Attitudes

• Attitude: an emotional response that influences behaviour and brings about an individual‘s typical actions towards an attitude object
• Positive attitude = favouritism
• Negative attitude = prejudice
• An attitude is a learned, typical response beaded on a belief about an attitude object
• Attitudes can last a life time but are unstable, meaning they can change
• The triassic model includes cognitive component (belief or knowledge), affective component (emotional aspect) and behavioural component (the response toward the attitude object.
• Persuasive communication theory:

  1. the persuader needs to be someone significant/high status
  2. the recipient must want to change their attitude
  3. the message needs to be presented clearly in a way that makes the player want to change
  4. the situation - attitudes are changed more easily if others are present to persuade
• cognitive dissonance: by changing one component of the triadic model the whole (negative) attitude can be changed. changing one component causes psychological conflict, a person will become uncertain. this conflict is known as cognitive dissonance