Lecture 2: Reading

Question 1

Critical Analysis of the early experiments providing evidence for selective attention (selective attention - we attend to information we have positive attitudes towards)

Answer 1

**Freedman & Sears (1965) **
* argued that some of the early research on selective attention merely showed that people are more likely to encounter information that supports their attitudes.
* There was no evidence showing that people sought-out attitude-congruent information.

Question 2

Selective exposure to information supporting attitudes depends on many factors…

Answer 2

• Larger when topics are value relevant
• High prior commitment to attitude position
• attitude strength

Question 3

Galdi et al., (2012): predicting selective exposure from self-reports or from implicit attitude measures matter

Answer 3

These researchers assessed northern Italian residents explicit and implicit measures of attitudes towards Turkeys possible inclusion in the EU.
A week later, Ps were asked to choose an article from each of 6 pairs of articles opposing or supporting Turkeys EU inclusion.

Results:
* They found that Explicit attitudes predicted selective exposure when Ps felt decided on the issue, whereas implicit measures predicted selective exposure when Ps reported being undecided on the issue.
* This suggests that lower levels of attitude strength may lead us to use spontaneous associations with an issue as guides to information processing, more than our directly reported attitudes.

Question 4

Evidence that attitudes influence how we encode and interpret information - Knowles et al., (2010)

Answer 4

These researchers found that an implicit measure of prejudice against blacks predicted Americans opposition to a health care reform plan, but only when the plan was attributed to Barack Obama and not Bill Clinton.

Question 5

When are our attitudes most likely to have effects of encoding and interpreting information?

Answer 5

• depends on the extremity
• depends on the accessibility

Question 6

Attitudes also effect how we encode and interpret faces, with positive consequences - Ma et al., (2011)

Answer 6

• Found that more positive attitudes to a racial group, assessed through the IAT, predict faster speeds at judging the orientation of faces from members of a group.
• This suggests that we interpret the group membership of a face more easily when we like the group to which it belongs.

Question 7

Attitudes effecting encoding and interpretation of faces, with negative consequneces - Dotsch et al., (2011).

Answer 7

• Researchers report evidence of people who are prejudice against an outgroup are more likely to interpret faces as belonging to that group when the faces display negative stereotype-relevant traits.
• But they are less likely to interpret faces as belonging to the group when the faces display positive stereotype-relevant traits

Question 8

Young Ratner and Fazio (2014): reverse correlation paradigm

Answer 8

• Researchers assessed the actual image of a political candidates face (Mitt Romney) in peoples minds.
• New candidates then saw the averaged scrambled face of MR and rated the face on trustworthiness and positivity.

Results:
* They found that if the averaged scrambled face came from a Ps who liked MR, the new Ps rated the scrambled face as more trustworthy and better looking.

Question 9

Brown Ianuzzi (2017): reverse correlation paradigm

Answer 9

used this paradigm to assess American Ps mental representations of “welfare recipient”

Results:
* the welfare recipient face created from the reverse correlation paradigm was judged by others to be more African American compared to a control face (that of a non-welfare recipient).
* Also, when others were shown the created face of the welfare recipient, they expressed more negative attitudes toward welfare benefits compared to Ps who were shown a created face of the control

An individuals stereotype influenced their mental representation of the category, and this representation had a subsequent effect on others’ attitudes.

Question 10

Balcetis and Dunning (2006): Visually ambiguous stimuli (B or 13?)

Answer 10

Tested whether our likes and desires influence how we interpret visually ambiguous stimuli.
* Ps took part in what they thought was a study on taste-testing.
* They were infromed that they would taste 1 out of 2 beverages (one was desirable, one was undesirable). Ps were allowed to smell both drinks - making the attitudes towards the drinks salient (assuming that the desirable drink led to +ve attitudes and the undesirable drink led to -ve attitudes.)
* They then sat at a computer and was told that they were randomly assigned one of the beverages for them to consume.
* 1/2 of the Ps were told that a number would indicate desireable drink, while a letter would indicate undesirable drink. The other Ps told the opposite.
* Ps were then shown this ambiguous image (looks like a B or 13).

The experimenters were interested in testing whether this ambiguous object would be interpreted differently as a function of whether the positive attitude object (desireable drink) was associated with either a letter or number.

Results:
* Ps preference to drink the desireable drink affected their interpretation of the ambiguous figure. When the desireable drink was associated with a letter, 72% of ps reported seeing B instead of 13. However, when the desireable drink was associated with a number, 61% of Ps reported seeing the number 13 instead of the letter B. Depends on what you want to see!!!

