Attitudes Flashcards
Preston and de Waal (2002)
Neuroscientific studies shown that our attitudes activate regions of the motor cortex to prepare for behvaiour associated with it.
LaPiere (1934)
Found that when he enquired if 251 would accept chinese guests (knowing they had recently accepted them 6 months earlier) and 92% said no.
This shows their attitude is not consistent with their behaviour.
Defleur and Westie (1958)
Measured racially prejudiced attitudes of 250 white college students and selected the 23 highest and 23 lowest scoring participants and measured willingness to be photographed with a black person of opposite sex and found that there was a 0.4 correlation between attitudes and behaviour.
Knox and Inkster (1968)
Measured chance of winning ratings of people waiting to place a bet compared to after they placed it
Found that average ratings increased from fair to really good.
Sharot et al. (2012)
Ps evaluated a list of holiday destinations, then had to pick between two they evaluated equally and re-evaluate them all
They found that ratings went up for the chosen option
When asked again in three years the preference had remained
Aronson and Mills (1959)
Ps thought they were taking part in an interesting discussion about sex – had to initiation first either reading control words, mildly embarrassing sex words, or read an erotic passage
Then they only got to listen to a discussion about invertebrates’ sex life
Those in severely embarrassing condition rated the discussion as more interesting
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
Had participants perform a boring task and were then asked to help by telling the next participants that the task was interesting for either $1 or $20 and a control group were not asked to lie or offered money.
When participants were later asked to evaluate the task those in $1 condition claimed the task was more enjoyable than the $20 and control.
This is arguably because they were in a state of cognitive dissonance as they had to lie about the task to others and the reward didn’t act as a consonant cognition like in the $20 condition
So they changed their attitude to reduce dissonance.
Aronson and Carlsmith (1963)
Nursery children evaluated 5 toys and were told they could play with any except their second favourite when experimenter left for a while either because they’d be “very annoyed” or they’d be “very angry and take the toys and never come back”
None of the children played with the toy and only the mild threat group re-evaluated the toy lower to reduce dissonance
Petty, Cacioppo and Goldman (1981)
Had participants listen to a message advocating ‘senior comprehensive examination’ under one of two conditions; university considering introducing these exams next year (high involvement), or in the next decade (low involvement).
The message was either strong or weak and had either been produced by a local high school class or Carnegie Commission of Higher Education.
Results showed that in the low involvement condition source expertise affected attitudes whereas in the high involvement condition argument quality affected attitudes.
Petty, Wells, and Brock (1976)
Had participants listen to a message advocating senior comprehension examinations under one of four distraction conditions (xs projected during message); none, low medium and high and the message was either weak or strong.
They found that at high levels of distraction people who listened to the weak argument showed more agreement and less agreement to the strong argument.
What is an attitude and what are its components?
An attitude is an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes three components; affect, cognition and behvaiour.
The affective component refers to the positive or negative emotion attached to the object
The cognitive component refers to the thoughts, knowledge, beliefs and memories associated with the object.
There is a specific behvaiour attached to each attitude depending on the affective component for example approach and avoid depending on whether the affect is positive or negative.
How do you measure attitudes?
Likert scale - numerical scale, explicit
Implicit measures like…
IAT
AMP
Response latency - time takes to answer question on attitude
Why can’t we predict behaviour from attitudes?
Other factors influence behaviour such as current emotions, peer pressure and other situational factors. For example when dieting if your flatmate is ordering takeaway there is a high temptation to eat something fatty.
Additionally a person’s attitude may be overruled by their understanding of social norms which may explain LaPiere’s findings as the restaurant owners didn’t want to cause an embarrassing scene by refusing the Chinese people to stay.
Another reason is that attitudes are often inconsistent and therefore the stronger one would be a better predictor of behvaiour. Furthermore there can be inconsistencies between cognition and affect for example in LaPiere’s study the cognitive component may consist of negative information about Chinese people’s impact on business but meeting them aroused positive feelings.
What is the cognitive dissonance theory?
Festinger’s theory states that inconsistencies among a person’s thoughts, sentiments and actions cause an aversive emotional state (dissonance) that leads to efforts to restore consistency.
When can cognitive dissonance occur?
Making a difficult decision — it’s likely the rejected option had desirable features and the accepted option had undesirable features which would both cause dissonance. In order to reduce this state of dissonance individuals have a tendency to rationalise decisions both before and after making an irreversible choice
People also anticipate the future and once they show a slight preference continue to interpret further info in support of this
When people make a lot of effort for something that turns out to be disappointing or unpleasant — reduce through effort justification
