Attitude (psychology)

Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's like or

dislike for an item. Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an
"attitude object": i.e. a person, behaviour or event. People can also be
"ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a
positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question.

Attitudes are composed from various forms of judgments. Attitudes develop

on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition). The affective
response is a physiological response that expresses an individual's
preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal indication of the
intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive evaluation of
the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in individuals are a result of
observational learning from their environment.

Implicit and explicit attitudes

There is also considerable research on "implicit" attitudes, which are
unconscious but have effects (identified through sophisticated methods
using people's response times to stimuli). Implicit and "explicit" attitudes
seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to
be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The
relationship between them is poorly understood.

Philosophical aspect
Attitude may also be seen as a form or appearance that an individual
assumes to gain or achieve an egotistic preference, whether it is acceptance,
manifestation of power or other self-centered needs. Attitude may be
considered as a primitive attribute to the preservation of the self or of the
ego.

Attitude formation
Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of
experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect
attitudes - but believes that they may do so indirectly. For example, if one
inherits the disposition to become an extrovert, this may affect one's attitude
to certain styles of music. There are numerous theories of attitude formation
and attitude change. These include:
 • Consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent in our beliefs
and values. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-
reduction

(In psychology, cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling or stress

caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of
cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a fundamental cognitive
drive to reduce this dissonance by modifying an existing belief, or rejecting
one of the contradictory ideas.

Often one of the ideas is a fundamental element of ego, like "I am a good
person" or "I made the right decision." This can result in rationalization when
a person is presented with evidence of a bad choice, or in other cases.
Prevention of cognitive dissonance may also contribute to confirmation bias
or denial of discomforting evidence.

Experiments have attempted to quantify this cognitive drive. Studies have

not so far detected any gender or cross-cultural differences) theory,
associated with Leon Festinger (Fritz Heider (February 18, 1896 – January 2,
1988) was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt
school. In 1958 he published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations,
which systematized and expanded upon his creation of balance theory and
attribution theory.

Heider was born in Graz, Austria in 1896. His approach to higher education
was rather casual, and he wandered freely throughout Europe studying and
traveling as he pleased for many years. At the age of 24 he received a Ph.D.
from the University of Graz, and traveled to Berlin, where he worked at the
Psychology Institute.

In 1930, Heider was offered an opportunity to conduct research at the Clarke

School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, which was associated
with Smith College, also in Northampton. This prospect was particularly
attractive to him because Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of the Gestalt
school of psychology, held a position at Smith College (Heider, 1983).

It was in Northampton that he met his wife Grace (neé Moore). Grace was
one of the first people Heider met in the United States. As an assistant to
Koffka, she helped Heider find an apartment in Northampton and introduced
him to the environs (Heider, 1983). They were married in 1930, and the
marriage lasted for more than 50 years, producing three sons: Karl, John, and
Stephan (in birth order). Karl Heider went on to become an important
contributor to visual anthropology and ethnographic film. John Heider wrote
the popular "The Tao of Leadership."

Heider published two important articles in 1944 that pioneered the concepts
of social perception and causal attribution (Heider, 1944; Heider & Simmel,
1944). After this point, however, Heider published little for the next 14 years.
In 1957, Heider was hired by the University of Kansas, after being recruited
by social psychologist Roger Barker (Heider, 1983). Shortly thereafter, Heider
published his most famous work, which remains his most significant
contribution to the field of social psychology.

Heider's The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958) was written in

collaboration with the uncredited Beatrice Wright, a founder of rehabilitiation
psychology. Wright was available to collaborate because the University of
Kansas's nepotism rules prohibited her from a position at the University (her
husband, Erik Wright, was a professor), and the Ford Foundation gave Heider
funds and assistance to complete the project. (Wright is credited only in the
Foreword; she later went on to become an endowed professor of psychology
at the University of Kansas).

The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations essentially founded the modern

field of social cognition. A giant of social psychology, Heider had few
students, but his book on social perception had many readers, and its impact
continues into the 21st Century, having been cited nearly 4,000 times.

The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations contains several influential ideas.

Heider argued that social perception follows many of the same rules of
physical object perception, and that the organization found in object
perception is also found is social perception. Because biases in object
perception sometimes lead to errors (e.g., optical illusions), one might expect
to find that biases in social perception likewise lead to errors (e.g.,
underestimating the role social factors and overestimating the effect of
personality and attitudes on behavior).

