Attitudes

Evaluating and Responding to the Social World

Course Instructor: Fizza Arshed

Resources

 Baron Chapter 5
 Myers, 10th Edition, Pages 46, 50, 51, 86, 87, and 123-127
Activity

 Take out a piece of paper

 Whatever comes to your mind, write down the evaluation of the
following:
1. Shopping
2. Cars
3. Smoking
4. Transgender
 So what did you do in the activity?
Attitude Formation
How Attitudes Develop
Defining Attitudes

 Evaluation of various aspects of social world

 A favourable or unfavourable evaluative reaction toward something or

someone (often rooted in one’s belief, and exhibited in one’s feelings
and intended behavior)
Example of attitude predicting behavior…

 An individual who likes minding their own business and keeping to

themselves, would that person step up in a crowd and help someone in
need? Would they always do this? Or sometimes? Or never?

 Does attitude perfectly predict behavior?

How Attitudes Develop? - Baron

Social Learning—the process through which people acquire

new information, forms of behavior, or attitudes from other
persons

Three learning processes are important to the development of

attitudes.
ClassicalConditioning --- Learning based on association
Instrumental Conditioning --- Rewards for the ‘Right’ view
Observational Learning --- Learning by Exposure to Others
 Classical Conditioning - Baron

Process in which the evoking of an attitude by the association of unconditioned

stimulus with neutral or conditioned stimulus.
When a stimulus that is capable of producing a positive response (the unconditioned
stimulus) regularly precedes a second stimulus ( the conditioned stimulus), the first
becomes a signal for the second.

Classical Conditioning—learning in which one stimulus becomes a signal for the

presentation of another stimulus (learning by association)
 Classical conditioning contribute to shaping our attitudes
 For instance an experiment: students were shown photos of a stranger
engaged in routine daily activities, such as shopping in a grocery store or
walking into her apartment.
 While viewing these photos,other pictures associated with either positive
or negative feelings were exposed for brief periods of time – so brief that
participants were not aware of their presence.
 Participants who were nonconsciously exposed to photos that induced
positive feelings (a newlywed couple, people playing cards and laughing)
liked the stranger better than participants who had been exposed to photos
that nonconsciously induced negative feelings( open-heart surgery)
 Those exposed to the positive photos reported more favorable attitudes
toward the person than those exposed to the negative photos.
 Classical Conditioning

These findings suggest that attitudes can be influenced by

Subliminal conditioning.

Subliminal Conditioning—classical conditioning of attitudes

by exposure to stimuli that are below individuals’ threshold
of conscious awareness

Or

Classical conditioning that occurs in the absence of

conscious awareness of the stimuli involved.
 Instrumental Conditioning—learning in which responses (e.g., attitudes) that lead
to positive outcomes or which avoid negative outcomes are strengthened

Observational Learning—learning in which individuals acquire new forms of

behavior (e.g., attitudes) as a result of observing others
Media exposure can influence attitude formation.
Third-Person Effect—the impact of media exposure on others’ attitudes and behaviors is
overestimated and the impact on the self is underestimated
Social Comparison to people that are liked also plays a role in learning attitudes from others
and people learn attitudes from those they like and respect.
 Relationship of Attitude and Culture -Myers Pg 46

 Is our attitude affected by our culture?

 Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama:
 Hazel’s story from a visit to Japan and Shinobu’s from America
 There were certain differences they met with
1. Class discussion
2. Ordering Dinner
3. Ordinary path (fork in the path)
 Link between Attitudes and Behavior - Baron

 Role of the Social Context

Social attitudes do not always predict behavior.
LaPiere (1934) found that the actions of business owners did
not match their attitudes.
Businesses gave the Chinese couple traveling with him very good
service.
But, they expressed negative attitudes in written responses to LaPiere,
saying that they would not offer service to Chinese customers.
Attitudes differentially predict behavior depending on how
public the action is and whether there are potential social
consequences.
Activity

 Rate how happy you are with Pakistan on a scale of 1-10

 Think of 3 positives about Pakistan and then 3 negatives

 Rate your happiness again

 What do you think influenced your rating?

Fallacy of analysing our feelings -Myers

 Answer to Q1 was based on gut  Answer to Q2 was based on

feeling analysis

 Answer based on gut feeling  Considered weak predictor of

shows that attitude is a better future behavior
predictor of future behavior

 Read Timothy Wilson’s Dating

example on page 50-51 for
clarity
Dual Attitude System

Whatever we have studied by far, two mental processes have

been at work

 Implicit Attitudes  Explicit Attitudes

- Automatic/Uncontrollable - Consciously controlled
- Gut feeling based - Thought through
- Reportable

From childhood, for example, we may retain a habitual automatic

fear or dislike of people for whom we now consciously verbalize
respect and appreciation
How Do Attitudes Guide Behavior? -Baron

