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What is an Attitude?
● A predisposition to respond in a favorable or
PSYC 3013 – Contemporary Issues unfavorable way to objects or person’s in one’s
in Social Psychology environment
● Three components:
● Affective (an emotion, feeling)
Lecture ● Behavioral (an intention to behave in a certain way toward
someone or something)
Attitudes and Persuasion ● Cognitive (opinion or belief)

Class – Give examples expressing all three components

Attitude Formation
Areas to be covered: (Sources of Attitudes)
1. Attitude formation
2. Attitude functions
3. Link between attitudes and behavior
● Attitudes acquired through social learning:
4. Persuasion
- the process through which people acquire new information,
5. Cognitive dissonance forms of behavior, or attitudes from other persons

Sources of Attitudes Sources of Attitudes

● Classical conditioning - Learning in which one stimulus ● Operant Conditioning/Instrumental Conditioning - The
becomes a signal for the presentation of another stimulus; strengthening of responses or attitudes that lead to positive
learning by association outcomes or which avoid negative outcomes (rewards for the
‘right’ attitude)

● Individuals may not be consciously aware of conditioning -
Subliminal conditioning - Conditioning of attitudes by
exposure to stimuli that are below an individual’s threshold
of conscious awareness
● Observational Learning/Modeling - Individuals acquire new
forms of behavior or attitudes as a result of observing others
● Class – Give examples of how behavior portrayed in
the media influence attitude formation
● How does social modeling affect what we eat?
(cultural norms, religious beliefs, family preferences,
etc)
● Social Comparison – tendency to compare ourselves with others
to determine if our views of social reality are correct

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Sources of Attitudes Some Function of Attitudes

● Genetic Factors ● Utilitarian/instrumental
Research finding – attitudes of identical twins correlate
more highly than those of non-identical twins e.g. those related to
● Knowledge
food ● Identity/Self-expressive/Value-expressive
● Self-esteem
● Mere exposure/repeated exposure - Attitudes toward an
object can become more positive by simply seeing ● Ego-defensive
something previously, whether or not it is stored in memory

● Direct Experience – the individual forms attitudes based on past

experience with object or person

● Drugs

Link between Attitudes and Behavior E.g. Attitude influencing behavior:

● NB someone’s attitude may not predict their overt

behavior
● Factors which may determine behavior include
● Behavioral Intention (a separate, distinct variable)
● The strength of the attitude (influenced by attitude extremity, attitude
certainty/stability and experience person had with the attitude)
● Aspects of the situation (e.g. the social context, situation requiring
quick action - )
● Origin of the attitude
● The extent to which the attitude is focused on a specific object or AE – extent to which an individual feels strongly (in one direction or the other)(towards
person vs. a general attitude or against) the issue
● Ability to perform behavior (from theory of planned behavior) AC – includes attitude clarity (being clear about one’s attitude) and attitude correctness
● Reasoned Action (theory)– evaluate options, consider consequences (feeling one’s attitude is the valid or proper one to hold)
and then decide how to behave PE – attitudes formed on the basis of direct experience with the object about which we
● Implementation Plan hold a particular attitude can exert stronger effects on behavior than ones formed
indirectly. (Branscombe & Baron, 2017)

Link between Attitudes and Behavior How Behavior influences Attitudes

● Role playing can affect attitudes

Class - Have you ever experienced a

● Saying and doing may affect belief
gap between your own attitudes and
behavior? Any examples? ● Act, then determine we always had the attitude

Class – Have you ever experienced pluralistic ● Self-perception – when our attitudes are unclear to us, we
ignorance? (erroneously believing that others observe our behaviors and then infer our attitudes from
them
have different attitudes than yourself)

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Persuasion
(How attitudes are changed)
● Note - From social perception/social cognition –
may be difficult due to selective attention, selective
memory, attribution errors and errors in social
cognition
● Class: In the last few days, how has someone tried to
change your attitudes about something?
● On an individual level
● On a societal level
Persuasion
Communicators, Messages, and Audiences
● Communicators who are credible
● Communicators who are attractive in some way (physically, etc)
● Communicators who we feel we know already
● Communicators who speak rapidly
● Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our attitudes
are more successful than those that seem to be designed to achieve
this goal
● Messages that arouse strong emotions
● How argument presented – two sides vs one
● Environmental distractions
● eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) – PTO
Other characteristics of the message
● Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our
attitudes are often more successful than those that seem to be
designed to achieve this goal
● Fear appeals – messages intended to arouse fear in the recipeint
... People are likely to argue against the threat or else dismiss its
applicability to themeselves – not very effective
● Messages that are framed in a positive manner (e.g. How to
attain good health) [These are most persuasive] versus messages
framed in a negative manner (e.g. Risks and undesirable
consequences of particular behaviors)
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What is persuasion?
● Persuasion defined as efforts to change others’ attitudes
through the use of various kinds of messages
Picture
reminds you
of?
eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) and other
messages
● Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, browsing through daily news feed, etc. have
become means by which the transmission of word-of-mouth communications
is accomplished.
● Recommendation ratings from “friends” are particularly important to
purchasing behavior (hence… facebook highlights for you which friends
visited, or commented on a particular thing)
● Facebook has a membership of 500 million worldwide, and on average each
user has 130 friends (Branscombe and Baron 2017)
● Many browers, You Tube, Amazon.com and other sites - provide us with
new information based on our search history .... (‘if there was ever a time that
you could become a shopaholic, perhaps it is now’)
Cognitive Processes
Systematic Versus Heuristic Process
-central route to processing involving careful
consideration of message content and the ideas it
contains
OR peripheral route processing – involving the use of
mental shortcuts requiring less effort (e.g. if it makes me
feel good… I like it, if the communicator is someone I
trust... I agree with it,
Cognitive dissonance is an internal state which results when
individuals notice inconsistency between two or more
attitudes or between their attitudes and their behavior
● People are motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance
● They engage in strategies to do so
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Strategies to reduce cognitive dissonance Resisting Persuasion Attempts

● Acquire information that supports attitude or behavior ● Reactance - Negative reactions to threats to one’s personal freedom

● Forewarning - Advance knowledge that one is about to become the

● Change attitudes or behavior to be consistent with each
other
● Engage in trivialization of the inconsistency, concluding
that the attitudes or behaviors are unimportant
● Use indirect ways to restore positive self-evaluations,
which is more likely when the dissonance involves
important attitudes or self-beliefs (Steele, 1988)
● For example, one may use self-affirmation
target of an attempt at persuasion
● Selective avoidance - Tendency to direct attention away from
information that challenges existing attitudes
● Actively defend attitudes – some may be motivated to engage in
counterarguments
● Inoculation – exposing people to weak attacks o their attitudes may
help them resist powerful attacks by helping them to develop
counterattacks

Thoughts on how campaigns persuade Persuasion

persons to change attitudes and behavior? Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

● Don’t Drive and Drive

● Say No to Drugs
● Live Up, Love Life – HIV/AIDS
● UNiTE to End Violence Against Women Campaign
https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-
women
● Cyberbullying Campaign
● Applying the ELM model, what
approaches can be taken in a campaign
used to persuade people to take the
COVID-19 vaccination?

COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Ideas

● 1) …