ATTITUDE

PRESENTER:DR.MANOVATHI.N
CHAIR PERSON:DR.SIVALINGAM
 DEFINITION
 Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of
objects of thought.

 Allport –“mental and neural state of readiness,

organized through experience exerting a
dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to
all objects and situations with which it is related”.
 
COMPONENTS
Affective - emotional feelings stimulated by an object of
thought

Behavioral -predispositions to act in certain ways toward

an attitude object

Cognitive -beliefs that people hold about the object of

an attitude.
 
 DIMENSIONS
Centrality

Direction

Intensity

Salience

Consistency
 FUNCTIONS
 Social adjustment

 Knowledge

 Instrumental

 Value-expressive

 Ego-defensive
 NEUROBIOLOGY
 
Motivational attitude entail Striatal processing;

Emotional attitude entail Amygdala processes;

Combining both entails processing by hippocampal

circuit.
 
 VARIOUS FACTORS IN ATTITUDE
FORMATION
Motivation

Information Exposure

Group affiliation
-Group belief
_Group values
_Group norms

Personality
.
 
ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR

Lapiere - weak predictors of behavior

Attitude-behavior inconsistency? 
 1) attitude strength, accessibility, and ambivalence
variations not accounted.

2) measured in a general, global way that isn’t likely to

predict specific behaviors.

3) Many behaviors occur spontaneously.

 4) Behavior depends on situational constraints—

subjective perceptions of how people expect you to behave.
 (contd….)
Recent research-attitudes do predict behavior under
certain conditions.

Attitude specificity

Attitude strength

Attitude accessibility

Ambivalent attitude
 TRYING TO CHANGE ATTITUDES
Factors in Persuasion

 Source- person who sends a communication

Receiver- person to whom the message is sent.

Message - information transmitted by the source.

 Channel -medium through which the message is sent.

 SOURCE FACTORS
 
successful when the source has high credibility.
 
Expertise - more influential when arguments are
ambiguous.
 
 Trustworthiness is more important because people
accept messages from trustworthy sources with little
scrutiny.
 
 Likability -increase the effectiveness of a persuasive
source.
 MESSAGE FACTORS
Two-sided arguments tend to be more effective

Concentrate on strong arguments and that weak

arguments actually raise doubts

Validity effect: simply repeating a statement causes it

to be perceived as more valid or true.

Persuasive messages frequently attempt to arouse fear.

Antismoking campaigns emphasize the threat of
cancer.
 RECEIVER FACTORS
Some are easier to persuade

No personality traits are susceptible to persuasion

Forewarning more influential than personality

Attitude/belief source is trying to change

Stronger attitude resistant to change

Resistance can promote resistance

THEORIES- FORMATION AND
CHANGE
Learning theory

Cognitive Dissonance theory

Balance theory

Self perception theory

Elaboration likelihood model

Osgood and Tannenbaum’s congruity theory

 LEARNING THEORY
Evaluative conditioning- classical conditioning
efforts to transfer the emotion attached to UCS to
new CS.

Operant conditioning

Observational learning
 BALANCE THEORY
Relation between a person and two attitude objects.

connected by favorable or unfavorable attitudes

 relations may be balanced or unbalanced .

The basic tenet of this theory is that there is a tendency to

maintain or restore balance in one’s attitude structures.

Imbalance will not always be resolved but there is a

tendency towards balance since the unbalanced structures
produce tensions and discomfort
 COGNITIVE DISSONSNCE
THEORY
LEON FESTINGER

When an individual’s behavior is inconsistent with their

attitude dissonance occurs.

Change in attitude consistent with the behavior.

 Negative drive state characterized by psychological tension or

discomfort causing increased arousal

Individual attempts to reduce by three ways

Changing behavioral cognitive element- stop smoking

Changing environmental cognitive element – will not

read or hear such facts.

Adding new cognitive element - criticize method of

research and inadequacies of report

COUNTERATTITUDINAL ROLEPLAYING:
people express attitudes publicly that are
opposite to their private attitude which creates high
dissonance and attitude change
EFFORT JUSTIFICATION

The Fox and the Grapes

SELF PERCEPTION THEORY
DARYL BEM – 1967

Proposes that people often infer their attitude from

their behavior.

“If I said it, it must be true”

Dissonance theory- to reduce the tension
Bem’s theory- to better understand their behavior

primarily works when subjects do not have well-

defined attitudes regarding the issue .
ELABORATION LIKELIHOO MODEL
Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (1986).

central route - content and logic of persuasive messages.

peripheral route - non message factors, such as the attractiveness credibility

of the source.
 
