Lecture 9 - Attitudes and Behaviours

Question 1

Define Attitudes.

Answer 1

Attitudes in psychology refer to the mental representation of a summary evaluation of an attitude object (stored in memory).
Attitudes can be about the self (self-esteem) or other (prejudice) etc.
Attitudes are made up of thoughts, feelings and responses.

Question 2

What is the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes.

Answer 2

Explicit attitudes are attitudes that people openly and deliberately express.
Implicit attitudes are automatic evalutaions. In lecture Simon says they are uncontrollable, but I would like to think of them as unexamined.

Question 3

What are some examples of Explicit Attitude measures and what are some limitations of measuring explicit attitudes?

Answer 3

Explicit attitudes are measured using Self-reported attitude measures, such as a likert scale (agree - diagree) or a semantic differential (rate this attitude object along a scale that ranges from clean to dirty, honest to dishonest etc).
These measures are limited because a) the social desirability bias, where people may distort their self-reports in an attempt to come across more favourably, and b) these measures cannot measure implicit attitudes necessarily, as these are often not consciously accessible.

Question 4

What are some examples of Implicit Attitude measures?

Answer 4

Some examples of Implicit Attitude Tests are measuring physiological responses, such as sweat, in response to an attitude object.
Others measures response times and or accuracy of certain tasks designed to measure implicit attitudes (think IAT).

Question 5

What are the ABCs of attitude structure/components?

Answer 5

Affective component.
Behavioural component.
Cognitive component.

Question 9

Are the ABC components of attitudes of similar importance for all attitudes?

Answer 9

No.
Different attitudes will be grounded in differing weights of the Affective, Behavioural, and Cognitive component.
For example, political attitudes tend to be strongly grounded in an emotional/affective response, whereas as an attitude toward a fridge may be more influenced or based on your thoughts (cognitive component) about the utility of the fridge.

Question 9

What functions do attitudes serve? We discussed five in the lecture.

Answer 9

1. Knowledge function - attitudes allow us to express and synthesise our experiences thus far about attitude objects.
2. Attitudes have a utilitarian/instrumental function - they summarise our experiences of the world into more manageable and usual tools to guide us through the world. e.g. an attitude of caution when walking in long grass in the bush during summer based on the knowledge of the potential for snakes.
3. Social identity/social value expressive function - attitude expression can indicate our social identity e.g. expressing an attitude of openness and inclusion when around traditionally marginalised folks, such as disabled people or LGBTQIA+ folks.
4. Impression management function - expressing attitudes to fit into a certain group or certain relationships - e.g. expressing an attitude of worshipping a Christian god around family that are not open to other or no religion.
5. Self-esteem protection/defensive function - attitudes can also serve to aid in survival and progress - e.g. having an attitude of self-acceptance and self-love can prevent self-esteem from becoming too low and to help guide you through difficult times.

Question 9

Do attitudes have varying strengths?

Answer 9

Yes. Attitudes vary in terms of their strength, including the degree of confidence with which we hold them and how susceptible they are to being altered or changed.

Question 10

Attitudes are formed by multiple routes and influenced by multiple processes. What are the ABC processes involved?

Answer 10

Affective processes.
Behavioural processes.
Cognitive processes.

Question 11

What is the mere exposure affect on attitude formation?

Answer 11

The mere exposure effect is the phenomenon where the familiarity of an attitude object can breed an attitude of liking toward that object.
This is an AFFECTIVE process of attitude formation or attitude influence.

Question 12

How does our discomfort of cognitive dissonance of attitudes and behaviours influence our behaviours or our attitudes?

Answer 12

Cognitive dissonance arises between attitudes and behaviour when our attitudes are not reflected in our behaviour. We find this state of being to be very uncomfortable and so we aim to reduce this discomfort. We can do this by either changing our attitudes to match our behaviour or change our behaviour to align with our attitudes.
This is a BEHAVIOURAL process of attitude influence.

Question 13

What is a cognitive process that influences attitude formation?

Answer 13

Reasoned inference - when we think logically through the facts about an attitude object and draw an evaluation based on a reasoned exploration then this is an example of a cognitive process of attitude formation. An example of this could be how different people change their attitudes toward vaccines.

Question 14

What were the two Dual Process models of attitude change discussed in the lecture that came out in the 80s?

Answer 14

The Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).
Both these models are based on the idea that people can process information and form attitudes superficially or deeply (however, it is more of a continuum than a binary).
The amount and kind of attitude change is dependent on the path/depth of processing.
The factors that influence attitudes change are contingent on the route of processing.

Question 15

What does ELM stand for and what is the ELM model of attitude formation and change?

Answer 15

ELM stands for Elaboration Likelihood Model.
ELM model states that attitude change can be caused by more or less elaboration or thinking about attitude-object-relevant information.
The type of elaboration or thinking route that is involved will have different effects on attitude change and/or formation, with more elaboration (central route) creating more long-lasting change and the effect is stronger, and less elaboration (peripheral route) causing less persistent or effective change.

Question 16

What influences whether we will process information through the central route or the peripheral route?

