Social psychology 4 Attitudes

When a person's behavior differs to their attitudes without external justification, a person's attitude may change.

A person's attitude may change because they experience dissonance in that they cannot explain their behavior by using external justifications. The person then alters their attitude to suit their behavior and thus reduce dissonance.

Reactance theory states that when a person feels that they are being prevented from acting or thinking in a particular way, they begin to rebel against the threat.

An example is teens smoking in response to being firmly told not to smoke.

Attitudes towards specific behaviors are better predictors of planned behavior than attitudes towards general behaviors.

Attitudes towards general behaviors are misleading predictors of planned behavior as a general attitude may not take into account certain details concerning the behavior. On the other hand, attitudes towards specific behaviors are better predictors as these attitudes are likely to be more in line with the actual behavior concerned.

If an advertisement focuses on associating positive feelings such as attractiveness or youth with its products, it is affectively based.

Cognitively based commercials rely on facts and data. Affectively based commercials rely on appealing to the emotions. This often involves attempting to associate positive feelings such as attractiveness, youth, or success with the product.

Central route to persuasion refers to when people listen to the logic of the arguments within a persuasive message.

Generally this occurs when people have the ability and motivation to pay attention to the speaker.

The use of hidden messages in advertising has not been found to influence consumers, although some evidence that they influence people has been found in laboratory studies.

Despite wide usage of subliminal messages in advertising, and the wide-spread belief that they do influence consumers, researchers have determined that they actually do not significantly influence consumers

The affective component of a person's attitude involves the emotional reactions a person has towards the attitude object.

For example, Sarah enjoys marching bands-- those feelings are the affective component of her attitude towards marching bands.

When an attitude is based on someone's activities or reactions to certain things, it is a behaviorally based attitude.

For example, a person may observe their own behavior and note that they always avoid a certain person. Based on this, the person may conclude that they do not like the person.

Attitudes tend to become more accessible with repeated direct exposure to the attitude object.

For example, a person who skydives often is likely to have an accessible attitude about skydiving. However, a person who has only heard about skydiving is likely to have an inaccessible attitude towards it.

Attitudes can be strongly influenced, or even changed, in response to social influence.

For example, advertising is a strong medium which is used to influence a person's attitude. A celebrity seen wearing designer jeans can convince consumers to develop a positive attitude towards those jeans

Classical conditioning occurs when a stimulus which elicits no emotional response is experienced alongside a stimulus which does elicit an emotional response until eventually, the first stimulus begins to stimulate the same emotional response as the second stimulus.

For example, as a child you may visit your grandmother and experience feelings of warmth and love. At the same time, you may always smell a faint hint of mothballs in the air. Eventually, the smell of mothballs will trigger the same feelings of warmth and love. The most famous example of classical conditioning is Pavlov's experiment with dogs. Pavlov would ring a bell every time he brought food to the dogs. Eventually, just ringing the bell would cause the dog to salivate-- even if there was no food. The food was the primary or unconditioned stimulus; no conditioning was required to elicit salivation with the food. The ringing of the bell was the secondary or conditioned stimulus.

Attitude accessibility refers to how closely linked the object is to the person's evaluation of the object.

For example, if a person immediately recalls their attitude toward an object when they see the object, attitude accessibility is high. If the person's attitude is slowly recalled, the attitude is inaccessible.

When a message has personal relevance to a listener, they are likely to listen to the arguments of the speech. However, when a message does not have personal relevance, they are likely to take mental shortcuts.

For example, the person may assume that the message is correct because the speaker looks and sounds knowledgeable.

Many advertised products have little factual information available to convince consumers. Advertisements for these products focus on appealing to a person's emotions.

For many products advertised, there is little difference between the product being advertised and competing products. For example, there is little difference between the taste of different cola drinks. These products generally have advertisements that rely on appealing to the emotions of consumers.

If a person's attitude is cognitively based, persuasive communication is most effective when it is based on cognitions.

If a person's attitude is affectively based, persuasive communication is effective when based on emotion.

When a person tends to want to think an issue through thoroughly, they have a higher need for cognition.

Need for cognition is a personality variable. People with a high need for cognition enjoy thinking things through carefully and are more likely to pay attention to a speaker's arguments.

Long-lasting attitude changes are more likely to occur when a person is persuaded to change their attitude based on a careful analysis of the arguments presented, rather than by peripheral characteristics.

People who change their attitude via the central route tend to maintain a long-lasting attitude change as opposed to those who changed it via the peripheral route.

A person's subjective norms refers to their beliefs concerning how the people important to them will view their behavior.

Subjective norms can influence a person's behavior more than their own attitudes. If a person's subjective norms are unknown, it can be difficult to predict their behavior.

