Attitudes and Attitude Change

• attitude + attitude object

  • relatively enduring organisation of beliefs + feelings towards socially significant objects/events
  • general feeling or evaluation about something
• what does attitude consist of under three-component model (e.g., Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960):

  • Affective - Expressions of feelings towards an attitude object.
  • Behavioural - Overt actions/verbal statements concerning behaviour.
  • Cognitive - Expressions of beliefs about an attitude object.
• Example: Attitudes towards eating meat (Rosenberg & Hovland 1960)

  • affective - unhealthy and wrong to eat meat
  • cognitive - the thought of eating meat makes me feel sick.
  • behavioural - I will only eat vegetarian food
• components of attitudes

  • simple / complex (consistent/inconsistent) dimension
  • complex + consistently evaluated attitudes can become stronger (more extreme positive or negative)
  • If they are inconsistent, they become weaker or moderate as they come more complex (Judd & Lusk, 1984).
• What is the function of attitudes? Katz 1960


  
  

   1. Knowledge Function

  •Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence.

  
  

   2. Utilitarian Function

  •Help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes (e.g., right attitude = no punishment).

  
  

   3. Ego-defensive

  •Protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world.

  
  

  4. Value Expressive

  •Facilitate expression of one's core values and self-concept.
• attitudes come from mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968)

  • Repeated exposure of stimulus -> enhancement of preference for that stimulus (Zajonc, 2001).
  • For example, participants more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive (Harrison & Zajonc, 1970).
• how are attitudes learned?

  • classical conditioning
  • instrumental conditioning
  • self perception theory, Bem 1972
• classical conditioning (how attitudes are learnt)

  • Repeated association
  • previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction previously elicited only by another stimulus.
  • e.g., celebrity endorsement! Transfer the positive image of the celebrity to the product (e.g., Jun et al., 2023)
• Instrumental conditioning

  • reinforcement (of behaviour) with positive feedback = attitude likely survives
  • Insko (1965) participants more favorable attitude towards a topic if they had received positive feedback (vs negative) on the same attitude a week earlier
• Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972) (how attitudes are learnt)

  • Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions:
  • Infer attitudes from our behaviour:
  • e.g. I read at least one novel a week -> I must enjoy reading novels.
• nature of how attitudes are measured + challenges

  • indirectly
  • challenge is to measure them:
  • Reliably (measure gives consistent results over time)
  • Validity (actually measuring attitudes and not something else)
• How are attitudes revealed?

  • Self-report and experimental paradigms:
  • Attitude scales.
  • Implicit Association Task.
  • Physiological measures:
  • e.g., skin resistance, heart rate, pupil dilation
  • Measures of overt behaviour:
  • Frequency of behaviour
  • Trends and preferences over various objects.
  • Non-verbal behaviour.
• why are attitudes important?

  • Core of self-concept
  • Hobbies, beliefs, politics, music, etc.
  • Understand why and predict how people behave!
  • But could be there be a mis-match:
  • e.g., smokers often dislike smoking, understand health risks, & intend to quit but continue to smoke
• attitudes vs behaviours La Piere (1934) racial prejudice study

  • when a Chinese couple visited more than 250 restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, they received service 95% of the time without hesitation. 
  • However, in response to a letter of inquiry afterwards, 92% of establishments replied saying they would not accept members of the Chinese race.
  • discrepancy between behaviour + attitudes
• how are LaPiere's findings backed up? correlation between attitudes and behaviour?

  • Wicker (1969):
  • metaanalysis
  • weak correlation – average correlation 0.15
  • Gregson and Stacey (1981)
  • small positive correlation between (general) attitudes and alcohol consumption.
  • Sheeran et al. (2016)
  • medium-to-large-sized changes in intentions = small-to-medium-sized behavioural changes
  • Attitudes do predict behaviour, but the relationship is weaker than imagined.  
• Things that impact how well attitudes predict behaviour

  1. How strong the attitude is.

  2. if it was formed through direct experience/encounter:

  Haddock et al., (1999) influenced people's attitudes towards assisted suicide

  
  

  3. How attitudes are measured:

  • How specific questions are
  • e.g., Davidson and Jaccard (1979) women’s general attitudes toward birth control did not predict use of the pill or specific attitudes towards using the pill within next two years
  • How closely questions (intentions) relate to behaviours.
• Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)

  Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Ajzen, 1991); multiple components!
• TPB

  • behaviours influenced by intentions
  • intentions influenced by:
  • positive/negative attitude towards behaviour
  • social norms
  • perceived behavioural control
• Does the TPB replicate across cultures?

  • Cho and Lee (2015) polled Korean and US participants
  • found strong evidence for theoretical constructs but also boundary conditions
  • findings support other work showing:
  • individualistic culture = behaviours determined by self-perceptions or internal beliefs (personal control)
  • collectivistic cultures = behaviours determined by social group pressures (subjective norms)
• Can we change attitudes? Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957)

  • “Unpleasant state of psychological tension generated when a person has two or more cognitions [thoughts] that are inconsistent or do not fit in together” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p. 216).
  • Counter-attitudinal behaviour -> discomfort / dissonance.
  • efforts to reduce dissonance -> reduce dissonance by e.g., changing inconsistent cognition to consistent cognition
• strategies of reducing cognitive dissonance

  • reduce importance/cognition
  • ‘I know lots of people who have smoked all of their lives and they haven’t got lung cancer.’
  • add an element
  • ‘I’m addicted, I can’t help it. I need to smoke or the stress I’ll suffer will be just as unhealthy.’
  • change one element
  • ‘I’ll stop smoking!’
• dual-process model - theory of persuasion 1 - Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

  • Central route = message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effort expended
  • argument quality matters; analytical judgement used
  • enduring
  • Peripheral route = arguments not well attended to; peripheral cues (e.g., attraction)
• dual-process model - theory of persuasion 2 - Heuristic-systematic Model (Chaiken, 1980)

  • Systematic processing – When a message is attended to carefully; scan & consider available arguments.
  • Heuristic processing – e.g., ‘statistics don’t lie’.
  • active at the same time unlike ELM which suggests independent pathways
• How is knowledge of attitudes used in the real world?

  • Political campaigns.
  • Advertising / sales.
  • Encouraging prosocial behaviours
  • e.g. Organ donation, Voluntary work, Environmental responsibility
• Changing attitudes + behaviours in real world, smoking

  It depends (Hansen et al. 2010) how the message 'smoking kills' affects people:

  • If smoking is a source of self esteem for someone, ‘mortality salient’ message makes them want to smoke more!
  • If their smoking behaviour is not linked to their self-esteem, this isn’t the case.

    
• problems with the La Piere racial prejudice study

  • Specifics (are the same people involved).
  • Time (behaviour came first).
  • Attitude strength & direct experience (simply yes / no does not show the complications of life).
• Cognitive dissonance Festinger 1957

  • played a boring game
  • bribed to lie about how exciting the game was
  • asked again if they liked it?
  • those given $1 continued with the idea that they liked it (cognitive dissonance) unlike the $20 group

  • diagram