lecture 2 - attitudes and rationalisation 1

Question 1

why study attitudes

Answer 1

-attitudes can influence behaviour (way you feel influence way you behave)
eg those with strong pro environment attitudes are more likely to vote green

-behaviour can influence attitudes
environmentally minded individuals who drive petrol cars tend to convince themselves that automobile exhaust contributes very little to air or pollution or global warming-or that they don’t drive much anyway

Question 2

what are attitudes
-dictionary definition
-psychologist definition

Answer 2

-dictionary
-a feeling or opinion about something or someone or a way of behaving that is caused by this

psychologist
-an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes three components : affect, cognition and behaviour

Question 3

components and measurement of attitudes
-affect(emotion)
-cognition
-behaviour

Answer 3

affect : how much someone likes or dislikes an object

cognition : thoughts that typically reinforce a persons feelings, these include knowledge and beliefs about the object, as well as well associated memories and images

behaviour: attitudes are associated with specific behaviour. most generally, the affective evaluation of good versus bad is connected to behavioural tendency to either approach or avoid

Question 4

chen and bargh (1999)
-specific attitudes primed

Answer 4

-when specific attitudes are primed (brough to mind ) even unconsciously- people are more likely to act in ways consistent with the attitude
-eg if you hear crying child you go to take care of them -

Question 5

why when specific attitudes are primed people are more likely to act in ways consistent with the attitude?

Answer 5

neuroscientific studies indicate that our attitudes activate particular brain regions , areas of the moto cortex, that support specific actions (Preston and de Waal ,2002)

Question 6

measuring attitudes
scales

Answer 6

likert scale - a numerical scale used to asses attitudes; includes a set of possible answers with labelled anchors on each extreme. a 5- or 7-point ordinal scale used by respondents to rate the degree to which they agree or disagree with a statement

response latency - the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, such as an attitude question

implicit attitude measure - an indirect measure of attitudes that does not involve a self report
any procedure for evaluating attitudes in which a person is not consciously aware of the fact that their attitude toward something or someone is being assessed.

Question 7

attitudes are typically measured through ___ ____ measures.
-what do simple scales like these miss

Answer 7

Attitudes are typically measured through self-report measures such as survey questions, where participants rate an attitude object on a Likert scale
-Likert scale ranges from 1-7, where 1is the least favourable answer and 7is the most favourable.

-Simple scales like Likert might miss some important elements when measuring complex attitudes (e.g., capital punishment, environmentalism).

Question 8

approach to measure attitude developed by Russell Fazio

Answer 8

An approach developed by Russell Fazio and his team is to measure the accessibility of the attitude, or how readily it comes to mind.

-Accessibility is measured by response latency, which is the time it takes a person to respond to an attitude question.

Question 9

assessing importance of an attitude
-centrality
-how is centrality measured

Answer 9

Another way to assess the strength and importance of someone’s attitude is to determine the centrality of the attitude to the person’s belief system.
-map out someone’s belief system
-Attitude centrality is measured by calculating how strongly each attitude within a domain is linked to the others

.E.g., if abortion is a defining issue, then the view on abortion is likely to be strongly correlated with your attitudes about stem cell research and sex education, and perhaps even with attitudes about same-sex marriage and taxation.

Question 10

what are implicit attitude measures, and when are they used

Answer 10

-implicit attitude measures are used when people may be unwilling or unable to report explicitly their true feelings or opinions

-Implicit measures are designed to bypass conscious awareness and control, to get at attitudes that people might not be aware of or might be unwilling to disclose -nonconscious attitude

Question 11

two widely used implicit measures

Answer 11

-affective priming
-implicit association test

Question 12

affective priming
implicit association test

Answer 12

-affective priming is a measure of implicit attitudes by assessing the speed and accuracy of responding to target words that are preceded by subliminal primes

-implicit association test (IAT) measure the strength of associations between concepts (eg black people, gay people) and evaluations (eg good,bad) or stereotypes (eg athletic, clumsy)

Question 13

the IAT is widely used as a tool to uncover ______ biases, specifically……

Answer 13

-implicit
-specifically bias in the form of racial or gender prejudices.

