W6.a

Question 1

The conceptual definition of attitudes

Answer 1

Mental representation of a summary evaluation of an attitude object (stored in memory)
Things, self, group, other people…
In various domains: politics, health, business, education…

Question 2

What is explicit attitude?

Answer 2

Attitudes that people openly and deliberately express: ‘I like apple’

• Consciously accessible
• Revealed in explicit measures

Question 3

What is implicit attitude?

Answer 3

Automatic, uncontrollable evaluations

• Might be consciously inaccessible
• Might be accessible but not willing to report
• Revealed in implicit measures

Question 4

Explicit measures

Answer 4

Assess explicit attitudes
Asking a person to report on their attitudes

Self-report scales:

• Likert scale
• Semantic differential (Thurstone)

Question 5

Limitations of explicit measures

Answer 5

Social desirability biases: People may distort their self-reports
Implicit attitudes may not be consciously accessed, thus cannot be reported on

Question 6

Implicit measures

Answer 6

Assess implicit attitudes
Overcome motivated response biases and limits of introspection

Physiological responses
Fake physiological responses (bogus pipeline)
Most common use response (reaction) time (RTs) paradigms

Question 7

What is “response time paradigms” based on?

Answer 7

Based on spreading activation accounts of the mental processes

Mind is an associative network
Activation spreads between nodes
When exposed to a stimulus (corresponding node activated), then subsequent responding to a related stimulus should be faster than to a less related or unrelated stimulus
Patterns of RTs can be used to infer patterns of association between concepts in the mind

Question 8

What is evaluative priming?

Answer 8

If exposed to an attitude object, then responses to subsequent evaluative stimuli (i.e., positive or negative stimuli) can reveal whether attitude is positive or negative

Question 9

The structure/components/bases of attitude?

Answer 9

“ABC”
Affective: emotions, feelings about att. object
Behavioural: interactions with att. object
Cognitive: beliefs about att. object

Most attitudes have mix of ABC bases; different bases may carry more weight in determining the overall summary evaluation

Question 10

What is the function of attitude?

Answer 10

Knowledge function
Instrumental/utilitarian function
Social identity/social adjustive function
Impression management/value expressive function
Self-esteem/defensive function

Question 11

Strength of strong attitudes

Answer 11

Held with confidence, certainty
Usually based on lots of one-sided info (A, B, C, social)
Are persistent, resistant and predictive of intentions and behaviour

Question 12

What is ambivalence attitude?

Answer 12

Contain positive and negative evaluative components and bases

Question 13

The processes of attitude formation

Answer 13

Affective processes
Behavioural processes
Cognitive processes

Question 14

Affective routes to attitude formation

Answer 14

Mere exposure: familiarity breeds liking

Evaluative conditioning: Pairing a positive or negative stimulus with a neutral target
e.g., celebrity endorsement

Question 15

Behavioural routes to attitude formation

Answer 15

Direct behavioural influences
Self-perception (Bem): we learn what we like from observing what we do
Cognitive dissonance reduction

Question 16

Cognitive routes to attitude formation

Answer 16

Reasoned inference: think through facts about object and draw evaluative inferences

Question 17

The standard persuasion frame

Answer 17

Source –> message –> recipient –> context/situation

Question 18

Dual process models of attitude change (via persuasion)

Answer 18

Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM)
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Deep or superficial

Two important implications: -Amount and kind of attitude change depends on processing route
-Factors influencing attitude change and manner of influence are contingent on processing route

Question 19

What is Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)?

Answer 19

Attitudes can be changed by processes that involve more or less attitude object-relevant elaboration or thinking

Low elaboration characterizes the peripheral route of persuasion
High elaboration characterizes the central route of persuasion

NB. Attitude change can occur via both routes

• via different processes
• with different consequences

Question 20

Consequences of central route persuasion

Answer 20

Central route persuasion

• Stronger
• More persistent over time (stable)
• Resistant to further change
• Predictive of intentions and behaviour

Question 21

Source –> Message –> Recipient

Where does route selection occur?

Answer 21

Message

Question 22

What influences route selection?

Answer 22

Motivation

Capacity

Question 23

What influences attitude change in each route?

Answer 23

Different factors matter in central vs peripheral route
• Message
• Source

Recipient factors interact with message and source factors to produce match effects, which can increase attitude change

Question 24

Central route factors

Answer 24

Because people are thinking deeply, argument quality matters

Question 25

Peripheral route factors

Answer 25

Because people are thinking superficially, they rely on heuristics
-Message heuristics: quantity; Familiarity

-Source heuristics: Credibility; Attractiveness (likeableness)

Question 26

People protect established attitudes by?

Answer 26

Ignoring,

reinterpreting,

resisting information that is inconsistent with them.

Better if they are forewarned.

Careful thinking and practice with counter-arguing can make us less vulnerable to persuasion attempts.

Question 27

What it takes to resist persuasion?

Answer 27

Resisting attitude change depends on having the motivation and capacity to fight off a persuasion attempt.

Question 28

What happens if we don’t even know we are being persuaded?

Answer 28

The subliminal cues nudged participants to do what they already wanted to do, but had no effect on people who did not already have the goal.
But conscious processing can resist the influence of subliminally processed cues.