Week 6 Flashcards
What is an attitude
“An organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (Hogg & Vaughan 2005)
Evaluate: liking vs disliking, beneficial vs harmful
Subjective: not necessarily based upon fact/ knowledge
Explicit vs implicit
Learned
Enduring but possible to change
ABC model of attitude: Rosenberg & Hovland 1960
Affect
Behaviour
Cognition
How are attitudes formed
Imitation and role models
Conditioning- reinforcement
Experience
Social norms
Why are attitudes formed
Social acceptance
To protect out self esteem
To express what we believe
To avoid punishment
To understand the world
To express who we are
Do attitudes predict behaviour
Yes but complicated
LaPiere 1934
Wicker 1969
Attitudes can be a good way of predicting behaviour under certain conditions:
-when they’re measured specifically
-when an attitude is formed through experience
-when there is more at stake
-when there are fewer potential barriers
-when the attitude is repeatedly expressed
Davidson &Jaccard 1979
Theory of planned behaviour (Azjen, 1991)
Perceived social pressure
Attitudes. —> intentions—> behavioural change
Perceived control
Why is attitude predicting behaviour important to doctors
Attitudes can then be used to predict:
-adherence to lifestyle advice
-concordance with treatment
-engagement with non-pharmacological interventions
-uptake of screening tests
-willingness to attend appointments
Measuring attitudes
Difficult
Behavioural observation: easy to perform, no specialist equipment, time consuming & unreliable (Hawthorne Effect-the alteration of behaviour by the subjects of a study due to their awareness of being observed)
Covert measurement: eg EMG, Galvanic skin response, more objective, non-directional, false positives
Self report scales: eg Likert, Osgoods semantic Differential cheap, quick, easy, assume attitudes are fixed, dependent on honesty and self awareness
Responder bias: people tend to always agree/disagree, people generally avoid extreme responses, people generally choose responses that make them look good, tend to choose socially acceptable responses
Changing attitudes
Cognitive dissonance
Self perception —> attitudinal change
Persuasive communication
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957)
Human have an innate desire for consistency
Inconsistency= dissonance
Ways to resolve dissonance:
- gain new info that overrides a dissonant cognition
-reduce the importance
-change attitudes
Dissonance based interventions
Growing evidence
Induced cognitive dissonance
-belief disconformation
-free choice
-hypocrisy (contradictions between thinking and behaviour)
-effort justification
-induced compliance
Self perception theory (Bem 1967)
Traditional view: attitudes determine behaviour
Bem’s self perception theory: behaviour determines attitudes
Persuasive communication
Yale attitude change approach (Hovland 1953)
Source
Message
Audience
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty 1980): central vs peripheral
Is fear persuasive
Good evidence that fear can be a motivator for attitudinal/ behavioural change (Leventhal 1967)
However too much fear prevents attitudinal/ behavioural change (Janis & Feschbach 1953)
Brief intervention the 5 As
Ask
Advise
Assess
Assist
Arrange
Developmental psychology
Maturation and learning
Human development is a continual and cumulative process
Plasticity- capacity for change in response to negative or positive life experiences
History and culture has a strong influence on attributes and competences that individuals acquire
Infancy
New born reflexes and states
Infants sensory capabilities
Basic learning processes
-habituation
-classical conditioning- combining 2 stimuli to produce a new learned response
-operant conditioning -ability to learn based on our behaviours and any following reward or punishment
-observational learning