Question 14

explicit vs implicit measures
-problems with implicit measures

Answer 14

explicit
-deliberate
-conscious
-introspective
-‘slow’ / ‘cold’
-self report

implicit
-automatic
-non conscious
-associative
-‘fast’ / ‘hot’
-response time

-implicit attitude measures are not always accurate, and they should be used in combination with other methods of assessment

Question 15

-non verbal measures
-physiological indicators

Answer 15

non verbal measures
-smiling behaviour and degree of physical closeness, as indices or signals of positive attitudes toward others

physiological indicators
-increased heart rate, sweaty palms associated with fear can capture peoples attitudes

Question 16

predicting behaviours from attitudes
-richard la piere 1930s
-how the study was carried out
-results

Answer 16

-he conducted a study in which he travelled the United states with a young Chinese couple, visiting numerous hotels, auto camps,restraunts and cafes.

-despite prevalent prejudice and discrimination against Chinese individuals at the time , la piere and his companions were denied service by only one of the 250 establishments they visited

-after the trip, lapiere wrote to all the establishments they visited and asked whether their policy was to serve ‘orientals’

-approximatley 90 percent of those who responded said they would not, a response rate that was inconsistent with la pieres observations during the tour

-this study suggested that attitudes dont predict behaviour very well and was surprising and unsettling for the field of psychological science which had treated attitudes as a powerful determinants of behaviours .

Question 17

predicting behaviour from attitudes
-attitudes about certain topics eg dieting are not always _____ ______ of related behaviour

Answer 17

strong predictors.

Question 18

attitudes compete with _____ __________ of behaviour…

Answer 18

-other determinants
-eg eating habits or situational factors like nearby distractions

Question 19

a persons understanding of prevailing norms can ______ the relationship between attitudes and behaviour

Answer 19

weaken

Question 20

predicting behaviour from attitudes
-how can attitudes be inconsistent

Answer 20

-when the affective and cognitive components are inconsistent, the attitude may not predict behaviour very well
-the cognitive component might determine the attitude we express, but the affective component might determine our behaviour (or vice versa)

Question 21

attitudes can be influenced by various factors-may be difficult to know exactly why one holds a certain attitude

Answer 21

-when asked to come up with reasons for ones attitude, one may focus on the most easily identifiable factors that are incorrect,rather than the real underlying reasons

-when this happens it is not surprising that the attitude you report after generating reasons doesn’t end up predicting your behaviour very well

Question 22

-attitudes, behaviour and specificity
-when is consistency between attitude and behaviour high?

Answer 22

-attitudes and behaviour do not always align, and the consistency between them is higher when they are both at the same level of specificity

-highly specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviours, whereas general attitudes tend to predict how a person behaves across different instances

-to predict specific behaviours , attitudes towards that behaviour must be measured

Question 23

-lord et al 1984
-experiment about male college students

Answer 23

Lord et al. (1984) asked male college students to express their attitudes about gay men (i.e., stereotype of a “typical” gay man).
-Two months later, a different experimenter asked the participants if they would be willing to show some visiting students around campus

One visitor was “John B” and for half participants he was described to fit their own individualised stereotype of a gay man.Those with positive attitudes said they were willing, those with negative attitudes said they were not, but only if John B. matched their prototype of a gay individual.

Question 24

influence on attitude being deliberate

Answer 24

The influence of an attitude on behaviour is sometimes conscious and deliberate: we reflect on our attitudes and then decide how to behave. But often our behaviour is more reflexive than reflective, and the surrounding context elicits the behaviour automatically. When automatic behaviour is consistent with your attitudes - “go with your gut feeling” – fast and efficient.

Question 25

what does automatic behaviour due to context do to the relationship between attitudes and behaviour

Answer 25

Automatic behaviour elicited directly by the surrounding context can weaken the connection between conscious attitudes and behaviour.

-Priming Elderly = Slow walking (Bargh etal., 1996) Automatic behaviour can conflict with conscious attitudes without our knowledge, highlighting a limitation of how well attitudes predict behaviour.