Answer 16

We tend to process information through the central route when we are motivated to engage in the topic and have the capacity to engage in more elaborate/taxing thinking. Motivation toward engaging in the central route of processing is influenced by whether the topic is of value to use, if we are directly affected, if our values are activated, if we are accountable for the topic or if we have a ‘need for cognition’/desire to engage in critical thinking.
Capacity refers to whether we have the time and space and ability to engage in the more elaborate route of processing, which is both taxing and mentally consuming.

Question 17

What factors influence attitude change in the central route?

Answer 17

Argument strength has a big influence on attitude change in the central route of processing.

Question 18

In 1984 Petty and Cacioppo did an experiment that looked at the impact of argument strength on attitude change when participants were either engaging in the central or peripheral route of information processing. What did they find?

Answer 18

They found that the strength of an argument has a big impact on attitude change when participants were motivated to engage in the central route, whereas when there was no motivation to engage in central processing then argument strength had little impact on attitude change.

Question 19

What factors influence attitude change in the peripheral route?

Answer 19

Argument quantity influences attitude change when the peripheral route of processing is being engaged in.

Question 20

In the same study by Petty and Cadioppo (1984) they looked at how the quantity of arguments (With the same strength) influenced attitude change in both processing pathways. What did they find?

Answer 20

They found that the higher the quantity of arguments the more change in attitude is seen if participants are engaging in peripheral processing, where as argument quantity does not influence attitude change if people are engaging in the central route.

Question 21

Does familiarity of messages improve attitude change in the peripheral or central route of information processing?

Answer 21

Familiarity of messages improves ease of processing and that feels good and is most influential when we are in the peripheral route.

Question 22

What was the study done by LaPiere in 1934 that looked attitudes and behaviours and what was the main finding?

Answer 22

There was a lot anti-Chinese prejudice in the US at the time. The study looked at whether a Chinese couple would be seated at various restaurants. What they found was that most restaurants seated the couple, however, when the researches reached out to the staff at these restaurants afterward they expressed anti-Chineses attitudes/prejudices.
The conclusion drawn from this study was that attitudes are not always in alignment with behaviour.

Question 23

What influence does acting on an attitude object with a valenced behaviour have on attitude formation?

Answer 23

There is evidence to suggest that the nature of the behaviour (i.e. positive or negative) acted upon an attitude object can influence the attitude we have toward that object.

Question 24

What was the study done by Laham et al. (2014) that looked at how directly acting on an attitude object influenced the attitude formed toward that object?

Answer 24

The study involved a foraging task where participants pulled (collected) or pushed away (discarded) novel stimuli and did an implicit attitude test to see the nature of the attitude participants formed toward the different stimuli. They found that the objects that participants pulled toward themselves had more positive attitudes than participants had toward the objects participants pushed away.

Question 25

What is cognitive dissonance and why do we tend to try and reduce cognitive dissonance?

Answer 25

Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that arises when our actions/behaviour does not align with our beliefs/attitudes. We tend to prefer cognitive consistency and so when cognitive dissonance arise we want to reduce this discomfort by changing our beliefs or behaviour so that they are more aligned.

Question 26

What was one of the seminal works on cognitive dissonance that used a unique experimental design to study the phenomenon?

Answer 26

The study was done by Carlisle and Festinger in 1959. They got participants to perform a boring task (which would elicit a negative attitude toward the task) and then got them to "tell" another participant "who hadn't done the task yet" that it was fun. They then measured the participants attitudes toward the task. There were two conditions, however, one where the participant was paid $1 to tell the others it was a fun task and the one where they were paid $20 to tell the others that the task was fun. What they found was that those who were paid $1 reported liking the task more than those who were paid $20. This was thought to have happened because those who were paid $20 had enough of an external motivation to say something they didn't believe to overcome the discomfort of cognititve dissonance, whereas those who were paid $1 did not have enough motivation to ease the discomfort of the cognititve dissonance generated by the study and therefore to reduce this discomfort they changed their attitude toward the task.

Question 27

When it comes to attitudes, what is effort justification?

Answer 27

Effort Justification refers to the phenomenon that occurs when people tend to like what they have worked hard to get. i.e. people tend to develop a positive attitude toward what they have worked hard to get. A real-world example of this may be that people think they there relationship is doing better than it actually is or has more of a future than it might because they have worked hard and gone through a lot together.

Question 28

What was the study done by Aronson and Mills (1959) that looked at the Effort Justification of Attitudes using an uncomfortable conversation around sex, what did they find?

Answer 28

The design was as follows: participants (male adults) were asked to listen to a conversation about sex (which was a very taboo topic at the time). Prior to hearing the conversation they were asked to prepare by reading a section of conversation to the researchers. One conversation was innocuous and about a neutral topic, one conversation was a mildly intimate and uncomfortable discussion of sex, and the other was a very intimate and uncomfortable discussion about sex. The participants were then asked to listen to a conversation that was very boring about sex (to induce a negative attitude toward the conversation) and then they were asked how they felt toward the conversation. Those that had only done the initial innocuous or mildly uncomfortable conversation reported liking listening to the second conversation less than the group who had gone through the very uncomfortable intial conversation. The researchers used this as an example of how when we work hard for something, in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance between having worked hard for an unequally rewarding thing, then we try and reduce the cognitive dissonance by moving our attitudes to align more with our actions.