Heider also argued that the order people put on their perceptions followed
the rule of psychological balance. Although tedious to spell out in
completeness, the idea is that positive and negative sentiments need to be
represented in ways that minimize ambivalence and maximize a simple,
straightforward affective representation of the person. He writes "To conceive
of a person as having positive and negative traits requires a more
sophisticated view; it requires a differentiation of the representation of the
person into subparts that are of unlike value (1958, p. 182)."

But the most influential idea in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations is

the notion of how people see the causes of behavior, and the explanations
they make for it—what Heider called "attributions".

Attribution theory (as one part of the larger and more complex Heiderian
account of social perception) describes how people come to explain (make
attirbutions about) the behavior of others and themselves. Behavior is
attributed to a disposition (e.g., personality traits, motives, attitudes), or
behavior can be attributed to situations (e.g., external pressures, social
norms, peer pressure, accidents of the environment, acts of God, random
chance, etc.) Heider first made the argument that people tend to overweight
internal, dispositional causes over external causes—this later became known
as the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) or correspondence bias
(Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Jones, 1979, 1990)).although there are others, such as
the balance theory of Fritz Heider.

• Self-perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem

Self-perception theory is an account of attitude change developed by

psychologist, Daryl Bem. It asserts that we develop our attitudes by
observing our own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have
caused them.

Self-perception vs. cognitive dissonance

Self-perception theory differs from cognitive dissonance theory in that it does
not hold that people experience a "negative drive state" called "dissonance"
which they seek to relieve. Instead, people simply infer their attitudes from
their own behavior in the same way that an outside observer might. Self-
perception theory is a special case of attribution theory.

Bem ran his own version of Festinger and Carlsmith's famous cognitive
dissonance experiment. Subjects listened to a tape of a man enthusiastically
describing a tedious peg-turning task. Some subjects were told that the man
had been paid $20 for his testimonial and another group was told that he
was paid $1. Those in the latter condition thought that the man must have
enjoyed the task more than those in the $20 condition. Bem argued that the
subjects did not judge the man's attitude in terms of cognitive dissonance
phenomena, and that therefore any attitude change the man might have had
in that situation was the result of the subject's own self-perception.

Whether cognitive dissonance or self-perception is a more useful theory is a

topic of considerable controversy and a large body of literature, with no clear
winner. There are some circumstances where either theory is preferred, but it
is traditional to use the terminology of cognitive dissonance theory by
default.

Uses of the concept

An awareness of the characteristics that constitute one's self-knowledge.

Cooley (1904- ) made a looking glass model which was comprised of three
components:

1) How we think we appear to others

2) How we think they evaluate that appearance

3) The resulting shame or pride we feel

In philosophy ‘Self-Knowledge’ is commonly used to refer the knowledge of

one’s particular mental states, including one’s beliefs, desires, and
sensations. Often it is used to refer to knowledge about a persisting self- its
ontological nature, identity conditions, or character traits. Self-perception in
short, is how we as individuals come to understand ourselves.

Self-perception is part of Marie Jahoda's theory of Ideal mental health

• Meta programs, associated with Neuro-linguistic

programming

Meta-programs in general are programs that create, control or make

decisions about programs, such as when and how to run them, preferred and
unpreferred programs, and strategic choices of fall-back or alternative
programs.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) uses the term specifically to indicate the

more general pervasive habitual patterns commonly used by an individual
across a wide range of situations. Examples of NLP meta-programs include
the preference for overview or detail, the preference for where to place one's
attention during conversation, habitual linguistic patterns and body
language, and so on.

Related concepts in other disciplines are known as cognitive styles or

thinking styles.

