PSYC1001 Social Psychology - Attitudes

Attitudes

Definition of Attitudes

  • Attitudes are defined as the tendency to think, feel, or act positively or negatively towards objects in our environment (Banaji & Heiphetz, 2010).

Implicit vs. Explicit Attitudes

  • Explicit attitudes: Attitudes that we can consciously think about, report on, and control.
  • Implicit attitudes: Evaluations that we cannot consciously access, report on, or control.
  • Implicit attitudes are more strongly impacted by early developmental events and are more sensitive to current affective (emotional) experiences.

Implicit Association Task (IAT)

  • The IAT is used to measure implicit attitudes.
  • It involves associating different categories (e.g., insects/flowers, pleasant/unpleasant) with response keys.
  • Variations of the IAT include:
    • Weight (fat/thin)
    • Sexuality (gay/straight)
    • Presidential popularity (Trump/other presidents)
    • Disability (physically disabled/physically abled)
    • Religion (Jewish/Christian)
    • Transgender (transgender/cisgender)
    • Gender-Science (male-female/science-liberal arts)
    • Age (young/old)

IAT Scores and Implicit Bias

  • IAT scores reflect implicit biases toward various groups:
    • Straight People: 48%
    • No Bias: 21%
    • Gay People: 31% (N = 295,452)
    • Thin People: 78.3%
    • No Bias: 13.9%
    • Fat People: 7.8% (N = 275,092)
    • Abled People: 78.5%
    • No Bias: 12.8%
    • Disabled People: 8.7% (N = 138,873)
    • White People: 59.9%
    • No Bias: 21.3%
    • Black People: 18.8% (N = 645,758)
    • Cisgender People: 47.6%
    • No Bias: 24.5%
    • Transgender People: 27.9% (N = 118,012)
    • Young People: 78.3%
    • No Bias: 15.1%
    • Old People: 6.6% (N = 275,006)

Implicit and Explicit Attitude Change Over Time

  • Minimum time to neutral for:
    • Sexuality (Implicit): 9 years
    • Sexuality (Explicit): 5.5 years
    • Race (Implicit): 58 years
    • Race (Explicit): 2 years

Attitude Dimensions

  • Specificity vs. Generality
  • High vs. Low Accessibility
  • Weak vs. Strong

Attitudes and Behavior: Three Principles

  1. Specificity: Attitudes predict behavior better when there is a match between the specificity vs. generality of the attitude and the behavior (the correspondence principle).
  2. Accessibility: Attitudes predict behavior better when an attitude is highly accessible.
  3. Strength: Attitudes predict behavior better when those attitudes are held strongly.

Dissonance

  • Dissonance is the tension that occurs when behaviors are inconsistent with attitudes.
  • Dissonance can be reduced by:
    • Changing the behavior
    • Changing the attitude

Cognitive Dissonance Classic Study #1

  • Participants completed a boring task for over 1 hour.
    • Control condition: No lie
    • Lie condition 1: Participants told to say "It's so fun" for 1
    • Lie condition 2: Participants told to say "It's so fun" for 20
  • Outcome: Measured how much participants enjoyed the task and their willingness to participate in a similar experiment.
  • Results: Participants in the 1lieconditionreportedenjoyingthetaskmorethanthoseinthe1 lie condition reported enjoying the task more than those in the20 lie condition and the control condition.

Cognitive Dissonance Classic Study #2

  • Participants were asked to taste test fried grasshoppers.
    • Condition 1: Nice experimenter
    • Condition 2: Mean experimenter
  • Outcome: Measured how much participants enjoyed the grasshoppers and their willingness to endorse eating them to others.
  • Results: Participants who had the mean experimenter stated that they liked the grasshoppers more and were more willing to endorse eating them than participants who had the nice experimenter.

Attitude-Discrepant Behavior and Dissonance

  • Attitude-discrepant behavior performed for low reward:
    • Large amount of dissonance leads to a large amount of attitude change.
  • Attitude-discrepant behavior performed for high reward:
    • Small amount of dissonance leads to a small amount of attitude change.
  • Attitude-discrepant behavior performed for no good reason:
    • Large amount of dissonance leads to a large amount of attitude change.
  • Attitude-discrepant behavior performed for good reason:
    • Small amount of dissonance leads to a small amount of attitude change.