The behavioral component of a person's attitude involves their actions towards the attitude object.

The behavioral component of a person's attitude refers to their actions and behaviors towards the object or person-- how they are predisposed to act. For example, Sarah practices her instrument every day-- that is the behavioral component of her attitude towards marching bands.

The cognitive component of a person's attitude involves their thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object.

The cognitive component of a person's attitudes refers to their rational thoughts about the object or person. For example, Sarah joins a marching band because she believes that it challenges its members to become better musicians-- this belief is part of the cognitive component of her attitude towards marching bands.

Emotion and mood can influence the route to persuasion. That is, whether a person is more likely to change their attitude via central or peripheral route to persuasion.

The mood that a person is in can influence the way in which they take in a persuasive method. For example, people in good moods are less likely to perform activities which may alter their mood. Therefore, they are less likely to pay much attention to an argument, and thus will take the peripheral route to persuasion.

Subliminal messages are words or pictures which may influence a person's attitudes and behaviors, but are not consciously perceived by the person.

These messages are used in advertising in an attempt to unknowingly influence consumers.

The Yale Attitude Change approach is a study which determined under which conditions people were most likely to change their attitudes when exposed to a persuasive message.

They examined such factors as who was communicating the message, the nature of the message, and the nature of the audience.

A useful technique used when trying to change people's attitudes on a mass scale is persuasive communication. This technique involves communication which highlights a particular attitude, or viewpoint of an issue.

This involves broadcasting, or producing, a message which can be released to many people. This message would advocate a particular viewpoint of an issue with the aim of convincing people to agree with its message.

One way in which people can be prevented from changing their attitude when exposed to a persuasive message is to expose them to small doses of the opposing point of view being presented before exposing them to the message. This process is referred to as attitude inoculation.

This makes people consider both sides of an argument prior to being bombarded with a logical viewpoint on only one side.

Split cable market tests is a technique employed by advertisers and cable television companies to determine the effectiveness of advertising their product.

This technique involves randomly allocating participants to a target commercial and keeping track of all participant purchases to determine whether they buy the advertised product. These tests have shown that exposure to an advertisement increase the likelihood of purchasing the advertised product.

Fear-arousing communications involve attempting to scare people in order to influence them to pay attention to a particular message.

This technique works on the idea that if a moderate amount of fear is aroused, people will want to know more so that they may alleviate their fear. Therefore, they are more likely to pay attention to the message and change their attitude via the central route.

The heuristic-systematic model of persuasion refers to a theory which states that persuasive communication can cause attitude changes in two ways: via a systematic process of an argument's merits, or via the use of mental shortcuts.

This theory is similar to the elaboration likelihood model in that it states that there are two pathways that people take when exposed to persuasive communication. These pathways depend on how much attention is paid to the actual message, and how much is paid to superficial characteristics.

An affectively- based attitude is based primarily on how a person feels towards, or values, a certain object.

This type of attitude evaluates objects using emotions, rather than an objective appraisal. An example is a person liking a certain brand of car because of an emotional feeling about the car, rather than based on any factual information about the car.

Cognitively based attitudes are based primarily on a range of facts about the object of the attitude.

This type of attitude utilizes facts to classify an object according to its positives and negatives. For example, when evaluating a vacuum cleaner, facts such as efficiency and cost are weighted up to form an attitude towards the different types available.

Attitude

When people evaluate other people, objects, or ideas, they form a long-term opinion, or evaluation, known as an ________

Instrumental conditioning explains why

a behavior that is followed by a reward will increase in frequency, while a behavior that is followed by a punishment will decrease in frequency.

A person's behavior is not always determined by their attitudes

and can contradict the attitude.

A person's attitude is more resistant to change

as the strength of the attitude increases.

Peripheral route to persuasion occurs when people tend not to pay attention to the arguments presented in the persuasive message,

but rather focus on surface characteristics of the message such as how attractive or well- known the speaker is or how long a speech goes for. These factors can sway the opinion of a person, despite being peripheral to the message.

The elaboration likelihood model states that persuasive communication can invoke attitude changes in two ways depending

on whether the person pays attention to the arguments in the communication or to superficial characteristics.

The theory of reasoned action states that when a person performs a deliberate behavior,

the best predictor of this planned behavior is their intention. That is, how they intend to behave.

When people have difficulty paying attention to a speech,

they are more likely to rely on peripheral cues and are less likely to rely on the content of the speech.

When a person has a highly accessible attitude towards something,

this attitude is more likely to predict spontaneous behavior due to the fact that people will be focusing on their attitude when they are called to act on it.

People are generally motivated to listen to a message

when the message has personal relevance.