 Attitudes arrived through reasoned thought

 Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Azjen,

1980)—the decision to engage in a particular
behavior is the result of a rational process in which
behavioral options are considered, consequences or
outcomes of each are evaluated, and a decision is
reached to act or not to act.
 Careful, deliberate thought to our attitudes and their
implications for our behavior

 That decision is reflected in behavioral intentions, which

strongly influence overt behavior.
Theory of Planned Behavior
 Another factor was added later
Perceived behavioral • People’s evaluation of their ability to
control perform the behavior
 Theory of Planned Behavior—in addition to attitudes toward a
given behavior and subjective norms about it, individuals also
consider their ability to perform the behavior (perceived behavioral
control).
This theory is an extension of the theory of reasoned action.
Behavioral intentions are determined by attitudes toward a behavior,
subjective norms, and also perceived behavioral control.

Both theories are useful in predicting the link between attitudes and
behavior.
 Reconstructing Our Past Attitude -Myers Pg 86
 Up till now we have seen what attitudes are, cultural impact on attitudes, the
implicit and explicit attitudes. But do our long held attitudes change?
 People whose attitudes have changed often insist that they have always felt much
as they now feel
 Daryl Bemand Keith McConnell (1970) conducted a survey among Carnegie
Mellon University students. Buried in it was a question concerning student
control over the university curriculum
A week later, the students agreed to write an essay opposing student control.
After doing so, their attitudes shifted toward greater opposition to student
control. When asked to recall how they had answered the question before writing
the essay, the students “remembered” holding the opinion that they now held and
denied that the experiment had affected them.
A Bit More About The Experiment

 After an initial measurement of student attitudes, which were

favorable towards student control, Bemand McConnell assigned
students to write an essay on opposing student control. By writing an
essay proclaiming views different from the ones they held, students'
views changed to become less favorable towards student control.
When Bemand McConnell asked the students how they had felt at the
beginning of the study, students insisted that they had always felt less
favorable towards student control. The students believed that the
experiment had not changed their opinions, even though it had
changed their opinions significantly.
Rosy Retrospection

 Besides the long held attitudes that we just spoke about, do we change the
attitude towards memories?
 Think about the last time you went out with your friends, to a big fun get
together. How was it?
 Terence Mitchell, Leigh Thompson, and colleagues (1994, 1997): recall
mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them
 Likely to minimize the boring and unpleasant aspects and remember the
high points
 It’s not that we are totally unaware of how we used to feel, just that when
memories are hazy, current feelings guide our recall
 Cathy McFarland and Michael Ross (1985) found that as our
relationships change, we also revise our recollections of other people.
They had university students rate their steady dating partners. Two
months later, they rated them again.
 Students who were more in love than ever had a tendency to
overestimate their first impressions—it was “love at first sight.” Those
who had broken up were more likely to underestimate their earlier
liking—recalling the partner as somewhat selfish and bad-tempered.
 What does this tell you about rosy retrospection?
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?
- Myers Pg 123-127

Feelings and thought process

interact and predict how we
might act
 To answer the question, Alan Wicker (1969), did a bit of study
 Looked at different research studies and found out that: people’s expressed attitudes
hardly predicted their varying behaviors
 Student attitudes towards cheating more little relation to the likelihood of their
actually cheating
 Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with worship
attendance on any given Sunday
 The disjuncture between attitudes and actions is what Daniel Batson and his
colleagues (1997, 2001, 2002; Valdesolo& DeSteno, 2007, 2008) call “MORAL
HYPOCRISY” (what is this?). Appealing task with a possible $30 prize and a dull
task with no rewards. Only 1 in 20 believed that assigning the positive task to
themselves was the more moral thing to do, yet 80 percent did so. (further: coin
toss)
 When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior Then?

 Behavior and expressed attitude differ due to multiple influences, such as social
influences, so when these factors are minimal, attitudes predict behaviors
 Tests have been discovered to help assist in measuring the tiniest signs that will
help see true implicit attitudes
A newer and widely used attitude measure, the implicit association test (IAT) ,
uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts
(Greenwald & others, 2002, 2003).
 Example: One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing
whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black faces
than with White faces. Implicit attitude researchers have offered various IAT
assessments online (projectimplicit.net)
 Remember the dual attitudes system?
Implicit Bias

 Bias at a level below consciousness

 Eg, Bias against Muslims
 The three characteristics of implicit bias:-
 1. Implicit biases are pervasive. For example, 80 percent of people show
more implicit negativity toward the elderly compared with the young
 2. People differ in implicit bias. Depending on their group memberships,
their conscious attitudes, and the bias in their immediate environment,
some people exhibit more implicit bias than others
 3. People are often unaware of their implicit biases. Despite thinking
themselves unprejudiced, even the researchers exhibit some implicit
biases (negative associations with various social groups).