Chapter 7: Attitudes and Attitude Change

Yale Attitude Change Approach`

The study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on "who said what to whom"—the source of the communication, the nature of the communication, and the nature of the audience

William McGuire

) "inoculated" people by giving them brief arguments against cultural truisms (beliefs that most members of a societ accept uncritically ex-brushign your teeth) Two days later, people came back and read a much stronger attach on the truism- one that contained a series of logical argument about why brusing your teeth too frequently is a bad idea- the people who had been inoculated against these arguments were much less likely to change their attitudes than a control group who had not been inoculated The individuals who were inoculated with weak arguments had time to think about why these arguments were false

Central route to persuasion

- The case whereby people elaborate on a persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments, as occurs when people have both the ability and the motivation to listen carefully to a communication

Operant Conditioning

- The phenomenon whereby behaviors we freely choose to perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment A 4 year old white girl goes to the playground- plays with a African American child- Her father expresses strong disapproval- thereby adopting her father's racist attitudes- Attitudes can take on a positive or negative affect

Peripheral route to persuasion

- the case whereby people do not elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by peripheral cues They are persuaded if the surface characteristics- such as how long it is or that it was delivered by an expert or attractive communicator- make is seem like a reasonable one

Attitude accessibility

- the strength of the association between an attitude object and a person's evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with how which people can report how they feel about the object

Subjective Norms

- their beliefs about how people they care about will view the behavior in question

The Elaboration Likelihood Model

A model explaining two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change centrally, when people are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication and peripherally, when people do no pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics (e.g. who gave the speech) Specifics when people will be influenced by what the speech says (logic of arguments) and when they will be influence by superficial characteristics (who gives the speech)

Culture and Different types of Attitudes

Americans were persuaded most by the ads stressing independence and the Koreans were persuaded by ads stressing interdependence

Cognitively Based Attitudes

An attitude based primarily on peoples beliefs about the properties of an attitude object EX: your attitude toward a utilitarian object like a vacuum cleaner- based on your beliefs about the objective merits of particular brands- not on how sexy they make you feel

Implicit Attitudes

Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious

Explicit Attitudes

Attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily report

Three components of attitude:

Cognitive Component- which is the thoughts and beliefs that people from about the attitude objects The affective component which is people's emotional reactions toward the attitude objects The Behavioral component- which is how people act toward the attitude object

Persuasive Communication

Communication (e.g., a speech or television ad) advocating a particular side of an issue

Emotions and Different Types of Attitudes

Depends on the type of attitude we are trying to change Participants looked at different kings of advertisements- some were utilitarian products such as air conditioners- people's attitude towards those tend to be formed after an appraisal of the utilitarian aspects of the precuts (how energy efficient an air conditioner is) and thus are cognitively based Others items were "social identity products:- such as perfume and greeting cards- peoples attitude toward these types of products tend to reflect a concern with how they appear to others and are more affectively based

Attitudes

Evaluations of people, objects and ideas

DO they work?

If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them to reduce this fear- they will be motivated to analyze the message carefully and will likely change their attitudes via the central route Fear-arousing appeals will also fail if they are too strong- if people are scared to death- they will become defensive, den the importance of the threat, and be unable to think rationally about the issue

Affectively based Attitudes

an attitude based more on people's feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an object EX: sometimes we simply like a car, regardless of how many miles to the gallon it gets

Behaviorally Based Attitudes

an attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object

Heuristic-Systematic Model of Persuasion

an explanation of the two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically processing the merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts (heuristics) such as "experts are always right"

Attitude inoculation

making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing the to small doses of the arguments against their position

Perceived Behavioral control

peoples intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior, or perceived behavioral control

Fear-arousing communication

persuasive messages that attempt to change people's attitude by arousing their fears One way to get people to pay attention is to scar them- ex: show them a picture of a diseased lung- for smoking

Theory of planned behavior-

the idea that the best predictors of a person's planned, deliberate behaviors are the person's attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control

Reactance Theory

the idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavior

Classical Conditioning

the phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response (e.g. your grandmother) is repeated paired with a neutral stimulus that does not (e.g. the smell of mothballs) until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus EX: visiting your grandmother as a child, you experienced feelings of warmth and love when you visited your grandmother- her house always smelled of mothballs- eventually the smell of mothballs will trigger the emotions you experienced during your visits through classical conditioning

Subliminal Messages

words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but may nevertheless influence peoples judgments, attitudes, and behaviors