Question 29

What is the FREE-CHOICE paradigm (aka the spreading of alternatives or post-decisional dissonance)?

Answer 29

This is the effect seen by which people re-evaluate something they have chosen as being more positive than its alternatives as a way of decreasing any cognitive dissonance that may have arisen from their desire for good things and the decision they made.

Question 30

In a study done by Brehm (1956), how did they study this idea of post-decisional dissonance and what did they find?

Answer 30

Participants were given two similar appliances, e.g. kitchen appliances, and ask to rate/evaluate them. They were then told they could take one home. Sometime later they were ask to re-evaluate the positivity of the appliances. What they found was that participants amplified their positive attitude toward the appliance they chose and amplified their negative attitude toward the appliance they did not choose compared the evaluration they did prior to taking one home. Brehm suggested that this occurred because people want to feel good about the decisions they make. I notice myself do this all the time.

Question 31

Is it always the case that dissonance leads to attitude change?

Answer 31

No. It is not always the case that dissonance leads to attitude change and is largely dependent on a range of factors.

Question 32

What factors go into whether dissonance will more likely lead to attitude change?

Answer 32

1.Whether the action is freely chosen. 2.Whether the person is actually AWARE of the dissonance. 3.Whether the person experiences negative physiological arousal. 4.Whether this arousal is attributed to the dissonance being experienced.

Question 33

What contributes to whether attitudes do or not predict behaviour?

Answer 33

Whether attitudes can be accurate predictors of behaviour depends on the type of attitude, the type of behaviour and the attitude-behaviour compatibility.

Question 34

Do attitudes predict intentional behaviour?

Answer 34

Yes. Attitudes influence intentional behaviour VIA intenetions.

Question 35

Do attitudes predict habitual behaviour?

Answer 35

No. This is because what predicts habitual behaviour is: 1.Past behaviour. 2. Environmental cues.

Question 36

Do attitudes predict uncontrolled (unintentional), spontaneous behaviour?

Answer 36

Yes. This type of behaviour refers to spontaneous behaviour that is not a habit, but is also not an intentional action. The example given in the lecture was smiling at a stranger when walking past them in the street...which seems like a habit to me, but maybe not. These types of behaviour arise from the attitudes we have. Perhaps in this example, the attitude may be "Being friendly is important to me" . For these types of behaviours, attitudes directly influence the behaviour - with implicit attitudes being most relevant here.

Question 37

In a study done by Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner (2002) looking at the effect of implicit and explicit attitudes on the intentional and spontaneous, unintentional behaviour, what were their main findings?

Answer 37

What they found was that explicit attitudes strongly predicted intenetional behaviour, but not spontaneous unintentional behaviour. AND implicit attitudes predicted unintentional, spontaneous behaviour, but not intentional behaviour.

Question 38

Whilst the type of behaviour can contribute to whether or not attitudes will influence them the type of attitude also is also a predictor of whether or not it will influence behaviour. What are some properties of attitudes that make them influencers of behaviour?

Answer 38

1. How accessible the attitude is (is it explicit or implicit)? 2. How stable the attitude is. 3. How strong the attitude is. The factors that influence the accessibility, stability, and strength of an attitude are the degree to which one has elaborated the attitude, repeated expression of the attitude, had direct experience with the attitude object, how one-sided the information base is around the attitude object, and therefore how confident one is in holding and expressing the attitude.

Question 39

What is the Theory of Reasoned Action?

Answer 39

Proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), the Theory of Reasoned Action states that peoples' behaviour is influenced by their attitudes, subjective norms and their intentions.

Question 40

What is the Theory of Planned Behaviour?

Answer 40

An elaboration of the Theory of Reasoned action, The Theory of Planned Behaviour was proposed in 1985 by Ajzen. This theory states that not only are attitudes, subjective norms and intentions are relevant influencers of behaviour, but that ones perception of their control over the behaviour is also a major predictor of whether or not someone will engage in that behaviour.

Question 41

In a study done by Davidson and Jaccard (1979) on the correlation between attitudes and behaviour matching, what did they find and what did their results suggest about the importance of how attitude and action properties overlap?

Answer 41

They asked participants about their attitudes toward birth control pills and measured the correlation between these attitudes and their actions. There were four groups: 1. Participants were asked about their attitudes toward birth control in general. 2. About attitude toward birth control pills. 3. About their attitude toward using birth control pills. 4. Their attitude toward using birth control pills during the next 2 years. What they found was that as the attitude became more relevant and specific for the individual the correlation between the participants' beliefs and attitudes increased significantly. What is provided evidence for, was this idea that as attitude properties match more with the action properties the attitude becomes more of a predictor of the action.

Question 42

Which theory states that we infer our attitudes from our behaviours?

Answer 42

Self-Perception Theory. Proposed by Daryl Bem, this theory states that people observe their own behaviour and draw conclusions about their attitudes, based on what attitudes they think must have caused them to act the way they did.