Unit 7- attitudes and attitude changes

Question 1

What are attitudes?

Answer 1

Evaluations of people, objects, and ideas

Question 2

Explicit attitudes

Answer 2

attitudes we consciously endorse and easily report

Question 3

Internal attitudes

Answer 3

Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious

Question 4

Three potential antecedents that form our evaluation of the “attitude object”

Answer 4

• an affective component: emotional reactions towards the attitude object
• a cognitive component: consisting of your thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object
• a behavioral component, consisting of your actions or observable behavior towards the attitude object

Question 5

Examples of the three potential antecedents that form our attitude of the object

Answer 5

1. Affective reaction when you see a certain car: excitement
2. Cognitive reaction: what beliefs you hold about the car’s attributes (reliability and fuel economy)
3. Behavioral reaction: Have you bought or test driven a car that you didn’t plan to?

Question 6

Where do attitudes come from?

Answer 6

-Some attitudes are linked to genes (identical twins share more attitudes than fraternal twins, even when raised in different homes not knowing each other)
-Social experiences, and others can affect our attitudes

Question 7

Behaviorally based attitude

Answer 7

an attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object

Question 8

Self-perception theory

Answer 8

people base their attitudes on their own behavior when attitudes are ambivalent

Question 9

classical conditioning

Answer 9

the phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus

Question 9

cognitively based attitude

Answer 9

an attitude based primarily on people’s beliefs about the properties of an attitude object

Question 10

affectively based attitude

Answer 10

an attitude based more on people’s feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object

Question 11

operant conditioning

Answer 11

the phenomenon whereby behaviors that people freely choose to perform increase or decrease in frequency, depending on whether they are followed by positive reinforcement or punishment

Question 12

In operant conditioning:

Answer 12

behaviors we freely perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment

Question 13

Persuasive communication

Answer 13

communication (speech or television ad) advocating a particular side of an issue

Question 14

Yale attitude change approach

Answer 14

the study of conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on “who said what to whom”- the source of the communication, the nature of the communication, and the nature of the audience

Question 15

Elaboration likelihood model

Answer 15

An explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change:
centrally: when people are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication
peripherally: when people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics

Question 16

Central route to persuasion

Answer 16

the case whereby people elaborate on a persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments, as occurs when people have both the ability and motivation to listen carefully to a communication

Question 17

peripheral route to persuasion

Answer 17

the case whereby people do not elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication by instead are swayed by peripheral cues

Question 18

peripheral route

Answer 18

• uses rules of thumb judgement heuristics: expertise of speaker, attractiveness of speaker, length of communication, etc
• short-term attitude change
• changed attitude susceptible of future arguments

Question 19

Central route

Answer 19

• processed by careful evaluation of argument
• leads to long lasting attitude change
• changed attitude resistant to future arguments

Question 20

Fear-arousing communications

Answer 20

persuasive messages that attempt to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fears

Question 21

Do fear-arousing communications work?

Answer 21

If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them how to reduce this fear, they will be motivated to analyze the message carefully and will likely change their attitude via the central route

Question 22

Fear-arousing appeals will also fail if they…

Answer 22

if they are so strong that they overwhelm people. They will become defensive, deny the importance of the threat, and be unable to think rationally about the issue.

Question 23

Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion

Answer 23

an explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change

Question 24

Attitude inoculation

Answer 24

making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position

Question 25

Resisting persuasive messages

Answer 25

when people are forewarned, they analyze what they see and hear more carefully and as a result are likely to avoid attitude change

Question 26

Reactance theory

Answer 26

The idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavior

Question 27

Attitude accessibility

Answer 27

The strength of the association between an attitude object and a person’s evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object

Question 28

Theory of planned behavior

Answer 28

the idea that the best predictors of a person’s planned, deliberate behaviors are the person’s attitude towards specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control

Question 29

Attitude toward the behavior

Answer 29

people’s specific attitude toward the behavior, not their general attitude

Question 30

Subjective norms

Answer 30

people’s beliefs about how other people they care about will view the behavior in question

Question 31

Perceived behavioral control

Answer 31

The ease with which people believe they can perform the behavior (Intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior)

Question 32

Specific behaviors (Principle of specificity)

Answer 32

The theory of planned behaviors hold that only specific attitudes toward the behavior in question can be expected to predict that behavior

Question 33

Subliminal messages

Answer 33

Words or pictures that are not consciously perceived by may nevertheless influence people’s judgements, attitudes and behaviors