Lecture 3 - Attitudes and Attitude Change

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

a) A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, events or symbols

(b) A general feeling or evaluation – positive or negative – about some person, object or issue”

(Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p. 150)

Question 2

What is an attitude object?

Answer 2

Something we have an attitude about e.g. person, issue, event, thing

Question 3

Who came up with the three-component model?

Answer 3

Rosenberg and Hovland (1960)

Question 4

What is affective?

Answer 4

Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object

Question 5

What is cognitive?

Answer 5

Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object

Question 6

What is behavioural?

Answer 6

Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour

Question 7

What is the simple dimension of an attitude?

Answer 7

E.g. “dogs are so sociable!”

Question 8

What is the complex dimension of an attitude?

Answer 8

(Consistent or inconsistent) – “dogs look well cute and friendly” but “I hate the way they smell” (inconsistent – mix of positive and negative)

Question 9

How do attitudes become stronger?

Answer 9

Attitudes become stronger – more extreme positive or negative – if they are complex and evaluated consistently

Attitudes need to be complex and consistent

If they are inconsistent, they become weaker or moderate as they come more complex (Judd & Lusk, 1984)

Question 10

Who came up with the functions of attitudes?

Answer 10

Katz (1960)

Question 11

What is knowledge function?

Answer 11

Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence

Makes the complex world seem simpler

Question 12

What is the utilitarian function?

Answer 12

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

Help people with how to behave

Question 13

What is the ego defensive function?

Answer 13

Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world (e.g., many other people smoke, justifying the bad habit)

Question 14

What is the value expressive function?

Answer 14

Facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept (express individuality)

Question 15

What is the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968)?

Answer 15

Repeated exposure of a stimulus -> enhancement of preference for that stimulus (Zajonc, 2001)

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

Question 16

How may attitudes be learnt from others (social learning) through classical conditioning?

Answer 16

Repeated association – previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus

How does this relate to attitudes?

e.g., celebrity endorsement! Transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product (e.g. Jun et al., 2023)

Question 17

How may attitudes be learnt from others (social learning) through instrumental conditioning?

Answer 17

Behaviour followed by positive consequences = more likely to be repeated

Behaviour that is followed by a negative consequence = less likely to be repeated

E.g., 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

Reinforcement with positive feedback = attitude likely survives

Question 18

What is self-perception theory (Bem, 1972)

Answer 18

Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions

Infer attitudes from our behavior (using self as a mirror)

Behavior influences attitude towards object

E.g. I read at least one novel a week = I must enjoy reading novels

Question 19

How are attitudes revealed?

Answer 19

Can’t be seen (measured) directly

The challenge is to measure them:

Reliably (so that the measure gives consistent results over time)

Validity (so we are actually measuring attitudes and not something else)

Question 20

How do self-report and experimental paradigms measure attitudes?

Answer 20

Attitude scales (overt – directly asking)

Implicit Association Task – compares different stimuli together to see how you associate things together (typically used to measure prejudice)

Question 21

How do physiological measures measure attitudes?

Answer 21

E.g. skin resistance, heart rate, pupil dilation

Question 22

How do measures of overt behaviour measure attitudes?

Answer 22

Frequency of behaviour

Trends and preferences over various objects

Non-verbal behaviour e.g. where you sit

Question 23

Can attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 23

“Because attitudes predict behaviour, they are considered the crown jewel of social psychology” (Crano & Prislin, 2006, p.360)

How we think about something is how we’re going to behave towards it

Core of self-concept (hobbies, beliefs, politics, music etc.)

Understand why and predict how people behave

But there could be a mismatch e.g. smokers often dislike smoking, understand the health risks, and intend to quit but continue to smoke

Question 24

Describe LaPiere’s (1934) famous study on racial prejudice

Answer 24

When a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels in the US, they received service 95% of the time without hesitation

However, in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards, 92% of the establishments replied saying they would not accept members of the Chinese race

Behaviour and attitude mismatch (serve in person but belief/attitude different)

Question 25

What are some potential problems with La Piere's (1934) experiment?

Answer 25

Specifics (are the same people involved i.e. person who responded to letter or server) Time (behaviour came first i.e. tested behaviour then attitude – cause and effect?) Attitude strength & direct experience (simply yes / no does not show the complications of life)

Question 26

What did Wicker (1969) find about attitude-behaviour relationships?

Answer 26

Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour – the average correlation was .15 in a meta-analysis with 42 studies (there is an association but a weak one)

Question 27

What did Gregson and Stacey (1981) find about attitude-behaviour relationships?

Answer 27

Small positive correlation between (general) attitudes and alcohol consumption

Question 28

What did Sheeran et al. (2016) find about attitude-behaviour relationships?

Answer 28

Medium-to-large-sized changes in intentions are associated with only small-to-medium-sized behavioural changes

Question 29

What does all this evidence suggest about attitude-behaviour relationships?

