week 4 Flashcards
What is an attitude?
An overall evaluation of a stimulus
Attitudes can vary in:
Valence: positive and negative
Strength: holding weak or strong attitudes
strong attitudes
- More persistent
- More resistant to change
- Likely to influence information processing
- More likely to guide behaviour
weak attitudes
- Can fade with time
- Vulnerable to counter- argumentation
- Less likely to facilitate information processing
- Not strong predictors of behaviour
- More likely to follow from behaviour
the content of attitudes
three components (ABC)
A. Affective component:
Emotions & feelings
B. Behavioral component:
Behaviour
C. Cognitive component:
Thoughts, beliefs & convictions
cognitive component
Refers to beliefs, thoughts and attributes associated with an attitude object
affective component
Feelings or emotions associated with an attitude object
Affect heuristic
Evaluative conditioning and subliminal priming
Mere exposure effect
mere exposure effect
a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.
The tendency for novel stimuli to be liked more or favoured after repeated exposure to the stimuli.
the affect heuristic
- Rapid and automatic affective responses guide decisions. Allows people to function without having to complete an extensive search for information.
- Explains why people evaluate certain objects overly positively or negatively.
Evaluative Conditioning
A change of the liking for a stimulus when this is paired with either positive or negative stimulus.
Subliminal priming study
James Vicary
A commercial in the cinema said the following: Drink Coca-Cola, Hungry? Eat pop-corn Reported effect: Increase in sales of Coca-Cola (> 18.1%) Increase in sales of pop-corn (> 57.5%) fake results
The impact of subliminal priming on brand choice
A subliminal ‘Lipton ice’ prime positively affected participants’ choice for and their intention to drink ‘Lipton ice’:
- provided that participants were thirsty (having a physiological need).
- and among those who are not familiar with Lipton Ice Tea
Chinese characters & Turkish words study
exposing Chinese characters for shorts amounts of time to two groups of individuals. The individuals were then told that these symbols represented adjectives and were asked to rate whether the symbols held positive or negative connotations. The symbols that had been previously seen by the test subjects were consistently rated more positively than those unseen
behavioral component
Refers to behaviours we have performed (or might perform in the future) with respect to an attitude object
self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)
Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
Physical movements/posture
as a source of information about attitudinal object
like moving your head during persuasive message
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Aversive state resulting from holding inconsistent beliefs or engaging in a behaviour that is opposed to one’s attitudes
refers to a situation where behaviour and attitude are in conflict
alter your attitudes or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance
How often do you engage in different pro-environmental behaviours?
study
past behavior -> environmental self identity -> Judgements of environmental dilemmas
Object-appraisal
classifying objects in the environment for the purpose of action
measurement of attitudes
- explicit measures
- Likert scales
- Semantic differential scales
explicit measures
Directly ask respondents to think about and report an attitude
consciously accessible and easy to report
likert scales
Based on summated ratings – responses indicate either a favourable or an unfavourable attitude
1 Totally disagree – 7 Totally agree
Semantic differential scales
-Uses bipolar adjectives (e.g. good–bad, like–dislike)
-Measures attitudes towards many attitude objects along a common scale
Bad idea 1 2 3 4 5 Good idea
Implicit measures do not require conscious attention. What would be the reason?
People may not be aware of their attitudes. People may provide socially desirable answers, especially towards sensitive topics
Implicit measures
Assess spontaneous evaluative associations with an object without relying on a verbal report
- Evaluative Priming
- implicit-association task - how did it go?
evaluative priming
a technique that reveals the implicit associations between concepts by priming participants with images (or words) and having participants sort words (or images) into categories following the prime
implicit association task
a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person’s automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory
Implicit Association Test, Greenwald
preference for white or black people strong automatic preference moderate slight little to no
Attitude and Behaviour
study of LaPiere
LaPiere travelled through
California with a highly-educated
Chinese couple
Time of prejudice against
the Chinese
Attitude of restaurateur/hotelier
match actual behavior?
he asked the american restaurants in a letter if they would accept chinese people in their restaurant most said they would not but when they were there almost all restaurants and hotels accepted them. so they behaved different then their attitude
How well do attitudes predict behaviour
Attitudes and behavior correlation is low
When are attitudes related to behaviours?
1- Domain of behaviour
2- Correspondence between measures of attitude and behaviour
3- Attitude strength
theory of planned behavior
is a theory that links one’s beliefs and behavior.
The theory states that attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individual’s behavioral intentions and behaviors.
Increase amount of recycling in company (Holland, Aarts, & Langendam, 2006): limit use of paper and paper cups
Participants form implementation intention:
Plan: when, where and how to recycle their old paper/used plastic cups. Visualize and write down.
Helps to increase Perceived Behavioural Control
Significant reduction reported in total kg of paper and number of cups used
habit
a barrier towards behaviour change
Research on TPB
- Good theory to explain the process
- Not only attitudes predict behaviour
- But also subjective norm and PBC (To take into account the role of situational factors)
- don’t forget about the intention-behaviour gap
Perceived Behavioral Control
control refers to people’s perceptions of their ability to perform a given behavior.
intention-behaviour gap
The “gap” refers to the difference between the intention, and the actual result of the behavior