Definition
The use of the term program when talking about the human mind originates
from the cybernetics metaphor, which considers the human brain as a
biocomputer to which one can apply all principles known in computing. The
cybernetic model had been named by Norbert Wiener around 1946, and
became influential through the Macy conferences, which were held between
1942 and 1953 and attended by prominent members as Gregory Bateson,
Warren McCulloch, John von Neumann, Walter Pitts, Norbert Wiener et al. This
metaphor has been inspired on the Universal Turing Machine, named after
Alan Turing, who indicated that it is possible to program a machine to imitate
the behavior of any other machine — and even that of a human with a pencil
and paper following a set of rules. The metaphor got inverted, and a basic
premise became that cognitive activity can be explained in terms of
computation.
According to this mind-as-computer metaphor, the mind is constantly and
continuously running a complex set of programs which are controlling all
aspects of our existence, such as breathing, walking, talking, etc. Dr. John C.
Lilly, who can be considered as the first person to define the term meta-
programs, formally defined a program as: "a set of internally consistent
instructions for the computation of signals, the formation of information, the
storage of both, the preparation of messages, the logical processes being
used, the selection processes, and the storage addresses all occurring within
a biocomputer, a brain." And a meta-program as: "a set of instructions,
descriptions, and means of control of a set of programs."

Neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) is an interpersonal

communication model and approach to psychotherapy[1] initially co-created
by Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder in the 1970s. The originators
claim it draws from aspects of neurology ("neuro-"), linguistics and computer
science ("programming"). Critics consider the field of NLP to be highly
controversial.[2]

Tension exists between several divergent groups within NLP reflected in

various definitions, training and professional standards. NLP has often been
promoted as an art and science of effective communication and 'the study of
the structure of subjective experience'.[3][4]. Others have tended to define NLP
as a methodology for effective communication or modeling excellence as it
was originally created.[5][4]

NLP has enjoyed little support within the psychological profession following
research reviewed in the Journal of Counseling Psychology in the early
1980s.[6] This led some skeptics and psychologists to dismiss NLP as a
pseudoscientific or New Age form of psychotherapy.[7] A recent survey of
mental health professionals rated NLP as having questionable validity as a
psychotherapeutic technique.[8] While there has been some efforts within NLP
to improve its practice, recent research is spread thinly across various
disciplines and the field remains splintered.

An off-shoot application of NLP: Neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, has been

recognized by United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). There has
also been a recent University of Surrey sponsored, vendor neutral, NLP
Research Conference to encourage practitioners to engage in research.[9]

Founding and early development

The first popular book on NLP, Frogs into Princes, first published in 1979, was based
on transcripts of its co-founders, Bandler and Grinder, presenting at seminars live.

NLP originated when Richard Bandler, a student at University of California,

Santa Cruz, was transcribing taped therapy sessions of the Gestalt therapist
Fritz Perls as a project for the psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who had originally
commissioned Bandler to teach his son drums. Bandler believed he
recognized particular word and sentence structures which facilitated the
acceptance of Perls’ positive suggestions. Bandler took this idea to one of his
university teachers, John Grinder, a linguist, and together they produced
what they termed the Meta Model, a model of what they believed to be
influential word structures and how they work. They also 'modelled' the
therapeutic sessions of the family therapist Virginia Satir. [10]

They published an account of their work in The Structure of Magic in 1975,

when Bandler was only 25. The main theme of the book was that it was
possible to analyse and codify the therapeutic methods of Satir and Perl.
Exceptional therapy, even when it appears 'magical', has a discernible
structure, which anyone could learn. Some of the book was based on
previous work by Grinder on transformational grammar, the Chomskyan
generative syntax that was current at the time.[11] Some considered the
importation of transformational grammar to psychotherapy to be Bandler
and Grinder's main contribution to the field of psychotherapy.[12] Bandler and
Grinder also made use of ideas of Gregory Bateson, who was influenced by
Alfred Korzybski, particularly his ideas about human modeling and that 'the
map is not the territory'. [13][5]

Impressed by the work, the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson agreed to

write the preface and also introduced Bandler and Grinder to Milton Erickson
who would become the third model for NLP. Erickson, an American
psychiatrist and founding member of the American Society for Clinical
Hypnosis, was well known for his unconventional approach to therapy, for his
ability to "utilize" anything about a patient to help them change, including
their beliefs, favorite words, cultural background, personal history, or even
their neurotic habits, and for treating the unconscious mind as creative,
solution-generating, and often positive.

Persuasion
ersuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding people
toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic
(though not always logical) means. It is strategy of problem-solving relying
on "appeals" rather than strength.
Manipulation is taking persuasion to an extreme, where the one person or
group benefits at the cost of the other.

