Attitudes

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Lecture contents
Definitions and conceptualisations of attitudes.

Self-report measures.
The Theory of Planned Behaviour. The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. Cognitive dissonance and self-persuasion.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

What is an attitude?

...a positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object, or idea.

Brehm et al. (2002, p. 179)

...a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour.
Eagly & Chaiken (1993, p. 1)

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Affect and Attitudes

Single-component conceptualisations of attitudes equate them with dispositional affective responses.

Tricomponent conceptualisations of attitudes employ the ABC model of attitudes:

Affect, plus Behavioural tendency, plus Cognitions about likely consequences of behaviour.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Self-report attitude measures

Pros and cons
direct and straightforward (+) lends itself to (cheap) mass testing (+) attitudes not always salient or accessible (-) may simplify complex representations (+/-) reports easily affected by many extraneous factors (-)

Improving self-report measures

Learning from research! Using the bogus pipeline procedure. Using attitude scales.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Self-report measures: Attitude scales

Use a series of questions to ask about the same construct. Lessens some of the above problems but does not avoid all problems. Likert (or Likert-like) scales are the most commonly used.
Bipolar, ordinal response options anchored by opposites e.g., 1 = totally agree, 9 = totally disagree

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Ajzens (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour

The theory that attitudes toward a specific behaviour (or a class of behaviours) combine with subjective norms and perceived control to influence a persons actions.

Acknowledges complexity of attitude-behaviour link. Postulates an attitude - intention - behaviour sequence. Acknowledges the potential influence of social expectations on behaviour.

Acknowledges the potential influence of internal constraints on behaviour.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Ajzens (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Petty & Cacioppos (1986) elaboration likelihood (dual-process) model of persuasion (ELM)
Attitude change can follow a central route or a peripheral route.

The central route

Concerns message content. Persuasion via the central route occurs when we think critically about a message and are swayed by the strength and quality of its arguments.

The peripheral route

Concerns non-content cues. Persuasion via the peripheral route occurs when we do not do much thinking but are swayed by employing heuristics on the basis of non-content cues.
ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Choosing the central route: Thinking

Ability
Intelligence Access Receptive Attention

Motivation
Involvement

Absence of these leads to peripheral route reacting

Cf. Automatic and controlled attributions, evaluations, etc.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Petty & Cacioppos (1986) dual-process model of persuasion

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Communicator credibility
Credibility is affected by perceived:
Competence Expertise Knowledge Trustworthiness Impartiality Astuteness

Each of the above can be genuine or manipulated

E.g., An eminent physicist may know squat about irons.

or implied (validly or otherwise)

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Petty et al. (1981) Source vs. message effects

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

The sleeper effect

Hovland & Weiss (1959)

The sleeper effect.

Discounting cue hypothesis. But see next slide.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Kelman & Hovland (1953)

The sleeper effect and how to eradicate it

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Festingers classic cognitive dissonance theory

Cognitive inconsistency results in dissonance.
E.g., from freely performed attitude-discrepant behaviour.

Dissonance is aversive and motivating. The easiest form of dissonance reduction will be taken. Dissonance may be reduced directly or indirectly.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

5 Ways to Reduce Dissonance

I want a good degree BUT "I got a bad grade
Change one inconsistent cognition: I don't care about getting a good degree. Or the other: It's not such a bad grade. I dont really need to be on Change your attitude. Add conson ant cognitions: Change your perception
of the behavior. a diet I hardly ate any chocolate mousse. nutritious. Techniques Examples

I was working hard on a more important essay. Add consonant cognitions. Chocolate mousse is very Reduce theMinimize perc ei ved di ssonan ce: the importance of I dont care if Im overweight This will help me pull my socks up. Reduce the perceived I had no choice; the mousse Reduce the perceived control:
choice. was prepared for this special occasion. the conflict. life is short!

Everyone got bad grades from this tutor.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Three research domains examined here Justifying attitude discrepant behaviour.

Justifying effort.
Justifying decision-making.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)

Justifying attitude-discrepant behaviour

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Justifying attitude-discrepant behaviour

Insufficient justification.
Festinger & Carlsmith (1959) Leippe & Eisenstadt (1994)

Insufficient deterrence.
Aronson & Carlsmith (1963)

Hypocrisy paradigm.
Stone et al. (1994) Dickerson et al. (1992)

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Justifying effort
Voluntarily undertaking qualification seemingly too arduous or unpleasant for the prize obtained leads to dissonance. This dissonance may be reduced by cognitively downplaying the qualification and/or enhancing the attractiveness of the prize. Seminal paper is Aronson & Mills (1959).

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Justifying decision-making
Many free choices incur some negative consequences and/or knowingly forgo some positive ones. Both of these cognitions may lead to dissonance. Dissonance may be reduced, respectively, by:
re-evaluating the accepted negative characteristics more positively, re-evaluating the knowingly foregone positive ones more negatively.

Seminal paper is Brehm (1965).

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

Bems alternative to cognitive dissonance theory

Bems (1972) self-perception theory holds that we can base our attitudes on our acts without experiencing dissonance.
To the extent that peoples internal states are weak or difficult to interpret and they believe their behaviour to be unconstrained, then people will infer their attitudes from their behaviour.

Bem (1967)
No need for postulation of dissonance.

Fazio et al. (1977)

Dissonance when attitude-behaviour discrepancy distinct, selfperception when indistinct.

ATP Social 5: Attitudes

ATP Social 5: Attitudes