 Both routes lead to persuasion

 but the durability of attitude change depends on the extent to which people
elaborate on (think about) the contents of persuasive communicati

central route to persuasion leads to more enduring attitude change than the
peripheral route

attitudes changed through central processes predict behavior better

 
 MEASUREMENT
DIRECT
Thurstone scale
Likert scale
Osgood semantic diferential scale

INDIRECT
Galvanic skin response
Pupil size
EMG

Others –Guttmann’s method of cumulative scaling

Borgadus social distance scale
Sociometry
 Thurstone’s method of equally
appearing intervals
Easier to apply
Statements arranged in 11 categories
A B C D E F G H I J K
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
A – Statement with high favorability
E- neutral statement
k- highly unfavorable statement
 Low value- favorable attitude
 High value-unfavorable attitude
 LIKERT’S SCALE OF SUMMATED
RATINGS
Comprises a number of statements and subject
indicate his response on a 5 point scale
5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-undecided, 2-disagree, 1-
strongly disagree.
Final score- summing the scores for each statement.
Item analysis
More sensitive than the thurstone scale
Interpretation btwn max and min is difficult.
OSGOOD SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL
SCALE
Measuring the meaning of object to an individual
Seven point scale
Studied affective aspects of use of a word and
behavioral changes
Found 50 percent diff by three factors - evaluation,
potency, activity
Good reliability and validity
Used to study process of impression formation, person
perception and communication among lndividuals
Guttmann’s method of cumulative
scaling
scalogram method

Ranks group of statements in such a way that

affirmative answer to any one of them assumes an
affirmative answer to all other ranking on the scale

Highly reliable and consistent

Very difficult to construct

 BORGADUS SOCIAL DISTANCE
SCALE
Scale lists no of relationships to which members of the
group might be admitted.

Respondent is asked the relationship to which he would be

willing to admit the members of each group

Attitude is measured by closeness of the relationship he is

willing to accept

Used in comparing the attitude of people towards

untouchability, caste , regionalism, communalism.
INVOLUNTARY BEHAVIORAL
MEASURES
Galvanic skin response - measures the electrical resistance
of the skin. Resistance decreases when a person is
emotionally aroused. But it has never been possible to
distinguish extremely favorable and unfavorable attitudes.

 Pupil size: Expansion of the size of the pupil indicates

exposure to favorable stimuli and Constriction with
unfavorable stimuli.
 
EMG activity of different facial muscle sites produced a
different positive and negative reactions to persuasive
messages whether it distinguishes exact degree is yet to be
determined.
TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING THE
ACCURACY OF MEASUREMENT
Bogus pipeline:
Subjects are attached to a special machine and told
that by measuring tiny electrical changes in muscles it
can assume their true opinions.

Once this belief is established, subjects then

cooperate

 Their reports with respect to various issues measured

are then more truthful.
Unobtrusive measures:
Based on the fact that often human behavior leaves
lasting traces of its occurrence

Which provide valuable information about the

attitude of the persons involved.

Further, such knowledge can be gained without

affecting the individuals in any manner

(EX)voting records reveal current political views

 INDIAN STUDIES
EDUCATIONAL FIELD:
- Student’s Attitude towards various school subjects,
activities, vocations etc
-attitude of teacher and teacher trainees

FAMILY PLANNING PROGAMMES

 KAP STUDIES – Relation btwn knowledge, attitude,

practice
Results – despite widespread knowledge and favorable
attitude only 5% practice family planning techniques
 APPLIED ASPECTS
Cognitive dissonance in education

Cognitive dissonance in therapy

Promoting healthy and prosocial behavior

Dissonance and alcohol

 COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN
EDUCATION
Creating and resolving dissonance- impact on students
motivation and learning.

( ex) researchers used effort justification paradigm to increase

students’ enthusiasm for educational activities by offering no
external reward for students’ efforts

concluded that students who attribute their work to an

external reward stop working in the absence of reward.

while those who are forced to attribute their work to intrinsic

motivation came to find the task genuinely enjoyable.
 COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN
THERAPY
Effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychological intervention
explained thro this theory.

The act of freely choosing a specific therapy, with the effort and
money invested by the client in order to continue to engage in the
chosen therapy, positively influences the effectiveness of therapy.

Demonstrated in a study with overweight children, in which

causing the children to believe that they freely chose the type of
therapy they received resulted in greater weight loss
 PROMOTING HEALTHY AND
PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
 Cognitive dissonance can be used to promote
desirable behavior such as increased condom use.

Also be used to encourage individuals to engage in

prosocial behavior under various contexts such as
campaigning against littering, reducing prejudice to
racial minorities.
DISSONANCE AND ALCOHOL
Used in behavioral modification -preventing alcohol
use
 we can ask a person who abuses alcohol to join an anti
alcohol public campaign.

If he is not willing to stop alcohol then say that he can

continue drinking and the participation is just an
event.

It creates dissonance in a person who consumes

alcohol and causes discomfort, reduced by changing
their attitude ultimately resulting in stopping the
alcohol taking behavior
THANK YOU