Aristotle said that "Rhetoric is the art of discovering, in a particular case, the
available means of persuasion."

Principles of persuasion
According to Robert Cialdini in his book on persuasion, he defined six
"weapons of influence":
• Reciprocation - People tend to return a favor. Thus, the pervasiveness of
free samples in marketing. In his conferences, he often uses the example of
Ethiopia providing thousands of dollars in humanitarian aid to Mexico just
after the 1985 earthquake, despite Ethiopia suffering from a crippling famine
and civil war at the time. Ethiopia had been reciprocating for the diplomatic
support Mexico provided when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1937.

• Commitment and Consistency - If people commit, verbally or in writing,

they are more likely to honor that commitment. Even if the original incentive
or motivation is removed after they have already agreed, they will continue
to honor the agreement. For example, in car sales, suddenly raising the price
at the last moment works because the buyer has already decided to buy. See
cognitive dissonance.

• Social Proof - People will do things that they see other people are doing. For
example, in one experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the
sky; bystanders would then look up into the sky to see what they were
seeing. At one point this experiment aborted, as so many people were looking
up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity
experiments.
 • Authority - People will tend to obey authority figures, even if they are asked
to perform objectionable acts. Cialdini cites incidents, such as the Milgram
experiments in the early 1960s and the My Lai massacre.

• Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. Cialdini
cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral
marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to
them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are
discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype.

• Scarcity - Perceived scarcity will generate demand. For example, saying

offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales.

Propaganda is also closely related to Persuasion. Its a concerted set of

messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of
people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most
basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most
effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda
presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives
loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational
response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the
cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. The term
'propaganda' first appeared in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established the
Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith. Propaganda was then as now
about convincing large numbers of people about the veracity of a given set
of ideas. Propaganda is as old as people, politics and religion.

Elaboration Likelihood Model associated with Richard E.

Petty and the Heuristic Systematic Model of Shelly
Chaiken.
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)
is a model of how attitudes are formed and changed (see also attitude change).
Central to this model is the "elaboration continuum", which ranges from low
elaboration (low thought) to high elaboration (high thought). The ELM distinguishes
between two routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.

Central route
Central route processes are those that require a great deal of thought, and
therefore are likely to predominate under conditions that promote high
elaboration. Central route processes involve careful scrutiny of a persuasive
communication (e.g., a speech, an advertisement, etc.) to determine the
merits of the arguments. Under these conditions, a person’s unique cognitive
responses to the message determine the persuasive outcome (i.e., the
direction and magnitude of attitude change). So, if favorable thoughts are a
result of the elaboration process, the message will most likely be accepted
(i.e., an attitude congruent with the messages position will emerge), and if
unfavorable thoughts are generated while considering the merits of
presented arguments, the message will most likely be rejected (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1986).In order for the message to be centrally processed, a person
must have the motivation and ability to do so.

[edit] Peripheral route

Peripheral route processes, on the other hand, do not involve elaboration of
the message through extensive cognitive processing of the merits of the
actual argument presented. These processes often rely on environmental
characteristics of the message, like the perceived credibility of the source,
quality of the way in which it is presented, the attractiveness of the source,
or the catchy slogan that contains the message. (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

[edit] Choice of route

The two factors that most influence which route an individual will take in a
persuasive situation are motivation (strong desire to process the message;
e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1979) and ability (actually being capable of critical
evaluation; e.g., Petty, Wells, & Brock, 1976). Which route is taken is
determined by the extent of elaboration. Both motivational and ability
factors determine elaboration. Motivational factors include (among others)
the personal relevance of the message topic, accountability, and a person’s
"need for cognition" (their innate desire to enjoy thinking). Ability factors
include the availability of cognitive resources (e.g., the presence or absence
of time pressures or distractions) or relevant knowledge needed to carefully
scrutinize the arguments. Under conditions of moderate elaboration, a
mixture of central and peripheral route processes will guide information
processing.

[edit] Additional propositions

In addition to these factors, the ELM also makes several unique proposals
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).
• Attitudes formed under high elaboration are stronger (more predictive of
behavior and information processing, more stable over time, more resistant
to persuasion) than those formed under low elaboration.