Question 11

Principles of compatiability (WHEN is there a relation between attitude and behaviour?) - Davidson & Jaccard (1979):

Answer 11

• They were interested in predicting women’s use of birth control pills. Women were asked questions about attitudes on this topic, ranging from very general questions to specific, to really specific.
• Two years after Ps responded, they were asked to indicate whether they had used birth control pills in the previous 2 years.
• They predicted that attitude-behaviour relation would be higher as the measures of attitudes and behaviour became more correspondent (principle of compatibility).

That’s exactly what they found!

This shows that attitude-behaviour relation requires measures of attitudes and behaviour to be compatible

Question 12

Evidence that explicit measures of attitudes should be more likely to predict deliberative behaviour and implicit measures are more likely to predict spontaneous behaviour - Dovidio et al., (1997)

Answer 12

• Asked Ps to complete explicit and implicit measures of their attitudes towards African Americans.
• After completing the measures, Ps were met with a second experimenter, who asked Ps to complete an ostensibly unrelated study - they were asked a series of questions by a black female and a white female. The interviews were highly structured.
• Ps then had to evaluate both interviewers. Response to this served as the deliberative measure. The spontaneous measure was non-verbal behaviour during the interaction (eye-contact and frequency of blinks). Less eye contact and high blink frequency = less favourable behaviour.

Results:
They found what was expected - explicit measures of prejudice predicted deliberate evaluations and implicit measures predicted spontaneous behaviours

Question 13

Fritz et al., - Reflective-Impulsive model (RIM): behaviour is controlled by two interacting systems

Answer 13

1. A reflective system that guides and elicits behaviour through automatic associative links. This should have a greater influence on deliberative behaviour.
2. An impulsive system functions as a default, and becomes disengaged only when the reflective system takes over. This should have a greater influence on spontaneous behaviour

Reflective system involves processes that resemble how people respond to explicit measures of attitudes whereas the impulsive system involves processes that bear greater resemblance to implicit measures of attitudes.

Question 14

Charng et al., (1998)- blood donation study

Answer 14

found a correlation of just 0.24 between attitudes toward blood donations and intentions to donate blood

Question 15

Effects of attitude strength on WHEN there is a relation between attitude and behaviour - Normon (1975)

Answer 15

Had students complete measures of their attitudes towards volunteering as a Ps in psychology research. Three weeks after these evaluations and cognitions were measured, Ps were all offered the opportunity to volunteer for a psychology experiment. Norman was interested in participants evaluative-cogntive consistency; the extent to which their attitudes and beliefs were highly congruent.

He found that those Ps who exhibited higher evaluative-cognitive consistency behaved in a way that better matched their attitudes.
○ +ve attitude about participating, they participated
○ -ve attitude about participating, they did not participate

Question 16

7 indicators for attitude strength - Cooke and Sheerman (2004)

Answer 16

They examined 7 indicators of attitude strength:
* accessibility, temporal stability, direct experience, involvement, certainty, ambivalence, and affective-cognitive consistency.

These researchers found that all of the measures (except involvement) moderated the attitude-behaviour relation, with stronger attitudes likely to predict behaviour.

Question 17

Critical evaluation point for WHEN there is a relation between attitudes and behaviour

Answer 17

Need to be careful with student samples.
* Research has found that university students show lower attitude-behaviour relations than non students.
* Kraus (1995) observed that the average correlation between attitudes and behaviour was 0.34 in student sample studies. 0.48 in non-student sample studies.

Question 18

WHEN is there a relation between attitude and behaviour - it depends on the situation (Jamieson & Zanna, 1989).

Answer 18

Assessed Ps attitudes on capital punishment. They then were given circumstantial and ambiguous information of a murder case. After reading the case info Ps had to indicate the liklihood that they would vote in favour of finding the defendant guilty of murder. This decision served as a measure of behaviour.
* They manipulated the amount of TIME Ps had to read about the case (3 minutes to read case vs no time pressure)
* They measured individual differences in SELF MONITORING

Results:
* They found that Ps decisions would be most likely to be based on their attitudes when they had to make a decision quickly and when they were low in self monitoring

Question 19

Considering WHEN there is a relation between attitudes and behaviour - Froming et al., (1982) assessed the situational variation in self consciousness

Answer 19

They selected Ps who held strong pro or anti-punishment attitudes and who believed that most people hold the opposite attitude. Ps were asked to shock the ‘learner’ who gave a series of incorrect and correct responses.
There were three conditions:
* mirror (assessing private self-consciousness)
* audience (assessing public self-consciousness)
* a control

Results:
* Ps behaviour in the mirror condition corresponded to their attitudes better than behaviour in the control condition. Behaviour in the audience condition correspond to participants beliefs about the audience’s attitudes. Behaviour matched either internal or external standards.