Lecture 3- Attitudes

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

A general feeling or evaluation (pos or neg) about a person, object, issue

Question 2

Describe the 3 component model (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960)

Answer 2

Affective- Expression of feelings towards an attitude object. Cognitive- Expression of beliefs about an attitude object. Behavioural- Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour

Question 3

What is an example of a simple dimension attitude?

Answer 3

Dogs are sociable

Question 4

What is an example of a complex dimension attitude?

Answer 4

Can be consistent or not
eg dogs look cute but smell awful

Question 5

How can attitudes become stronger?

Answer 5

Attitudes may become stronger aka more extreme pos/neg if they are complex and evaluated constantly

Question 6

Describe the function of attitudes theory (Katz, 1960)

Answer 6

Knowledge function
Utilitarian function
Ego defensive
Value expressive

Question 7

What is the knowledge function in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?

Answer 7

Knowledge function- Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence.

Question 8

What is the Utilitarian function in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?

Answer 8

Utilitarian function- Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes (e.g right attitude = no punishment).

Question 9

What is the Ego defensive in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?

Answer 9

Ego defensive- Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world eg justifying habits

Question 10

What is the Value expressive in Katz, 1960 ‘function of attitudes theory’?

Answer 10

Value expressive- Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept.

Question 11

What is the Mere Exposure Effect (Robert Zajonc, 1968)?

Where attitudes come from?

Answer 11

-Repeated exposure of a stimulus -> enhancement of the preference for the stimulus

Eg participants were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison & Zajonc, 1970).

Question 12

What is classical conditioning?

Where attitudes come from?

Answer 12

-Attitudes learnt from others
-Repeated association in which a previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited by another stimulus eg food+bell

Eg Relates to attitudes in regard to celebrity endorsement in which you transfer positive image of celebrity to the product (Jun et al., 2023).

Question 13

What is Instrumental conditioning?

Where do attitudes come from?

Answer 13

-Attitudes learnt from others
-Behaviour followed by pos consequences means more likely to be repeated compared to neg consequences following behaviour.

Eg Insko (1965) showed that participants reported a more favorable attitude towards a topic if they had received positive feedback (vs negative) on the same attitude a week earlier.

Question 14

What is self-perception theory (Ben, 1972)

Answer 14

-Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions as you infer attitudes from our behavior eg reading lots of books means you must enjoy reading.

Question 15

How can we reliably/valid measure attitudes?

Answer 15

Use precise methodology eg

-Self report/ experimental paradigms
-Physiological masses eg heart rate
-Measures of overt behaviours eg frequency

Question 16

Why do we want to know attitudes but what is a potential downside?

Answer 16

-Helps understand and predict how people behave BUT- could be mismatch eg smokers know risks but continue

Question 17

What is self-concept?

Answer 17

Hobbies, beliefs, politics

Question 18

Describe the LaPiere (1943) study on racial prejudice

Answer 18

-Chinese couple visited +250 restaurants and received service 95% of time w/o hesitation. -However, after letter of inquiry, 92% replied saying they would not accept Chinese members.

Question 19

What considerations are needed regarding the LaPiere (1934) racial prejudice study?

Answer 19

Specifics (same people involved?)
Time (behaviour came first)
Attitude strength (yes/no does not show life complications)

Question 20

What were the results of the Wicker (1969) study?

Answer 20

Attitudes weakly correlated w/ behaviour as average correlation was 0.15 in meta analysis of 42 studies

Question 21

What were the results of the Gregson + Stacy (1981) study?

Answer 21

Small pos correlation between general attitudes and alcohol consumptions.

Question 21

What were the results of the Sheeran et al (2016) study?

Answer 21

Medium to large sized changes in intentions are associated w/ only small to medium behavioural changes.

Question 22

What can be said about how attitudes relate to behaviour?

Answer 22

Suggests attitudes do predict but relationship is weaker then suggested

Question 23

What are the 3 impacting attitudes predicting behaviour?

Answer 23

1) How strong the attitude is?

2) Is it formed by a direct experience
eg Haddock (1999) found attitudes towards assisted dying influenced by having direct encounter

3)How its measured such as question specificity
eg Davidson and Jaccard (1979) found women’s general birth control attitudes did not predict use of pill

Question 24

Describe the theory of planned behaviour (TPB)

Answer 24

-Proposes people make decisions as result of rational thought processes -Brings together the idea of attitude, social expectations and our own control over actions

Question 25

Describe the Cho & Lee (2015) study on TPB culture replication

Answer 25

Polled US and Korean ppts and found strong evidence for theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions.

Question 26

What were the 2 boundary conditions in the Cho & Lee (2015) study?

Answer 26

-Personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualistic national culture than a collective. -Subjective norms had a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation than individualistic ones.

Question 27

How does the TPB Cho and Lee (2015) study support other work?

Answer 27

-Individualistic culture = behaviours determined by self-perceptions or internal beliefs. -Collectivistic cultures = behaviours determined by social group pressures.

Question 28

What is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)

Answer 28

Considered an unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions that are inconsistent.

Question 29

What is the process of cognitive dissonance?

Answer 29

-Counter-attitudinal behaviour = feel discomfort / dissonance. -Strive to reduce dissonance = can reduce dissonance by e.g., changing inconsistent cognition.

Question 30

What are the 3 strategies to combat cognitive dissonance?

Answer 30

-Reduce cognition importance eg know loads of people who smoke and haven’t got lung cancer. -Add a new cognition eg believe you are addicted so stress will be equally bad if quit. -Change behaviour eg stop smoking

Question 31

What are the 2 dual process models in the power of persuasion?

Answer 31

-Elaboration Likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) -Heuristic- systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)

Question 32

Describe the Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980)

Answer 32

Systematic processing- When message is attended to carefully, scan and consider available arguments (engage more) Heuristic processing- Use cog heuristics eg stats don’t lie

Question 33

Describe the Elaboration Likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

Answer 33

-Central route= When message is closely followed, considerable cog effort is expended eg argument quality, analytical. Contains info -Peripheral route= When arguments are not well attended to, peripheral cues eg attraction

Question 34

What is the difference between 'the Elaboration likelihood model' and the 'Heuristic-systematic model'?

Answer 34

The ELM suggests pathways are independent, but they could be active at same time.