W6.a Flashcards
The conceptual definition of attitudes
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…
What is explicit attitude?
Attitudes that people openly and deliberately express: ‘I like apple’
- Consciously accessible
- Revealed in explicit measures
What is implicit attitude?
Automatic, uncontrollable evaluations
- Might be consciously inaccessible
- Might be accessible but not willing to report
- Revealed in implicit measures
Explicit measures
Assess explicit attitudes
Asking a person to report on their attitudes
Self-report scales:
- Likert scale
- Semantic differential (Thurstone)
Limitations of explicit measures
Social desirability biases: People may distort their self-reports
Implicit attitudes may not be consciously accessed, thus cannot be reported on
Implicit measures
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
What is “response time paradigms” based on?
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
What is evaluative priming?
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
The structure/components/bases of attitude?
“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
What is the function of attitude?
Knowledge function
Instrumental/utilitarian function
Social identity/social adjustive function
Impression management/value expressive function
Self-esteem/defensive function
Strength of strong attitudes
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
What is ambivalence attitude?
Contain positive and negative evaluative components and bases
The processes of attitude formation
Affective processes
Behavioural processes
Cognitive processes
Affective routes to attitude formation
Mere exposure: familiarity breeds liking
Evaluative conditioning: Pairing a positive or negative stimulus with a neutral target
e.g., celebrity endorsement
Behavioural routes to attitude formation
Direct behavioural influences
Self-perception (Bem): we learn what we like from observing what we do
Cognitive dissonance reduction
Cognitive routes to attitude formation
Reasoned inference: think through facts about object and draw evaluative inferences
The standard persuasion frame
Source –> message –> recipient –> context/situation
Dual process models of attitude change (via persuasion)
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
What is Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)?
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
Consequences of central route persuasion
Central route persuasion
- Stronger
- More persistent over time (stable)
- Resistant to further change
- Predictive of intentions and behaviour
Source –> Message –> Recipient
Where does route selection occur?
Message
What influences route selection?
Motivation
Capacity
What influences attitude change in each route?
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
Central route factors
Because people are thinking deeply, argument quality matters
Peripheral route factors
Because people are thinking superficially, they rely on heuristics
-Message heuristics: quantity; Familiarity
-Source heuristics: Credibility; Attractiveness (likeableness)
People protect established attitudes by?
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.
What it takes to resist persuasion?
Resisting attitude change depends on having the motivation and capacity to fight off a persuasion attempt.
What happens if we don’t even know we are being persuaded?
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.
