week 4 attitudes

• Attitude


  Positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object, or idea
• Attitude formation

  1. Inherited (genetically determined)

  2. Learned (more familiar = more like, role of reinforcement and modelling, context)
• Attitude measurement - Direct


  • Open-ended questions
  • Closed questions (Thurstone, Likert, Guttman, semantic differential)
• Attitude measurement - Indirect


  • Unaware participants (lost-letter technique)
  • Non-verbal/physiological/brain activity (pupil dilation)
  • Duping participants (bogus pipeline, cross-referencing)
  • Cognitive research methods (implicit association test)
  • Overt behaviour
• Theory of reasoned action


  Intention = estimate of probability of performing a behaviour, Attitude = how favourable/unfavourable towards the behaviour, Subjective norm = perceived social pressure
• Theory of planned behaviour


  Perceived behavioural control = perceived ease and control over performing/not performing the behaviour
• Elaboration Likelihood Model


  Central route (paying close attention) vs. peripheral route (superficial notice)
• Peripheral route


  • Influenced by persuasion cues (heuristics)
• Sleeper effect


  Delayed increase in persuasive impact of a non-credible source
• Source characteristics


  • Credibility (experts and trusted sources more persuasive)
  • Attractiveness/likeability (greater likeability, more persuasive)
• Message characteristics


  • Length (longer more persuasive if arguments perceived as valid, longer less persuasive if additional arguments perceived as weak/redundant)
  • Order (primacy and recency effects)
  • Role of emotion (negative vs. positive)
• Protection Motivation Theory


  Motivation to protect oneself from threat influenced by: 1) Severity of event, 2) Probability of event, 3) Response efficacy, 4) Self-efficacy beliefs
• Audience characteristics


  • Intelligence/need for cognition
  • Self-esteem
  • Self-monitoring
  • Mood
  • Gender, age, race, sexual identification
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory


  Inconsistent cognitions arouse physiological tension, people motivated to reduce dissonance by changing attitude, changing behaviour, or justifying dissonance
• Effort Justification Paradigm


  For voluntary acts, people justify effort by changing attitude
• Induced Forced Compliance Paradigm


  For persuaded acts, people justify dissonance by changing attitude
• Resistance to persuasion


  • Reactance (people react against threats to freedom)
  • Forewarning (awareness allows preparation)
  • Inoculation (exposure to weak versions increases later resistance)
• Attitude = positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a   person, object, or idea
• Indirect measures:

  participants unaware that attitude being assessed (e.g., lost-letter technique)

  • non-verbal/physiological/brain activity measures (e.g., pupil dilation) but some may only assess intensity not valence (so not positive or negative direction)

  -duping the participant (e.g., bogus pipeline lie detector, advising of cross-referencing via public databases)-cognitive research methods (e.g., implicit association test (IAT): association between pairs of concepts from timing responses to pairings such as Black/White with Good/Bad)
• Elaboration Likelihood Model

  •central (paying close attention) vs. peripheral (superficial notice)•central route influenced by quality of the arguments•peripheral route influenced by persuasion cues (heuristics)
• reactance = people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves
• inoculation = exposure to weak versions of an argument increases later resistance to the argument
• 2. Yale studies (Hovland)

  •source/communicator (e.g., credibility, attractiveness/likeability)

  •message (e.g., fear, protection motivation theory)

  audience (e.g., intelligence, self-esteem, self-monitoring)
• •Protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1983): motivation to protect oneself from threat influenced by:

    1. severity of event  (It’s serious)

    2. probability of event  (It could happen to me) 

    3. response efficacy    (Change will make a difference)

    4. self-efficacy beliefs   (I can do it)