• Variables can serve multiple roles in a persuasive setting depending on other

contextual factors (examples below).

o Under high elaboration, a given variable (e.g., source expertise) can

either serve as an argument (“If Einstein agrees with the theory of
relativity, then this is a strong reason for me to as well”) or as a
biasing factor (“if an expert agrees with this position it is probably
 good, so let me see what else agrees with this conclusion” (at the
expense of information that disagrees with it)).

o Under conditions of low elaboration, a given variable can act as a

peripheral cue (e.g., through the use of an “experts are always right”
heuristic – note that while this is similar to the case presented above,
this is a simple shortcut, and does not require the careful thought as in
the Einstein example above).

o Under conditions of moderate elaboration, a given variable can serve

to direct the extent of information processing (“Well, if an expert
agrees with this position, I should really listen to what (s)he has to
say”). Interestingly, when a variable affects elaboration, this can
increase or decrease persuasion, depending on the strength of the
arguments presented. If the arguments are strong, enhancing
elaboration will enhance persuasion. If the arguments are weak,
however, more thought will undermine persuasion.

o More recent adaptations of the ELM (e.g., Petty, Briñol, & Tormala,
2002) have added an additional role that variables can serve. They can
affect the extent to which a person has confidence in, and thus trusts,
their own thoughts in response to a message (self-validation role.
Keeping with our source expertise example, a person may feel that “if
an expert presented this information, it is probably correct, and thus I
can trust that my reactions to it are informative with respect to my
attitude”. Note that this role, because of its metacognitive nature, only
occurs under conditions that promote high elaboration.

Social judgment theory

Overview
Arising out of the socio-psychological tradition, SJT is a theory that focuses
on the internal processes of an individual’s judgment with relation to a
communicated message. SJT was intended to be an explanatory method
designed to detail when persuasive messages are most likely to succeed.
Attitude change is the fundamental objective of persuasive communication.
SJT seeks to specify the conditions under which this change takes place and
predict the direction and extent of the attitude change. In sum, the
researchers strove to develop a theory that addressed the following: a
person’s likelihood to change his/her position, the likely direction of his/her
attitude change, a person’s tolerance of other positions, and the level of
commitment to his/her own position. (Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965). The
SJT researchers claimed that expectations regarding attitude change could
be based on the message receiver’s level of involvement, the structure of
the stimulus (i.e., how many alternatives it allows), and the value (credibility)
of the source.

Development of SJT
SJT arose from social psychology and was based on laboratory findings
resulting from experiments. These experiments studied the mental
assessment of physical objects, referred to at the time as psychophysical
research. Subjects were asked to compare some aspect of an object, such as
weight or color, to another, differing object. The researchers discovered that
when a standard was provided for comparison, the participants categorized
the objects relative to the aspects of the standard. For example, if a very
heavy object was used as the standard in assessing weight, then the other
objects would be judged to be relatively lighter than if a very light object was
used as the standard. The standard is referred to as an "anchor". This work
involving physical objects was applied to psychosocial work, in which a
participant’s limits of acceptability on social issues are studied (Sherif &
Hovland, 1961; Sherif et al., 1965). Social issues include areas such as
religion and politics.

Judgment process and attitudes

The judgment process and the comparisons involved in it mediate attitude
change, although the causal nature of the judgment process on attitude
change is harder to determine (Kiesler, Collins, & Miller, 1969). A judgment
occurs when a person compares at least two stimuli and makes a choice
about them. With regard to social stimuli specifically, judgment processes
incorporate both past experiences and present circumstances (Sherif, 1963).
Sherif et al. (1965) defined attitudes as “the stands the individual upholds
and cherishes about objects, issues, persons, groups, or institutions” (p. 4).
Researchers must infer attitudes from behavior. The behavior can be in
response to arranged or naturally-occurring stimuli (Nebergall, 1966; Sherif &
Hovland, 1961; Sherif et al., 1965). True attitudes are fundamental to self-
identity, are complex, and thus can be difficult to change.

