Topic 21: Social Beliefs and Attitudes

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

A positive or negative evaluation of an object on event

Question 2

What is attitude strength?

Answer 2

A terms that refers to the durability and the impact of attitudes.

Question 3

What are strong attitudes characterised by?

Answer 3

Persistence over time
Resistance to change
Habitual impact on a person’s life

Question 4

What are the functions of attitude?

Answer 4

Knowledge Function: help us to explain and understand the world, provide a sense of structure

Instrumental Function: by highlighting ‘good’ and ‘bad’ entities, they allow us to maximise our chances of receiving the former and avoiding the latter

Value-Expressive Function: allow us to express and reinforce our sense of self and identity (by displaying those attitudes we consider important)

Ego-Defensive Function: can serve as a defence mechanism (e.g. by holding attitudes that protect our self-esteem or that justify actions that make us feel guilty)

Question 5

What is the structure of attitudes? (using the ABC approach?)

Answer 5

Affective component: a person’s emotion towards an entity

Behavioural component: a person’s habitual and/or preferred actions towards an entity

Cognitive component: a person’s beliefs about an entity

Question 6

How can we apply the ABC approach to the entity of masks during covid?

Answer 6

Affective component:
- like/dislike/neutral
- comforting
- awkward

Behavioural component:
- Buy them
- Use them
- Avoid them

Cognitive component:
- Reduce risk of transmitting illnesses
- protect vulnerable others
- easy to use
- interfere with eating/drinking

Question 7

What are the challenges of the ABC approach?

Answer 7

• The three components do not necessarily align with one another (they are not always highly correlated)
• Contradictions are possible

Question 8

What is the Theory of Planned Behaviour?

Answer 8

Tries to describe the relationship between a person’s cognition (such as beliefs and behaviour)

Successfully applied to predict wide range of behaviours i.e. reckless driving (Parker et al. 1995), sticking to diets, Condom use

Argues that willingness to act in a certain manner is determined by three types of beliefs:
Behavioural beliefs: an individual’s belief that a behaviour will produce a specific outcome (i.e. using masks reduces the spread of COVID)

Normative beliefs: an individual’s belief that others expect him or her to perform or suppress a specific behaviour (e.g. my lectures/peers expect me to use a mask)

Control beliefs: an individual’s beliefs about the factors that may facilitate or hinder performing the behaviour (i.e. i want to use masks but i keep forgetting to put them on)

Question 9

What is a belief?

Answer 9

Assumed knowledge that may or may not be true about a given entity.

Question 10

What theory attempts to understand the alignment of the ABC approach?

Answer 10

Theory of Planned Behaviour by Ajzen.
- looks at mostly cognition and behaviour aspect.

Question 11

What are the three types of beliefs that determine our willingness to act in a certain manner?

Answer 11

Behavioural beliefs
Normative beliefs
Control beliefs

Question 12

Why do people change their beliefs/attitudes?

Answer 12

We know that from the ABC challenge people don’t usually like when they realise that some of the three components are not aligned

Question 13

What do the three types of beliefs, in turn, influence?

Answer 13

Your intention to show a certain behaviour/readiness to perform a behaviour.

This intention then translates into whether the behaviour is actually shown. - observable response to a given target.

Question 14

What is the extension to the Theory of Planned Behaviour?

Answer 14

Intentions do not always translate into behaviour because sometimes people do not have the skills/resources to perform a behaviour.

Therefore, ‘Actual Behavioural control’ is the extension added to the model. - the extent to which a person actually has skills and resources to perform a behaviour.

Question 15

What does the latest version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour model include?

Answer 15

Background factors that explain why people hold the different types of beliefs. These include:

Individual factors:
Personality, mood, emotion, intelligence, values, stereotypes, experience

Social factors:
Education, age, gender, income

Information exposed to:
Knowledge, media intervention

Question 16

Why do people change their beliefs/attitudes?

Answer 16

Because of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is when people realise that their Affect, Behaviour and/or Cognition (ABC) are not aligned. - leads to unpleasant state in person.

Question 17

What does Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory argue?

Answer 17

Argues that people who experience cognitive dissonance try to alleviate it.
One approach to this is by restoring consistency within one’s attitudes through changing one’s Affect, Beliefs or behaviour.

Question 18

What is the Foot in the Door Technique?

Answer 18

Uses a person’s desire for consistency to influence that person’s behaviour
Technique involves:
Approaching people and asking them for something quite reasonable
Upon their acceptance, making a bigger request that is consistent (attitude-wise) with the first one
As people feel like they want to be consistent, they feel like they must also oblige with the bigger request
Put into Practice (Freedman & Fraser 1966)
E.g. would you sign a petition urging government to promote safe driving
E.g. would you install a big, unsightly sign in your garden that says ‘Drive Carefully’
Results: of people directly asked to put up the sign only 17% agreed. Of people asked with foot in the door technique, 55% agreed.

Question 19

What are attitudinal defences?

Answer 19

Refers to some attitudes being really hard to change.
Cannot always just easily change our Affect, beliefs, cognition to agree with our attitude and avoid cognitive dissonance.

Question 20

What is persuasion?

Answer 20

A person’s attitudes or beliefs are influenced by a communication from another person.

Question 21

What are the types of persuasion?

Answer 21

Systematic persuasion: a change in attitude brought about by appeals to logic or reasoning

Heuristic persuasion: a change in attitude brought about by appeals to emotion or habit

Question 22

Which type of persuasion is more effective?

Answer 22

Both types of persuasion can be effective but degree of effectiveness depends on motivation/personality of the audience (usually systematic persuasion requires more cognitive effort to be taken in)
BUT: attitude changes based on systematic persuasion usually longer lasting, more resistant to future change, and more influential in terms of a person’s behaviour.

Question 23

What’s an example of Heuristic persuasion in adverstisement?

Answer 23

E.g. coca cola trying to associate drink to positive emotions such as love/closeness.

Question 24

How can persuasion occur without you realising it?

Answer 24

Sleeper effect: even information from non-credible sources can have delayed impact because people tend to forget the source (e.g. reading in the daily mail that you initially don’t believe that seems plausible later on without the source)

Unbelieving effect: the human mind seems to quickly believe everything and then needs to actively ‘unbelieve’ it = requires cognitive resources (e.g. knowingly learning false information about cruel vs. kind criminal and, after getting interrupted, recommending a harsher sentence for the former)

Perseverance effect: when people explain things to themselves, they cannot easily ‘undo’ the effects (e.g. following exposure to ‘psychology students are more socially skilled than other students’)