What is an attitude? Definition
(1) A relatively consistent organization of beliefs, feelings and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols.
(2) A general feeling or evaluation about a person, issue or object
2 kinds: Belief based (reasoned) and cue driven (triggered by perception of the object)
What are the different components of an attitude?
One component attitude model - Affect/evaluation towards or evaluation of an object
Two component attitude model - (1) Affect/evaluation towards or evaluation of an object and (2) mental readiness
Three component attitude model - Cognitive (knowledge/belief), affective (feeling/emotion) and behavioral (expressed behavior) - Later expressed in thrughts, feelings and more behaviour
Attitudes vary in valence (good/bad) and intensity (importancy)
Attitudes are also permanent and limited to socially significant objects and can be generalized
What are the functions of attitudes?
- Knowledge
- Instrumentality (means to an end)
- Ego defense
- Value expressiveness
What is cognitive consistency?
People try to maintain consistency between their attitudes (avoid cognitive dissonance).
Balance theory - The balance reached between a person (P), another person (O) and an attitude (X) - Think of the triangle
How are attitude objects represented in memory according to Praktanis and Greenwald’s sociocognitive model?
- An object label and the rules for applying that label (shark, has teeth)
- An evaluative summary of that object (I should swim away)
- A knowledge structure supporting that evaluation (threat to my well being)
How do we decide what attitude to adopt?
Information integration theory - Average between the positive and negative evaluations of that object
- Cognitive algebra
- Automatic judgements
- Attitude accessibility
- Automatic activation - Attitudes with a strong evaluative link come stronger
Can attitudes predict behavior?
There are conditions which promote or disrupt the correspondence between attitudes and behavior:
- Whether the attitude is accessible in memory
- Whether it is expressed publicly
- Whether the individual identifies strongly or weakly with a group claiming that attitude
- Whether the attitude is stable over time
- If there is vicarious experience
- If it is frequently reported
Fishbein - It depends on the strength and the value of the belief - But the question must be very specific to predict behavior. Unless you use multiple-act criterion.
What is the theory of reasoned action?
Links between attitude and behavior are based on:
- Subjective norm - What the person thinks others believe
- Attitude towards the behavior - Calculus established earlier by Fishbein (strength * value of the belief)
- Behavioral intention - Internal declaration to act
- Actual behavior
Can you always control over what you do?
No! Theory of planned behavior:
- Because of volition
- Subjective norm
- Attitude towards the behaviour
- Behavioural intention
- Perceived behavioral control
- Actual behavior
There are also other factors like habits and moral values.
How do we form attitudes?
- Vicarious experience
- Mere exposure effect
- Classical conditioning (evaluative conditioning good/bad and instrumental conditioning reward/punishment)
- Spreading attitude effect
- Modelling
- Parental influences
- Mass media
- Cognitive development - You go for the things you like best
- Self perception theory - We conclude that we have certain attitudes from our own behavior
- Values, ideologies and social representations
Persuasion - Who?
- Expertise
- Popularity
- Attractiveness
- Speech rate
- Similarity
- Credibility
Third-person effect
The belief that others are more easily persuaded/manipulated than yourself
Persuasion - What?
- Repetition
- Fear? Mixed results, must be very scary, but still plausible (inverter U). Based on vulnerability and severity.
- Facts v. feelings
- The support of the message (video, audio, written)
- Vocabulary used
- The sleeper effect - Impact of the message increases as time goes because discounting cues (like invalid sources) are forgotten
Persuasion - To whom?
- Self-esteem
- Women are more easily persuaded than men? Nope
- Individual differences (need for cognition, need for closure, need to evaluate, preference for consistency)
- Age (U curve)
- Prior beliefs
- Cognitive biases
Persuasion - Dual-process models
Elaboratrion-likelihood model:
- If the message is listened to carefully, you use a central route
- Otherwise, use of peripheral route
Heuristic-systematic model:
- Same as above
- Central route = systematic processing
- Peripheral route = Heuristics (influence through cues)
En bref -> You’re more careful if you’re interested in the message
What are the different tactics used for compliance?
- Ingratiation - Get your audience to like you
- Reciprocity principle
- Foot-in-the-door - Small -> Agreed -> Big
- Door-in-the-face - Big -> Declined -> Small
- Low-ball - Committed to choice 1 -> Choice 1 is no longer available -> Chooses choice 2
- Action research - Involving the participants actively
How does cognitive dissonance influence our attitudes?
- Cognitive consistency
- Selective exposure hypothesis
- Effort justification - If you’ve been through a lot to achieve a goal which is relatively low, you will persuade yourself that the goal was important
- Induced compliance - A person is persuaded to behave in a way that’s contrary to his attitudes (creates cognitive dissonance)
- People seek to justify their actions
- Free choice dissonance reduction
- Need for self-consistency (self-affirmation theory)
- We can feel dissonance because we are part of a group
- Self-perception theory - We draw our attitudes from our behavior, not vice-versa
How can you resist persuasion?
- Reactance - Where a deliberate persuasion attempt is suspected, people will actively try to not be persuaded
- Forewarning - Knowing beforehand that you are going to be persuaded
- Innoculation - Once you have been exposed to persuasion, you are more resistant to it (you hear and develop your own counter-arguments)
- Attitude accessibility
- Attitude strength
How can you influence someone else’s attitudes?
- Persuasion
2. Reinforcement (rewards and punishments = incentives)
How do you measure attitude - behavior correlation?
Based on object, action, context and time
Does behavior lead to attitude or the opposite?
- If attitude is weak, behavior leads to attitude.
2. If attitude is strong, attitude leads to behavior.