One of the ways in which the SJT developers observed attitudes was through
the Own Categories Questionnaire. This method requires research
participants to place statements into piles of most acceptable, most
offensive, neutral, and so on, in order for researchers to infer their attitudes.
This categorization, an observable judgment process, was seen by Sherif and
Hovland (1961) as a major component of attitude formation. As a judgment
process, categorization and attitude formation are a product of recurring
instances so that past experiences influence decisions regarding aspects of
the current situation. Therefore, attitudes are acquired (Sherif et al., 1965).
Experience, knowledge, and emotion dictate these choices.
Latitudes of rejection, acceptance, and
noncommitment
All social attitudes are not cumulative, especially regarding issues where the
attitude is extreme (Sherif et al., 1965). This means that a person may not
agree with less extreme stands relative to his/her position, even though they
may be in the same direction. Furthermore, even though two people may
seem to hold identical attitudes, their “most preferred” and “least preferred”
alternatives may differ. Thus, a person’s full attitude can only be understood
in terms of what other positions he/she finds acceptable (or not) in addition
to his/her own stand (Nebergall, 1966). This continuum illustrates a crucial
point of SJT, referred to as the "latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and
noncommitment". These latitudes compose, respectively, a range of
preferred, offensive, and indifferent attitudes. The placement of positions
along the continuum hinges on the anchor point, usually determined by the
individual’s own stand (Sherif & Hovland, 1961). Therefore, one’s attitude on
a social issue can not be summed up with a single point but instead consists
of varying degrees of acceptability for discrepant positions.

These degrees or latitudes together create the full spectrum of an

individual’s attitude. Sherif and Hovland (1961) define the latitude of
acceptance “as the range of positions on an issue…an individual considers
acceptable to him (including the one ‘most acceptable’ to him)” (p. 129). On
the opposite of the continuum lies the latitude of rejection. This is defined as
including the “positions he finds objectionable (including the one ‘most
objectionable’ to him”) (Sherif & Hovland, 1961, p. 129). This latitude of
rejection was deemed essential by the SJT developers in determining an
individual’s level of involvement and thus his/her propensity to attitude
change. The greater the rejection latitude, the more involved the individual is
in the issue and thus is harder to persuade. In the middle of these opposites
lies the latitude of noncommitment, a range of viewpoints where one feels
primarily indifferent.

Assimilation and contrast

These latitudes dictate the likelihood of assimilation and contrast. When a
discrepant viewpoint is expressed in a communication message, if it falls
within the person’s latitude of acceptance, the message is more likely to be
assimilated or viewed as being closer to person’s anchor, or own viewpoint,
than it actually is. When the message is perceived as being very different
from one’s anchor and thus falling within the latitude of rejection, persuasion
is unlikely due to a contrast effect. The contrast effect is what happens when
the message is viewed as being further away than it actually is from the
anchor. Messages falling within the latitude of noncommitment, however, are
the ones most likely to achieve the desired attitude change. Therefore, the
more extreme stand an individual has, the greater his/her latitude of
rejection and thus the harder he/she is to persuade.

Ego-involvement
It was speculated by the SJT researchers that extreme stands, and thus wide
latitudes of rejection, were a result of high ego-involvement. According to the
1961 Sherif and Hovland work, the level of ego-involvement depends upon
whether the issue “arouses an intense attitude or, rather, whether the
individual can regard the issue with some detachment as primarily a ‘factual’
matter” (p. 191). Religion, politics, and family are examples of issues that
typically result in highly involved attitudes; they contribute to one’s self-
identity (Sherif et al., 1965).

Balance theory
Balance Theory is a motivational theory of attitude change proposed by
Fritz Heider, which conceptualizes the consistency motive as a drive toward
psychological balance. Heider proposed that "sentiment" or liking
relationships are balanced if the affect valence in a system multiplies out to
a positive result.

For example: a Person who likes an Other person will be balanced by the
same valence attitude on behalf of the other. Symbolically, P (+) > O and P
< (+) O results in psychological balance.

This can be extended to objects (X) as well, thus introducing triadic

relationships. If a person P likes object X but dislikes other person O, what
does P feel upon learning that O created X? This is symbolized as such:
• P (+) > X

• P (-) > O

• O (+) > X

Multiplying the signs shows that the person will perceive imbalance (a
negative multiplicative product) in this relationship, and will be motivated to
correct the imbalance somehow. The Person can either:
• Decide that O isn't so bad after all,

• Decide that X isn't as great as originally thought, or

• Conclude that O couldn't really have made X.

Any of these will result in psychological balance, thus resolving the dilemma
and satisfying the drive. (Person P could also avoid object X and other person
O entirely, lessening the stress created by psychological imbalance.)

