attitudes and attitude change Flashcards
(39 cards)
What is an attitude ?
A general feeling or evaluation - positive or negative about some person, object or issue
what do attitudes consist of?
Three component model (Rosenberg and Holland 1960)
Affective
Cognitive
Behavioural
What is affective ?
Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object
What is cognitive ?
Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object
Thought about object in the mind
What is behavioural?
Overt actions/verbal statement concerning behaviour
why can attitudes be complex?
they consist of a simple and complex dimension
how do attitudes becomes stronger ?
They become more extreme positive or negative if they are complex and evaluated consistently and if they are inconsistent the become weaker (Judd and Lusk 1984)
What is Katz (1960) 4 function of attitudes?
- Knowledge function
- Utilitarian function
- Ego defensive
- Value expressive
what is knowledge function?
organise and predict social world : provide a sense of meaning and coherence
what is utilitarian function?
help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcome
what is ego defensive?
protecting ones self esteem from harmful world
what is value expressive?
facilitate expression of ones core values and self concept
What is the mere exposure effect?
Repeated exposure of a stimulus –> Enhancement of preference for that stimulus
For example, ppts were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison and Zajonc 1970)
Where do attitudes come from?
Classical conditioning
- Repeated association –> previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus
link between celebrity endorsement and classical conditioning?
Transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product eg Jun et al 2023
How does attitude come from instrumental learning ?
Behaviour followed by positive consequences –> more likely to be repeated where behaviour that is followed by negative consequences is not
What did Insko show about instrumental conditioning ?
Ppts reported a more favourable attitude towards a topic if they had received positive feedback vs negative on the same attitude a week later
What is Bems (1972) Self perception theory ?
Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self attributions where you can infer attitudes from our behaviour
What are the 5 ways attitudes are revealed ?
- Reliably.- so that measure gives consistent results over time
- Validity - So we are actually measuring attitudes and not something else
- Self report and experimental paradigms - attitude scales and implicit association task
- Physiological measures - skin resistance and heart rate
- Measures of overt behaviour - frequency of behaviour and trends/preferences over various objects
Why do we want to know?
Core of self concept : hobbies, beliefs, politics and music
But there could be a mismatch
Understand why and predict how people behave
What did LaPiere (1934) research about behaviour ?
When a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, the received service 95% of the time without hesitation
However in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards 92% of the establishment replied saying they would not accept members of the Chinese race
what were the problems with La Piere study ?
Specifics (are the same people involved)
Time ( behaviour came first)
Attitude strength & direct experience
What did Wicker (1969) find ?
Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour - the average correlation was .15 in a meta analysis with 42 studies
What did gregson and stacey (1981) find ?
Small positive correlation between general attitudes and alcohol consumption
