Definitions & Measures

Question 1

What was Allport’s (1935) definition of Attitudes?

Answer 1

A mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerts a directive or dynamic influence upon an individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related

IE. Something in our head, some kind of evaluation. guided by things we’ve done, seen or read. It influences what we do

Question 2

What is Fazio’s (1990) definition of Attitudes?

Answer 2

A mental association between an object and our evaluation of it
Strong automatic link

Question 3

If an attitude has a strong link between the object and the evaluation, how accessible is it?

Answer 3

Highly accessible

Question 4

What is Zanna and Rampel’s (1989) definition of attitudes?

Answer 4

Am overall evaluation of an attitude object that is based on cognitive, affective and behavioural information

Question 5

What is Eagly and Chaiken’s definition of attitudes?

Answer 5

A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with a degree of favor or disfavor

Question 6

What two ways can an attitude vary? What do they mean?

Answer 6

Intensity/Strength: Stability over time and withstand persuasive appeals
Valence: Positive vs negative

Question 7

Give 4 reasons why attitudes are important

Answer 7

Attitude appraisal function - Serve as energy saving devices to make judgements easily and quickly
Express attitudes
Identify who we like
Protect selves from negative feedback

Question 8

Why is knowing the primary function of an attitude important when wanting to change someone’s attitude?

Answer 8

More likely to be successful

Question 9

What did Wicker say about attitudes predicting behaviour? How did Fishbein and Azjen counter this?

Answer 9

Wicker -Attitudes aren’t good predictors of behaviour
Fishbein and Azjen - Its about HOW and WHEN attitudes predict behaviour = some conditions are better than others

Question 10

What is evaluative conditioning?

Answer 10

The repeated exposure of an attitude object paired with an affective sensation comes to elicit an evaluation of the attitude object

Question 11

Name two explicit measures of attitudes

Answer 11

Likert scale and Semantic differential scale

Question 12

How does a Likert scale measure attitudes?

Answer 12

Rate the extent to which they agree or disagree with statements that express either a positive or negative sentiments about an attitude object

Question 13

How does a Semantic Differential Scale measure attitudes?

Answer 13

People rate attitudes based on several bipolar adjective scales (E.g Bad vs good, unfavourable vs favourable)

Question 14

What are the issues with explicit measures of attitudes?

Answer 14

Awareness of attitude
Social desirability/filtered responses
Presentation of question = diff responses
Diff responses if question invites person to rate attitudes based on others

Question 15

What are explicit measures shown to do?

Answer 15

Predict behaviours

Question 16

How is the Equal Appearing Intervals Method used to create an attitude scale?

Answer 16

• A set of belief statements relevant to attitude is presented
• Judges are asked to order statements along an interval scale
• Give set of statements to sample being tested

Question 17

How do implicit measures measure attitudes?

Answer 17

By looking at speed of judgements

Question 18

Why is it important to look at speed of judgements?

Answer 18

Cognitive processes make it easier to interpret the meaning of an object that shares the same meaning as an object seen rather than comparing completely unrelated items

Question 19

Name 4 implicit measures of attitudes

Answer 19

Evaluative priming, IAT, Affect misattribution paradigm psychophysiological measures

Question 20

How does Evaluative priming measure attitudes?

Answer 20

Based on the accessibility of attitude
Measures the extent to which the presence of an attitude primes positive vs negative evaluations
- When a word comes up have to indicate if positive or negative
- Shown brief stimulus on one of the trails
- Interested in reaction time

Question 21

How does an IAT measure attitudes?

Answer 21

• Build association in first two blocks (E.g Males vs Females, positive vs negative words)
• Block 3 = Combine first two blocks so they are congruent with attitude to measure mean response latency which should be fast (E.g Males & Positive words, Females & negative words)
• Final Block is incongruent with attitude and response should be slower (E.g Males & Negative words, Females & positive words)

Question 21

How can the IAT be made child friendly?

Answer 21

• Allow more time to respond
• Words more prominent in child’s vocab (e.g Yucky)
• Words spoken aloud
• Bright buttons rather than keyboard

Question 22

Give an example of a study that used child IATs

Answer 22

Baron and Banaji (2006) - used a race IAT on 6 - 10 year olds
Found 6 y/os had strong explicit and implicit pro-white/anti-black attitudes
10 y/o were positive towards African Americans explicitly but not implicitly

Question 23

What are the criticisms of IATs?

Answer 23

Responses have been shown to be malliable - use of liked black and disliked white individuals (Dasgupta and Greenwald, 2001)
With training people can exert control over responses
Is it prejudice or do they just favour one over the other but still like both?
Attitudes can be affected by extrapersonal associations (if partner likes something they will like it too)
Personal associations or cultural associations?

Question 24

How can we overcome the criticisms of IATs?

Answer 24

Use something that measures more personal than general
Alt scoring algorithm

Question 25

How does the Affect Misattribution Paradigm (AMP) measure attitudes?

Answer 25

Derives from evaluative priming
- Shown images of attitude object and ambiguous object (e.g Chinese writing character)
- Asked to quickly rate pleasantness of ambiguous character and ignore all other objects before it
- Shown pleasant object before = rate amb. objects more pleasantly and vise versa

Question 26

Name psychophysiological measures that can be used to measure attitudes and their issues

Answer 26

Pupillometry - Less sensitive to valence and more to the attention the individual devotes to the object
Galvanic skin response - cannot differentiate valence
Electromyographic activity (muscle response) - Addresses valence issue but practical limitations

Question 27

How do explicit measures fair in terms of reliability and validity

Answer 27

High reliability (test-retest)
SDS - high internal consistency and high validity (predictive)
Likert - highly predictive (validity)

Question 28

How do implicit measures fair in terms of reliability and validity?

Answer 28

relatively high internal and test-retest correlations
Convergent and predictive validity

Question 29

What can implicit measures do that explicit measures cannot?

Answer 29

predict variability in behaviour

Question 30

What are strong attitudes more likely to be?

Answer 30

Stable over time
Resistant to change
Likely to influence info processing
Likely to guide behaviour