Attitudes

What is the definition of an attitude?

A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour

What are the three components of attitudes in the three-component model (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)?

Affective (feelings/ emotions)

Cognitive (beliefs/ thoughts)

Behaviour (actions/ past experiences)

What did Breckler’s (1984) study on attitudes towards snakes conclude?

That moderate correlations were find between components of attitude, demonstrating independence

What is affective-cognitive ambivalence?

When there are positive beliefs and negative feelings, or negative beliefs and positive feelings toward an attitude object

What might be reasons for individual differences in attitudes Chaiken et al'.’s (1995)

Differences in feelings (attitude-affect)

Differences in beliefs (attitude-cognition)

What are the four dimensions resulting from either attitude-cognition correlation or attitude-affect correlation

Dual-Consistents (High attitude-cognition, high attitude-affect)

Thinkers (high attitude-cognition, low attitude-effect)

Feelers (low attitude-cognition, high attitude-affect)

Dual-inconsistents (low attitude-cognition, low attitude-affect)

Which component of the FSM has the strongest effect?

Affect- feelings of anxiety and nervousness are the primary driver of avoidance and negative attitudes

What was added the added outcome to the FSM? (Haddock & Maio, 2004)

Motivation

According to the FSM, what affects the weights assigned to beliefs, feelings, and past experiences?

Salient motivations - affect current overall attitude

What are the three attitude functions proposed by Smith et al. (1956)?

Object appraisal (evaluate objects)

Social-adjustment (guide acceptable behaviour)

Externalisation (protect the self)

What functions did Katz (1960) add to attitude theory?

Knowledge and utilitarian functions (object appraisal)

Ego-defensive function (externalisation)

Value-expressive function (expressing guiding principles)

What are the two key concepts for why attitudes are formed in the first place?

The need for affect

Need for cognition

What is “need for affect”?

The degree to which people approach or avoid situations that are emotion-inducing

What is “need for cognition”?

A tendency to seek out and enjoy effortful cognitive activity

According to Haddock and Maio (2004) why are attitudes formed?

To satisfy the need for affect and the need for cognitive simplicity

For unfamiliar objects, do people reply on affect or cognition?

Affect

For familiar objects, what determines whether people use affect or cognition (Van Giesen et al., 2015)

High need for cognition = reliance on cognition

High faith in intuition = reliance on affect

Preferred thinking style plays a stronger influence on overall formation

What are the two measures of attitudes?

Attitude surveys

Implicit measures

What are the strengths of self-report attitude scales?

Economical

Relatively easy to administer

Reliable

Valid

What are the limitations of self-report measures?

Demand characteristics

Impression management

What do implicit attitudes measure?

Attitudes that exist outside of conscious awareness and control, which shape automatic reactions to objects

What does the Implicit Association Test (IAT) examine?

Automatic associations between attitude objects and evaluative attributes

What did LaPiere’s (1934) study initially suggest about attitudes and behaviour?

Revealed a significant gap between stated attitudes and actual behaviour- people’s expressed negative attitudes towards Chinese people didn’t match their real-world actions

What does current evidence show about attitudes as predictors of behaviour

Attitudes are fairly good predictors of behaviour

According to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) what other variables besides attitudes affect behaviour?

Beliefs

Subjective norms

Perceived behavioural control

What are the main components of the Theory of Planned behaviour?

Attitude toward the behaviour

Subjective norms

Perceived behavioural control

All leaf to behavioural intention and actual behaviour

What is persuasion?

Formation or change in attitudes through information processing in response to a message about the attitude object

What did Razran’s (1940) classical condition study demonstrate?

Positive or negative evaluations can be created as condition responses. Participants showed increased agreement with slogans paired with free lunch, even without conscious recall (low cognitive effort)

What does the Yale model (Message Learning Approach) emphasise?

Persuasion depends on source, message, channel, and receiver characteristics

What are the internal mediating processes in the Yale model?

Attention → comprehension → rehearsal → yielding

What are the two main dual-processing models of persuasion?

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

The Heuristic-Systematic Model (Chaiken et al., 1993, 1995)

What are the two routes in the Elaboration Likelihood Model

Central route (active, effortful processing)

Peripheral route (effortless processing)

What are the three things occur in both pathways?

Audience factors

Processing method

Attitude change

Outline what happens in the central route pathway?

High motivation and ability to process the message (audience factors)

Focus on quality of message argument (processing method)

Dependent on arguement quality (Attitude change)

When is the central route used?

When people are engaged, interested, and capable of deep thinking

Outline what happens in the peripheral route?

Low motivation and ability to process the message (audience factors)

Focus on communicator attractiveness (processing method)

Dependent on presence of persuasive cues (attitude change)

When is the peripheral route used?

When people lack interest, time, or cognitive resources

What are the two processing modes in Heuristic-Systematic Model?

A systematic processing (effortful, analytical)

Heuristic processing (effortless, using mental shortcuts)

What are the three motivational forces in the HSM?

Accuracy

Defence

Impression Motivation

What are the four principles in persuasion according to Haddock and Maio (2007)?

Extraneous information (mood, rate of speech)

Motivation and ability increase the impact of information

Congruence between message content and recipients’ accessible knowledge

Persuasion can occur without awareness

What is resistance to persuasion (McGuire, 1964)

The ability to withstand a persuasive attack

What does the ABC model of resistance state?

“I don’t like it” (Affective)

“I won’t do it” (Behavioural)

“I don’t believe it” (Congitive)

What are the four main strategies people use to resist persuasion?

Avoidance strategies (passive)

Contesting strategies (active- targeting the source, content, or strategies)

Biased processing strategies

Empowerment strategies

What are the main reasons individuals resit persuasion

Freedom threats

Concerns of deception

Reluctance to change