The Role of Affect in Attitude Formation

:A classical conditioning approach

Authors :john kim

Jeenu –su lim
Mukesh bhargava
Presented by
p.Kishore kumar
Objective
 The aim of the study was to investigate the
role of affect in attitude formation
 Two experiments using established

conditioning procedures ,assessed the impact

of the affect on the attitude formation
 A common practice of the television ads is
associate one’s brand with appealing visual
imagery to shape the consumer attitude
towards their brand
 Eg: animals -tv
 Beautiful men/women –soft drinks
 The advertisers assume that that the affective
appeals of the stimulus(celebrity endorses
and physically attractive models)will transfer
to the their brand and will increase the
effectiveness of the ads .
 The use of affective cues to influence attitude

formation is widely practiced ,the relationship

is strongly debated
 Most researcher concur that the belief plays
an important role in attitude formation
 For eg: the attractive water scenes to pair

colas . The attractive water scenes generated

affects but may also have communicated imp
product attribute (i.e refreshing )to the
subject .the attitude may due to cognitive
factors and affect transfer may be nothing
 We cannot unequivocally state that the affect
plays role in attitude formation .this study is
conducted using a stimulus that has the
ability to generate affect but no relevant
product attribute .
 The goal of exp 1 is to determine if the affect

influences attitude formation in the absence

of the product belief
 The second issue that is pertinent to the role of
affect in attitude formation is size if of direct
transfer mechanism in attitude formation
 The results showed that direct transfer belief

transfer were the mechanism for the effects of

classical conditioning on attitude formation
 The two mechanism are operating concurrently

in shaping attitude which mechanism has

greater effects in attitude formation ,under
which condition affect have stronger influence ?
 Thus with this we can determine the strength
of the meditational process and under what
condition one process will dominate the
other,this provides a frame work for choosing
the stimulus that will increase advertising
effectiveness
 This research investigates two imp issues
 1)does affect play a role in attitude formation

in absence of product belief ?

 2)if affect plays a role in attitude formation

,does it have a greater effect than belief on

attitude ,if so under what condition does it
have greater effect?
Experiment 1
 “ classical conditioning procedures can lead people
to form attitude towards objects without any
conscious deliberation about those objects attribute”
 To investigate the effects of the direct affects
transfers on attitude formation employing the
classical paradigm ,a UC that generates affect but is
devoid of product relevant meaning should be used
 the goal of the exp 1 to investigate the role of the
direct affect transfer in classical conditioning and
provide a strong unambiguous test of the direct
affect transfer in absence of product beliefs.
 H1:attitude towards the product in the
conditioning group will be more positive than
in the control group
 H2:beliefs about the products will not differ

between the conditioning and control group

Pretesting
Participants and procedure
 Sample size =36(UG students)
 17 students = conditioning group
 19students = control group
 Conditioned stimulus – pic of pizaa box with
L pizza house printed on it.
 To detract the participants attention from CS-

US paring ,filler were employed .

 Using fillers pic will decrease hypothesis

guessing
Presentation of cs and us
Dependent measures
 Three dependent measures are used
 1)the first gauge the attitude towards three fillers brands and target brand
 7 point, seven item measure
 Good/bad, attractive/unattractive etc
 2)the measure were include as means to investigate whether the

participants formed beliefs about the CS based on the US

 7 point probability scales participants expressed likelihood for various L

pizza house attributes

 Fast delivery
 Delivered hot

 Reliable
 Provides different toppings

 Tastes good

3)Measures was included as a manipulation check for participants affective

reaction towards the target US
result
 The result indicate that the conditioning
procedure has an effect on attitude towards
the products which supports the hypothesis
 The result suggest that the US (picture of

kitten)did not provoke any beliefs associated

with CS(pizza)
Conclusion
 The effects of the classical conditioning on attitude
formation Via direct transfer without product
belief .attitude in the condition group was more
positive than the control group ,which demonstrates
conditioning effects .the US generated positive
affect in both groups and the measured beliefs were
not significantly different between the two groups
.thus we can state that the conditioning procedure
allowed the participants in the conditioning
condition to associate the product with the US and
enabled the direct transfer to occur even when it
seems that no products beliefs were involved
Experiment 2
 Considering both affective and cognitive
mechanism may mediate attitudinal conditioning
concurrently ,an important issue remains
unresolved .which mechanism has the grater
affect on attitude formation ,and under what
condition will affect produce the greater effect?
 However ,if both affect and belief are present,
the situation in which the US is presented will
moderated the relative impact of affective and
cognitive mechanism .one such situation may be
the number of repetitions
 By varying the number of ads repetitions
,suggest that the affective ads require smaller
number of repetition than the cognitive –
based ads to produce positive effects .this
indicates that different processing
mechanism may different impact on attitude
formation depending on number of
repetitions
 The greater number of CS-US exposure will
lead to greater elaboration and formation of
attitudes will be dominated by the cognitive
mechanism .alternatively when participants are
exposed to a limited number of CS-US
pairings ,such as single trial ,they don’t have
the opportunity to process the visual relation
ship to great extent .the participants under the
state will focus on the peripheral cues
(attractiveness of the stimulus ),and attitude
formation will by the affective mechanism
Methods and procedures
 CS=L pizza house
 US=race car (fast delivery)
 Participants =84(UG students)
 Multitrial cond=24
 Multitrial control=19
 1-repetition cond=21
 1-repetition control =20
Presentaion of CS and US
Dependent measures
 1)the participants provided their attitude towards the
fillers products and target products on 7 point,
seven item semantic –differential scale
 2)measures the gauge product belief about pizza

house and laundry detergent.5 belief that were

relevant to pizza house . Only focal belief conveyed
by US(i.e fast delivery ) will be used in analyses
 3)Measures appraised the participants affective

response to the US. the US of the interest was a race

car,and the items to gauge the subjects affective
reaction to the 3 item scale to measure affect
towards the race car
result
 The affective mechanism and the cognitive
mechanism were equally important in
formation of attitude ,and Hypothesis 3 was
not supported .the effects of the belief and
affect on the attitude formation were
significant ,but they did not differ
significantly from each other
 The affective mechanism played a major role

in attitude formation ,where as the cognitive

mechanism was negligible .
Conclusion
 With limited number of exposures ,as in our repetition
condition participants may focus on the attractiveness of
the stimulus in forming an attitude towards the object.
This occurs because the limited exposure provide scant
opportunity for participation to process the information
associated with the visual stimuli .
 Under this condition effective mediation will have

significant impact in shaping attitudes .

 The number exposure increase as in 10 repetition

condition, the participants have the opportunity to

process the visual stimuli and extract product
attributes .thus ,attitudes are under this situation
,influenced by the belief mechanism.
THANK YOU