Week 2 - Attitudes

Question 1

Attitude

Answer 1

A positive, negative or mixed reaction to a person, object or idea. E.g., like, love, dislike, hate, admire and detest, self-esteem, prejudice.

Question 2

Four possible reactions to attitude objects

Answer 2

Question 3

Attitude scale

Answer 3

A multiple-item questionnaire designed to measure a person’s attitude towards some object.

Question 4

Implicit attitude

Answer 4

An attitude, such as prejudice, that the person is not aware of having.

Question 5

Implicit association test (IAT)

Answer 5

A measure of conceptual association between pairs of concepts derived from the speed at which people respond to pairings of concepts, such as black or white with good or bad.

Question 6

Theory of planned behaviour

Answer 6

The theory that attitudes towards a specific behaviour combine with subjective norms and perceived control to influence a person’s actions

Question 7

3 general reasons for stronger attitudes:

Answer 7

1. Directly affected their own self-interest
2. Related to deeply held philosophical, political and religious values
3. were of concern to their close friends, family and social ingroups.

Question 8

Persuasion

Answer 8

The process by which attitudes are changed

Question 9

Central route to persuasion

Answer 9

The process by which a person thinks carefully about a communication and is influenced by the strength of its arguments.

Question 10

Peripheral route to persuasion

Answer 10

The process by which a person does not think carefully about a communication and is influenced instead by superficial cues.

Question 11

Elaboration

Answer 11

The process of thinking about and scrutinising the arguments contained in a persuasive communication.

Question 12

Self-validation hypothesis

Answer 12

People not only ‘elaborate’ on a persuasive communication with positive or negative attutude-relevant thoughts; they also seek to assess the validity of these thoughts.

Question 13

3 factors that lead to persuasive communication (audience willing to take central route)

Answer 13

• a source (who) - e.g. clearly spoken, credible (competent and trustworthy*) and likeable
• a message (says what and in what context) - the message is important
• an audience (to whom) - e.g. bright captive and involved audience that cares deeply about the issue and has time to absorb the information

*Trustworthy - willing to report what they know truthfully and without compromise

Question 14

Sleeper effect; reliable until; discounting cue hypothesis

Answer 14

A delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a non-credible source.;

The sleeper effect is reliable provided that participants do not learn who the source is until after they have received the original message ;

People immediately discount the arguments made by non-credible sources but over time dissasociate the source from what was said. In other words, we tend to remember the message but not the source.

Question 15

Two criteria of speaker credibility

Answer 15

1. Competence
   (People who are knowledgeable, smart or well spoken, or who have impressive credentials, are persuasive by virtue of their expertise)
2. Trustworthiness

Question 16

Need for cognition

Answer 16

A personality variable that distinguishes people on the basis of how much they enjoy effortful cognitive activities.

Question 17

High vs low ‘Self monitoring’ (personality attribute)

Answer 17

high self-monitors regulate their behaviour from one situation to another out of concern for public self presentation.
Low self-monitors are less image conscious and behave instead according to their own beliefs, values and preferences.

Question 18

prevention-oriented

Answer 18

(i.e., protective of what they have, fearful of failure and vigilant about avoiding loss)

Question 19

promotion-oriented

Answer 19

(i.e., drawn to the pursuit of success, achievement and their ideals)

Question 20

Innoculation hypothesis

Answer 20

The idea that exposure to weak versions of a persuasive argument increases later resistance to that argument.

Question 21

Psychological reactance

Answer 21

The theory that people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves and perceiving the threatened freedom as more attractive

Question 22

Most cherished attitudes often form because of (5):

Answer 22

• our exposure to attitude objects
• our history of rewards and punishments
• the attitudes that our parents, friends and enemies express
• the social and cultural context in which we live
• other types of experiences.

Question 23

Evaluative conditioning

Answer 23

The process by which we form an attitude towards a neutral stimulus because of its association with a positive or negative person, place or thing.

Question 24

self-generated persuasion

Answer 24

“when people behave in ways that contradict their attitudes, they sometimes go on to change those attitudes without any exposure to a persuasive communication”

The process of persuading yourself through developing arguments (etc.). More effective when the audience you select is someone you anticipate will agree the least. If you believe in an idea, target someone else that disagrees or that you don’t know where they will stand. If you disagree, target yourself and you’ll try harder to investigate and therefore persuade yourself more.

