Attitudes and Behaviour (Part One)

Lecture 3

LaPiere (1934) - Actual vs Self-Report Study - Attitudes towards Asians

• visit 251 establishments w/ Chinese couple

• 1/251 refused service

• mail survey 6 months later - 118/128 that responded would not serve Chinese customers

• contradiction in attitudes v overt behaviour suggest responses not valid indicators of true attitude

LaPiere (1934) - Criticisms

• attitudes assessed long after behaviour

• unsure if responses from same people who served Chinese couple

• English speaking Chinese couple w/ white American may not identified as ‘Chinese’

• other studies with fewer methodological problems failed to find correlation between behaviour and attitudes (e.g. Corey, 1937)

Smith & Mackie (2000)

investigated:-

• attitudes influence behaviour directly without conscious thought (automaticity)

• attitudes influence behaviours after conscious/deliberate thought (volitional)

function of attitudes for behaviour if efficient processing of info. attitudes pre-established evaluations → efficient guides to behaviour

Automaticity - Automatic Attitudes

Fazio (1995) - attitude strength = association between object responsibility and evaluation.strong object-eval = faster attitude access when encountering attitude object.

attitude activation speed determined by strength of object-eval association.

Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio (1992)

4 experiments test hypothesis → attitude objects highly accessible from memory attract attention in visual displays.

experiments 1+2 → Ps more likely to notice/report attitude objects

experiment 3 → incidental attention - Ps noticed attitude object even when beneficial to ignore.

experiment 4 → inclusion of attitude object as distractor interfered with Ps performance in visual search task. suggest attitude-evoking stimuli attract attention automatically.

Fazio et al. (1986)

phase 1 → identify response speed to 70 good/bad object words. RT indicates strength of feeling.

phase 2 → Ps shown pos+neg words - indicated if pos/neg. prime presented before target word = word from phase 1 identified as pos/neg.

results - faster RT when target + prime had same valence. slower RT when valences inconsistent.

suggests prime facilitated/interfered with indicating pos/neg target words = automatic evals of prime occurred.

Automatic Attitudes and Spontaneous Behaviour

attitude accessibility determines attitude-behaviour consistency. spontaneous behaviour when attitudes easily activated.

Fazio et al. (1982) - Ps rehearse attitudes to set of puzzles. subsequent spontaneous playing with puzzles consistent with prior attitudes (pos/neg) and no. of times attitude rehearsed (accessibility).

Focusing Attention

attend to things evaluatively salient:-

• Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio (1992) - Ps rehearsed attitudes more likely to notice attitude object

• Calitri et al. (2009) - implicit attitudes of exercise associated with visual attention to exercise cues.

attitudes make attitude-consistent behaviour more likely.

Biasing Interpretations (Assimilation and Contrast)

ambiguous info may be interpreted as supportive of attitude (Lord, Ross & Lepper, 1979):

• Ps shown fictitious reports pro/anti capital punishment

• both reports sig. strengths + weaknesses

• Ps divided into supporters/opponents

results = supporters found supportive report more convincing and vice versa.

MODE Model (Fazio, 1990)

spontaneous behaviour occurs when motivation/opportunity for reasoned decision low; highly accessible attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviour (Hewstone, Stroebe & Jonas, 2015).

behaviour not always consistent with automatic attitudes when people motivated/able to deliberate about doing behaviour.

Criticism of Fazio - Cognition and Attitude (Bargh et al., 1996)

• ps presented pos/neg words as subliminal primes

• primes followed by target words - must be pronounced

results = consistent valence → faster responses. inconsistent valence → slower responses. evidences automatic eval.

some prime-target pairs semantically unrelated. conclusion - processes requiring memory of shared meanings between concepts cannot explain results.

Criticism of Fazio - Mitchell, Nosek & Banaji (2003)

attitudes heavily influenced by context/situation. attitude towards target changes depending on salient features at eval time.

black athletes v white politicians - when task emphasised job - Ps auto eval black athletes more positively.

when task emphasised race - Ps eval white politicians more favourably.

Modern View - Ferguson & Bargh (2003; 2007)

attitudes an evaluation of ‘object-centered context’.

single-object eval in memory cannot account for attitude instability across time/contexts.

attitude = eval of an ‘object-centered context’. attitude is summary eval encompassing all salient info at time object is encountered. evaluation of object happening ‘on line’.