LaPiere

Question 1

What is the background of US attitudes to the Chinese in the 1930s?

Answer 1

• Chinese immigration restricted
• Chinese are barred from landownership
• Intermarriage with other races such as ‘Yellows’ was forbidden
• strong stereotypes against ‘Yellow Devils’

Question 2

What was the procedure of his experiment?

Answer 2

• traveled extensively across the US with a young Chinese couple
• visited 251 establishments (67 hotels/auto-camps/tourist homes and 184 restaurants/cafes
• sent a questionnaire to the 250 establishments, 6 months after it had been visited by the group (sent 128 establishments not visited by group)

Question 3

What happened on the trip?

Answer 3

• only refused service once

- received more than ordinary consideration in 72 out of 184 restaurants/cafes

Question 4

What were the responses of the questionnaire?

Answer 4

• got 128 responses back (51% rate)
• asked Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishments?
• 118 establishments visited said no, 9 said not sure, 1 said yes
• 113 establishments no visited said no, 14 said not sure, 1 said yes

Question 5

What is the interpretation of the responses?

Answer 5

• answers reflected prejudiced attitudes of the time but not actual behaviour
• may be that behaviour was driven by the economic self-interest of hotel/restaurant owners (may be other explanations)
• need to consider what is found today, the opposite of LaPiere: significant number of people try to speak in ‘politically correct’ ways but then discriminate against foreigners in subtle and hard to challenge ways

Question 6

What’s the methodological criticism?

Answer 6

• 6-month gap between observed actions and reported attitudes (change over time)
• whether the attitudes and action came from the same person (e.g. manager/waiter)
• LaPiere’s presence (couple served 31 times in his absence)
• Chinese couple don’t conform to stereotype (they were personable and charming, well-dressed, spoke in unaccented English and were skillful smilers
• survey and observed attitudes were different (survey was of a more vague member of Chinese race, should’ve asked about what was actually observed

Question 7

What’s the conceptual criticism?

Answer 7

• attitude is a positive or negative evaluation of an attitude object (LaPiere measured behavioural intention instead)
• social norms: whether politeness face-to-face norms outweigh social norms to express societal prejudice, also concerns over whether politeness norms were salient when letter was answered

Question 8

What is the ethical criticism?

Answer 8

-lack of informed consent by the Chinese couple and service providers

Question 9

What impact did the study have on attitude-behaviour relationship?

Answer 9

• led to more research testing the attitude-behaviour relationship
• though Wicker (1969) found average correlation between attitudes and behaviour is very low

Question 10

What is the theory of reasoned action?

Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975

Answer 10

• to predict behaviour you need to know the intentions of the people first
• attitudes affect intentions, then intentions translate into behaviour
• subjective norms (social context has influence)
• relative importance (salience of subjective norms may be stronger in face-to-face)

Question 11

What is the theory of planned behaviour?

Ajzen and Madden, 1986

Answer 11

• improved upon theory of reasoned action
• behaviour is predicted by intentions and intentions are influenced by attitudes and subjective norms
• perceived behavioural control (self-efficacy: ability to perform the behaviour) that affects intentions

Question 12

What impact did the study have on how attitudes should be measured?

Answer 12

• principle of compatibility/correspondence: measure actual action rather than abstract construct
• need to consider the action, target, context, time
• attitude and behaviour need to be measured at the same level of specificity/generality

Question 13

What is the privacy paradox?

Acquisti et al, 2015

Answer 13

• attitude: most people think formal websites are more secure than informal ones
• behaviour: people are more likely to disclose private information on informal websites than formal ones

Question 14

What are explicit and implicit attitudes?

Answer 14

• explicit: what people state aloud, thought to be conscious awareness and under conscious control, assessed directly via surveys
• implicit: what people feel inside, thought to be outside of conscious awareness and conscious control, assessed indirectly via reaction time tasks