Balance Theory is also useful in examining how celebrity endorsement

affects consumers' attitudes toward products. If a person likes a celebrity
and perceives (due to the endorsement) that said celebrity likes a product,
said person will tend to liking the product more, in order to achieve
psychological balance.

However, if the person already had a dislike for the product being endorsed
by the celebrity, she may like the celebrity less in addition to liking the
product more, again to achieve psychological balance.

To predict the outcome of a situation using Heider's Balance Theory, one

must weigh the effects of all the potential results, and the one requiring the
least amount of effort will be the likely outcome.

Intellect
Intelligence (also called intellect) is an umbrella term used to describe a property
of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to
reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use
language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence. In some
cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character,
knowledge, or wisdom. However, most psychologists prefer not to include these
traits in the definition of intelligence.

Definitions
Intelligence comes from the Latin verb "intellegere", which means "to
understand". By this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably
different from being "smart" (able to adapt to one's environment), or being
"clever" (able to creatively adapt).

At least two major "consensus" definitions of intelligence have been

proposed. First, from Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, a report of a task
force convened by the American Psychological Association in 1995:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex

ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to
engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking
thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are
never entirely consistent: a given person’s intellectual performance will vary
on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria.
Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex
set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some
areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important
questions and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen
prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two
dozen somewhat different definitions.[1][2]

A second definition of intelligence comes from "Mainstream Science on

Intelligence", which was signed by 52 intelligence researchers in 1994:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the
ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend
complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book
learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a
broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings
—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.[3]

Another simple and efficient definition is : the ability to apply knowledge in

order to perform better in an environment

Researchers in the fields of psychology and learning have also defined

human intelligence:

Factors that affect attitude change

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. The celebrated work of Carl
Hovland, at Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s, helped to advance
knowledge of persuasion. In Hovland's view, we should understand attitude
change as a response to communication. He and his colleagues did
experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of
a message:
1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who
receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems
that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided
messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-
esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem
are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship
between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of
moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high
and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind frame and
mood of the target also plays a role in this process.

2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise,

trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility
of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here (Hovland &
Weiss, 1951); if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a
professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one
believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated
 whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the
effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source
disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether
there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Received wisdom is that if people are
informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood
of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.

3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in

persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help
change attitudes.

Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive

evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion the
individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and
arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude
change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the
source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature
celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are used. In other
cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.

Emotion and Attitude Change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and
attitude change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of
affective or emotion components (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992). Emotion works
hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue
or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health
campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking
health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of
terrorism.

Taking into consideration current attitude research, Breckler and Wiggins

(1992) define attitudes as “mental and neural representations, organized
through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence on behavior”
(p. 409). Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective
and conative components. Attitudes are part of the brain’s associative
networks, the spider-like structures residing in long term memory (Higgins,
1986) that consist of affective and cognitive nodes linked through associative
pathways (Anderson, 1983; Fazio, 1986). These nodes contain affective,
cognitive, and behavioral components (Eagly & Chaiken, 1995).

Anderson (1983) suggests that the inter-structural composition of an

associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus,
by activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible,
though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In
primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive
counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change (Eagly
& Chaiken, 1995).

Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of

emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting
emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the
cognitive processes (Loewenstein, 2007). How we feel about an outcome
may override purely cognitive rationales.

In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is

measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we cannot
see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have been
constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may
include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes,
and other body rate measures (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992). For instance, fear
is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body
tension (Dillard, 1994). Other methods include concept or network mapping,
and using primes or word cues (Shavelson & Stanton, 1975).

Processing Models
Some research on emotion and attitude change focuses on the way people
process messages. Many dual process models are used to explain the
affective (emotion) and cognitive processing and interpretations of
messages. These include the elaboration likelihood model, the heuristic-
systematic model, and the extended parallel process model.

In the Elaboration Likelihood Model, or ELM, (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986),

cognitive processing is the central route and affective/emotion processing is
often associated with the peripheral route. The central route pertains to an
elaborate cognitive processing of information while the peripheral route
relies on cues or feelings. The ELM suggests that true attitude change only
happens through the central processing route that incorporates both
cognitive and affective components as opposed to the more heuristics-based
peripheral route. This suggests that motivation through emotion alone will
not result in an attitude change.