Answer 29

Seems that attitudes do predict, but the relationship is weaker than first envisaged Does predict it but depends

Question 30

How does strength of the attitude impact how well attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 30

Weaker attitude may not predict behaviour to the same extent

Question 31

How does whether the attitude is formed through direct experience impact how well attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 31

E.g., Haddock et al., (1999) found attitudes towards assisted dying was influenced by people’s experience of having direct encounter with assisted dying

Question 32

How does how the attitude is measured impact how well attitudes predict behaviour?

Answer 32

How specific the questions are e.g., Davidson and Jaccard (1979) found women’s general attitudes toward birth control did not predict their use of the contraceptive pill as well as specific attitudes towards using the contraceptive pill within the next two years It matters how closely the questions (intentions) relate to the behaviours E.g. in the study, contraception wasn’t a good predictor but using the pill was

Question 33

What is the theory of planned behaviour (TPB)?

Answer 33

Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Azjen, 1991) Multiple components If I predict I can do something, I will actually do that behaviour What you believe influenced by context e.g. positively reinforced by friends strengthens attitude Brings together what you believe, social context and behavioural control (the three intersect to determine whether we do something)

Question 34

Does the TPB replicate across cultures?

Answer 34

Cho and Lee (2015) polled Korean and US participants and found strong evidence for the theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions Personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualistic national culture than a collective Subjective norms has a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation than individualistic ones These findings support other work showing: Individualistic culture = behaviours determined by self-perceptions or internal beliefs Collectivistic cultures = behaviours determined by social group pressures

Question 35

What is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)?

Answer 35

“Unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions [thoughts] that are inconsistent or do not fit in together” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p. 216)

Question 36

What does counter-attitudinal behaviour cause?

Answer 36

Feelings of discomfort/dissonance

Question 37

How do we strive to reduce dissonance?

Answer 37

Can reduce dissonance by e.g. changing inconsistent cognition (change how you think about something)

Question 38

Describe Festinger's (1957) experiment into cognitive dissonance

Answer 38

Counted dice (boring) Experimenter asked participant to tell other participant it was fun (given a dollar or someone else was given two dollars) Control lied then said it wasn’t enjoyable, $1 reported finding experiment enjoyable, $20 more ambivalent In the $1, they have cognitive dissonance (said they liked it when they don’t, acting like they like it so say they like it) but $20 could justify behaviour because they’d made money (didn’t have dissonance)

Question 39

What is strategy 1 to change attitudes based on cognitive dissonance?

Answer 39

Reduce importance (change cognition) e.g. ‘I know lots of people who have smoked all their lives and they haven’t got lung cancer’ Reduces dissonance – behaviour and attitude in sync

Question 40

What is strategy 2 to change attitudes according to cognitive dissonance?

Answer 40

Add an element (add a new cognition) e.g. ‘I’m addicted. I can’t help it. I need to smoke or the stress I’ll suffer will be just as unhealthy’ Rationalising dissonance

Question 41

What is strategy 3 to change attitudes according to cognitive dissonance?

Answer 41

Change one element (change behaviour) e.g. ‘I’ll stop smoking’

Question 42

What is the power of persuasion?

Answer 42

‘Who says what to whom and with what effect?’ (Hovland et al., 1953)

Question 43

Who came up with the elaboration likelihood model?

Answer 43

Petty and Cacioppo (1986)

Question 44

What is the central route?

Answer 44

When message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effort expended (really thinking about it) Look at argument quality; being analytical, high effort, relatively enduring

Question 45

What is the peripheral route?

Answer 45

When arguments not well attended to; look to peripheral cues (e.g., attraction), low effort, relatively temporary Attitude change better if you have time to think about arguments

Question 46

Who came up with the heuristic-systematic model?

Answer 46

Chaiken (1980)

Question 47

What is systematic processing?

Answer 47

When a message is attended to carefully; scan & consider available arguments

Question 48

What is heuristic processing?

Answer 48

Use cognitive heuristics - e.g., ‘statistics don’t lie’

Question 49

What is the key difference between the elaboration likelihood model and heuristic-systematic model?

Answer 49

Pathways – The Elaboration Likelihood Model suggests pathways independent, whereby these could be active at the same time

Question 50

How is knowledge of attitudes used in the real world?

Answer 50

Political campaigns Advertising/sales Encouraging socially valuable behaviours, e.g. organ donation, voluntary work, environmental responsibility

Question 51

What are some real-world examples of changing attitudes and behaviours?

Answer 51

Smoking ‘Smoking seriously harms you and others around you’ ‘Smoking kills’ Which warning is most effective?

Question 52

What did Hansen et al. (2010) find about which warning was most effective?

Answer 52

It depends If smoking is a source of self-esteem for someone, this type of ‘mortality salient’ message actually makes them want to smoke more! If their smoking behaviour is not linked to their self-esteem, this isn’t the case Self-esteem e.g. ‘smoking allows me to feel valued by others’ Feel stress because death is salient, so smoke to cope with stress