ATTITUDES: PERCEPTION & ACTION

Question 1

Functions

Answer 1

• Utilitarian
  ― Know our likes and dislikes
• Value-Expressive
  ― Attitudes help us express cherished beliefs and values
• Ego-Defensive
  ― Attitudes may allow us to maintain cherished beliefs about ourselves and our world
• Knowledge
  ― Attitudes help us organize information

Question 2

Where do attitudes come from?

Answer 2

1. Genetic Origins (twin studies)
2. Social Experiences

Question 3

Explicit Versus Implicit Attitudes

Answer 3

• Explicit Attitudes
  ― Attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily report
• Implicit Attitudes
  ― Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious

Question 4

Measuring Attitudes

Answer 4

• Self-report (overt): The attitude must be conscious to us!
  ― Attitude scale
  ▪ Attitudes that are more central to a person’s self-concept will be more strongly linked to other attitudes the person has
  ▪ But…can be substantially impacted by social desirability (& other self-report issues)
  ▪ Limited by what participants are willing & able to reveal about their attitudes
  ― Bogus pipeline
  ▪ Participants are led to believe they are connected to a lie detector (which is actually fake) to encourage them to provide more truthful answers about their attitudes (reduce social desirability)
• Covert: Better for implicit attitudes
  ― Videotape
  ― Facial electromyograph (EMG)
  ― Brain imaging
• Implicit Association Test (IAT)
• Go/No Go Association Test (GNAT)

Question 5

Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 5

Discomfort that people feel when two cognitions (beliefs, attitudes) conflict, or when they behave in ways that are inconsistent with their self-concept

Question 6

Four steps for both the arousal or reduction of dissonance (Cooper and Fazio, 1984):

Answer 6

1) An attitude-discrepant behavior must produce unwanted negative consequences
2) We must experience a feeling of personal responsibility for the unpleasant outcomes of behavior
3) Physiological arousal that produces a state of discomfort and tension that the person seeks to reduce
4) A person must make an attribution for that arousal to his or her own behavior

Question 7

Behavioral Ethics:

Answer 7

how individuals behave when facing temptations to cheat, steal, plagiarize, commit fraud, lie, or otherwise behave unethically

Question 8

Yale attitude approach

Answer 8

― “Who said what to whom”

▪ Who: the source of the communication

▪ What: the nature of the communication

▪ Whom: the nature of the audience

Question 9

Sleeper Effect:

Answer 9

source credibility tends to decrease more than the message itself with
the passage of time

Question 10

Message Characteristics

Answer 10

• High-Quality Messages
• Vivid Information
• Presentation Order – First or Last?
• Discrepancy
• Length of Message

Question 11

Receiver Characteristics

Answer 11

• Personality
• Mood
• Age
• Attention
• Intelligence
• Self-Esteem
• Culture
• Self-Monitoring

Question 12

Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty et al., 2005

Answer 12

Elaboration Likelihood Model
–> Specifies when people will be influenced by a persuasive communication

1. Central Route (systematic)
2. Peripheral Route (Heuristic)

Question 13

heuristic

Answer 13

a simple rule that people use to decide what their attitude is, without having to spend time analysing the details

Question 14

Attitude Inoculation

Answer 14

Making people immune to (later) attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position

Question 15

Reactance Theory

Answer 15

How people react when they perceive their freedom of choice is threatened

Question 16

Ideo-motor Action

Answer 16

Principle that thinking about an action increases the likelihood of doing that action

Question 17

Compliance

Answer 17

Agreeing to the request of another person regardless of that person’s status

Question 18

Door-in-the-face

Answer 18

Two-step compliance technique in which an influencer prefaces the real request with one that is so large that it is rejected

Question 19

Lowballing

Answer 19

Two-step compliance technique in which the influencer secures agreement with a request, but then increases the size of the request by revealing hidden costs

Question 20

Foot-in-the-door

Answer 20

Two-step compliance technique in which an influencer sets the stage for the real
request by first getting a person to comply with a much smaller request

Question 21

Milgram’s Study of Obedience

Answer 21

• Framed as a “study of learning”; * participants instructed to administer electric shocks for wrong answers
• “Learner” was a confederate; no actual shocks were delivered
• Shock levels ranged from 15 to 450 volts, increasing with each wrong answer
• Confederates protested, screamed, then went silent to simulate injury or death
• Authority figure (in lab coat) used scripted prods to urge continuation (e.g., “You must go on”)
• Beforehand, experts predicted most would quit early (avg. 135 volts); none expected full obedience

Actual results:
* 100% of participants went to at least 300 volts
* 65% went all the way to 450 volts

Obedience influenced by:
* Proximity and legitimacy of authority figure
* Victim’s proximity
* Authoritarian personality traits (submissive to authority, aggressive to subordinates)
* No major gender differences in obedience rates

Modern replication:
* Participants asked to harass a job applicant
* Control group: no one complied
* Experimental group: 92% complied fully despite moral objections

• Ongoing relevance:
  Demonstrates power of social influence and authority
• Explains workplace and political compliance with unethical directives
• Raises ethical concerns and informs discussions on authoritarianism