fear of snakes (aff)) and causal relations amongst the CAB components
Insight in to the cog and affective drivers of behaviour
How did Abelson et al (1982) demonstrate that the CAB components predict behaviour
- Looked at thoughts and feelings towards American Presidential Candidates
- Ascribed personality traits to Democratic and Republican cand. and feelings about them
- Asked to give attitude
- Favourability of affective responses correlated with overall attitudes compared with favorability of beliefs on their traits
- COG AND AFF PREDICT POLITICAL ATTITUDES
Which component was shown to better predict attitudes on blood donation and abortion
Blood donation - Affective
Abortion - Cognitive
What did Esses et al (1993) indicate about what cognitive and affective responses depended on to be predictive
Correlations on overall attitudes with cog and aff depended on target group under study
For example, Attitudes towards disliked groups best predicted by cognitive info whilst liked groups was predicted by affective info
What can cause people to differ in their degree of which CAB component is dominant in attribution to an attitude
Personality
Need for cognition vs Need for affect
What is cognitive-affective ambivalence
Conflict between how the person feels and thing about an object
E.g admire feminists but dislikes them
What is attitude structure?
The way we organise the information according to valence
What is the unidirectional (one-dimensional) view
Tendency to feel positive OR negative about an attitude object.
Pos and neg are at opposite ends of a SINGLE dimension
What is the bidimensional view?
Attitudes reflect varying amount of favourability AND unfavourability
Evaluate objects on BOTH a positive and negative dimension
What can be the issue with the uni-dimensional view? How does the bi-dimensional view help with this?
Ambivalent attitudes - If its at the midpoint does this mean no attitude or mixed attitude?
Bi-dimensional view allows us to reach a more nuanced conclusion about how ambivalent the person is
What are the two types of Ambivalence
Potential/Objective = When the person has both positive and negative evaluations. May not be consciously perceived
Felt/Subjective = Actual feeling of tension that the person experiences
What could ambivalence be adaptive of?
Self protection when you’re uncertain of future outcomes (judgement)
What did McDonald and Zanna find about ambivalent attitudes and polarizing evaluations?
High ambivalence towards feminists caused participants to be more affected by a prime to try and change their employment decisions of a feminist. E.g when presented with a males resume that showed them to be admirable but unlikable and they were successful, they had stronger intentions to hire the feminist
Therefore, When made aware of their cognitive or affective ambivalence, their behaviour reflects what is made salient
What is attitude function?
The needs or functions that are fulfilled by certain attitudes
What 3 primary functions of attitudes were outlined by Smith, Bruner and White (1956)
Object appraisal - Navigate daily life by summarizing the positive and negatives of an object
Social-adjustive - Because the important people in life hold that attitude
Externalization - Protecting yourself e.g not liking something because you’re not good at it
Why is object-appraisal important? How did Fazio et al’s study conclude?
Simplify interactions with the environment
Highly accessible attitudes increase the ease with which people make attitude-relevant judgements and decrease physiological arousal
What did Zunick, Teeny and Fazio (2017) find?
Self-defining attitudes were more favourable, extreme and less ambivalent
What 4 Functions did Katz outline for attitudes
Knowledge - organise information on attitude objects
Utilitarian - Maximise rewards and minimise punishments
Ego-Defense - Protect self
Value expression - Express core values
What is the limitation to object appraisal
Hard to differenciate between the different functions
What self-report measurement is used for assessing attitude function?
Attitude Function Inventory - assesses functions of attitudes towards an attitude object
What did Shavitt (1990) find when using the Attitude Function Inventory on certain consumer products?
Coffee and air conditioners served a utilitarian function and attitudes towards certain brands were changed depending on utilitarian arguments ( e.g quality)
Watches and sunglasses served different functions (E.g sunglasses and UV protection vs style/prestige)
What is a limitation of the Attitude Function Inventory
They need to know the function of their own attitude which is an issue for ego-defensive attitudes
What individual difference can explain the extent to which someone can be persuaded to change their attitude
High vs Low Self-Monitors
High - Flexible and adaptive
Low - Value consistency between behaviour and core/internal values
How does the self-monitor difference relate to Katz’ 4 functions
High self-monitors = Social adjustive
Low self-monitor = Value expressive