Question 25

Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 25

The theory holding that inconsistent cognitions arouse psychological tension that people become motivated to reduce.

Question 26

6 ways to reduce dissonance

Question 27

Insufficient deterrence

Answer 27

A condition in which people refrain from engaging in a desirable activity, even when only mild punishment is threatened.

Question 28

Insufficient justification

Answer 28

A condition in which people freely perform an attitude-discrepant behaviour without receiving a large reward

Question 29

Four steps necessary for both the arousal and reduction of dissonance

Answer 29

1. the attitude-discrepant behaviour must produce unwanted negative consequences
2. a feeling of personal responsibility for the unpleasant outcomes of behaviour (includes perception of freedom of choice, and belief that the potential negative consequences of their actions were foreseeable at the time)
3. physiological arousal.
4. must also make an attribution for that arousal to his or her own behaviour

Question 30

Ethical dissonance

Answer 30

The internal state of turmoil that arises from behaving in ways that violate our own moral code.

Question 31

Moral licensing

Answer 31

A tendency to justify an anticipated misdeed by citing good things that we have done

Question 32

Self-esteem

Answer 32

Self-esteem is an attitude we hold about ourselves

Question 33

Describe the attitude matrix

Answer 33

Question 34

Dispositional Attitudes

Answer 34

A tendency to like or dislike things

Question 35

Need for evaluation

Answer 35

People who describe themselves as high rather than low in the need for evaluation are more likely to view their daily experiences in judgemental terms. Typically more opinionated,

Question 36

Bogus Pipeline

Answer 36

A phoney lie-detector device that is sometimes used to get respondents to give truthful answers to sensitive questions.

Question 37

Facial electromyography

Answer 37

Certain muscles in the face contract to produce facial expressions. Some of the muscular changes that cannot be seen with the naked eye can be picked up via facial EMG

Question 38

Why Electroencephalograph (EEG) may be used as a measure of attitudes

Answer 38

Electroencephalograph measures brain waves. The pattern of electrical brain activity associated with novelty/unexpected stimulus has been found to increase/decrease more when the liked/disliked stimuli was preceeded by a series of the pos/neg. In other words, by establishing a trend of (reported) liked, you can make disliked stimuli novel to test whether actual.

Question 39

Theory of planned behaviour

Answer 39

The theory that attitudes towards a specific behaviour combine with subjective norms and percieved control to influence a person’s actions. The three lead to intention which may lead to behaviour.

Azjen 1991.

Question 40

Attitudes held most passionately (3):

Answer 40

1. Directly affected their own self-interest
2. related to deeply held philosophical, political and religious views
3. were a concern to their close friends, family and social groups

Question 41

Overheard communicator trick

Answer 41

Source tells a buddy to buy a product that works, while listener present. Assumed that friends are honest, so this trustworthiness lends credibility to claim

Question 42

Personality traits relevant to persuasion

Answer 42

Happiness vs Sombreness - happiness = generally higher attitude towards arguments, but more impacted (6x) by strong arguments compared to sombre.

Cognitive Need (high vs low) - higher = more likely to scrutinise

Self-monitoring (high vs low) - higher = susceptible to attitude changes that make them appear socially desirable; more persuaded by visual rather than informational; more moved by image-oriented names (over self-descriptive ones); evaluate based on non-object properties (such as packaging) over the quality of the object itself (e.g. fragrance)

Prevention vs promotion-oriented - promotion more swayed by language that ‘promotes’ such as ‘advance’ while prevention more swayed by language that ‘prevents’ risk/loss e.g. ‘secure’ ; same applies to non-verbal language (eager vs cautious presentation)

Question 43

Ways to reduce dissonance

Answer 43

• Change your attitude
• Change your perception of your behaviour
• Add consonant cognitions (e.g. dieting person saying ‘chocolate icecream is actually very nutritious)
• Minimise the importance of the conflict (‘I don’t care if i’m overweight, life is too short’)
• Reduce percieved choice (‘I had no choice…’)
• Intuit ingroup hypocrisy