In the Heuristic-Systematic Model, or HSM, (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly,

1989) information is either processed in a high-involvement and high-effort
systematic way, or information is processed through shortcuts known as
heuristics. Emotions, feelings and gut-feeling reactions are often used as
shortcuts.

The Extended Parallel Process Model, or EPPM, includes both thinking and
feeling in conjunction with threat and fear appeals (Witte, 1992). EPPM
suggests that persuasive fear appeals work best when people have high
involvement and high efficacy. In other words, fear appeals are most
effective when an individual cares about the issue or situation, and that
individual possesses and perceives that they possess the agency to deal with
that issue or situation.

Components of Emotion Appeals

Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include
jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, and anger. Fear is one of the most
studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence research.
Dillard (1994) suggests that “fear appeals have been thought of as messages
that attempt to achieve opinion change by establishing the negative
consequences of failing to agree with the advocated position” (p. 295). The
EPPM (above) looks at the effectiveness of using fear and threat to change
attitudes.

Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotion appeals include

the possibility of reactance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981) which may lead to either
message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change.
As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating
attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an attitude will not
change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed
thereby preventing attitude change.

Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more

than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of
humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating
incongruities in the mind (Maase, Fink & Kaplowitz, 1984). Recent research
has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of political messages
(Nabi, Moyer-Guse, & Byrne, 2007). While evidence is inconclusive, there
appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with low
political message involvement.

Important factors that influence the impact of emotion appeals include self
efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source
features. Self efficacy is a perception of one’s own human agency; in other
words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation
(Bandura, 1992). It is an important variable in emotion appeal messages
because it dictates a person’s ability to deal with both the emotion and the
situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to
impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or
behavior about global warming.

Dillard (1994) suggests that message features such as source non-verbal

communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact the
emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of a message are
important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for
different people. Thus, in terms of emotion appeals messages, one size does
not fit all.
Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory
(Fazio, 1986); in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an
object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement (Zaichkowsky, 1985) is the
relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue
involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude
strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to
change (Fazio & Williams, 1986).

Jung's definition of attitude

Attitude is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types.
Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in
a certain way" (Jung, [1921] 1971:par. 687). Attitudes very often come in
pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad definition
Jung defines several attitudes.

The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following.
• Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two attitudes is
extremely frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means
that consciousness has a constellation of contents different from that of the
unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis" (Jung, [1921] 1971:
par. 687).

• Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jung's theory of

types that he labeled them the "attitude-types".

• Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an attitude" (Jung,

[1921] 1971: par. 785).

o The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling

psychological functions, each with its attitude.

o The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition

psychological functions, each with its attitude. "There is thus a typical
thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" (Jung, [1921] 1971:
par. 691).

• Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms".

In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude. “When I take an abstract

attitude...” (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 679). Abstraction is contrasted with
concretism. “CONCRETISM. By this I mean a peculiarity of thinking and
feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction” (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 696).

MBTI definition of attitude

The MBTI write-ups limit the use of "attitude" to the extraversion-introversion
(EI) and judging-perceiving (JP) indexes.
The JP index is sometimes referred to as an orientation to the outer world
and sometimes JP is classified as an "attitude." In Jungian terminology the
term attitude is restricted to EI. In MBTI terminology attitude can include EI
and also JP. (Myers, 1985:293 note 7).

The above MBTI Manual statement, is restricted to EI," is directly

contradicted by Jung's statement above that there is "a typical thinking,
feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" and by his other uses of the term
"attitude". Regardless of whether the MBTI simplification (or
oversimplification) of Jung can be attributed to Myers, Gifts Differing refers
only to the "EI preference", consistently avoiding the label "attitude".
Regarding the JP index, in Gifts Differing Myers does use the terms "the
perceptive attitude and the judging attitude" (Myers, 1980:8). The JP index
corresponds to the irrational and rational attitudes Jung describes, except
that the MBTI focuses on the preferred orientation in the outer world in order
to identify the function hierarchy. To be consistent with Jung, it can be noted
that a rational extraverted preference is accompanied by an irrational
introverted preference.