Social Psychology - Attitudes

Peripheral

Appeals to less thoughtful/rational processes, bypasses information processing in cortex and goes to limbic system/heart/gut. Appeals to people who don't focus on quality of argument, perhaps just quantity of arguments and attractiveness of communicator etc, has minimal knowledge on/is indifferent to object. Involves IMPLICIT attitude change, as it involves appealing to unconscious processes - i.e. classical conditioning product with emotional response, repeating so many times that people believe it (as it produces familiarity that leads to liking, strengthens associations between to pieces of info, and -as we eventually forget the source of message- we assume that if we've heard it enough it has credibility)

Attitudes - 3 points

Are associations between an objects or acts and evaluations. ABC model: Affective/emotional component (alcohol is good/bad), behavioural disposition (alcohol should be drank/avoided) and a cognitive/belief component (alcohol causes road fatalities). Explicit attitudes: Conscious attitudes. Implicit attitudes: Unconscious attitudes that regulate thought and behaviour automatically, Explicit and implicit attitudes are not correlated/could be more markedly different from each other

Context

Environmental context (i.e. cheering and music makes agreement easier), presence or non-presence of competing images, more persuasive if it's the first pitch made, attitude inoculation (making weak arguments for or forewarning against an attitude object) prompts people to form counter-arguments against attitude objects, therefore causing them to have 'attitudinal antibodies'

Attitudinal ambivalence - 5 points

Extent to which a given attitude object is associated with conflicting evaluative responses. Claims attitudes have independent positive and negative evaluative dimensions, which can show up as 'neutral' on a negative to positive scale - Low negative/low positive = indifferent to attitudinal object, minimal effect on behaviour - Evidence suggests that non-ambivalent attitudes are easier to predict behaviours with, but also vice versa - Attitudinal ambivalence - more cognitive activity/systematic processing

Attitudinal coherence

Extent to which an attitude is internally consistent - we should have congruent feelings (affective) and beliefs (cognitive) towards objects

Heritable or non-heritable attitudes stronger?

Little research suggests heritable, however no genes are responsible for this

Central route

Involves inducing recipient to think carefully and weigh up arguments of message, works with people that have a high need for cognition, process info centrally, are attentive to the quality of presented arguments and feel that the issue is relevant to them, therefore peripheral cues (i.e. glitzy things, hoopla and jingles) shouldn't be used as they distract from processing. Involves EXPLICIT attitude change, as requires conscious deliberation.

Source

More persuasive if appear credible (trustworthy, expert), attractive, likeable, powerful, similar to message's recipient

Receiver

Persuaders try to attend to receiver characteristics (qualities of the receiver the communicator is trying to persuade). People with strong opposing attitudes are harder to persuade (they bias their information processing to preserve attitudes they don't want to change), some people just in general are hard to persuade, people vary in their need for cognition also (extent to which they attend to and reflect on arguments)

Elaboration likelihood model

Suggests people are persuaded via two routes, and that we should choose the optimal rate by determining the likelihood that people will think about/elaborate on the arguments. I.e. when elaboration likelihood is high, take central route.

Persuasion

The deliberate effort to change an attitude

Attitude strength - 2 points

The durability and impact of the attitude. High strength = persists over time, resistant to change, affects individual's FEELINGS, BEHAVIOUR AND BELIEFS Low strength = unstable, more likely to change, has minimal impact on individual's feelings behaviour and beliefs

Cognitive complexity

The intricacy of thoughts about different attitude objects (i.e. could be specific cognitions or general) - People of equal attitude strength could have markedly different cognitive complexity. - Females more cognitively complex than males, although females and males within a relationship tend to have similar cognitive complexity (people are drawn to partners of same complexity) - Culture affects what attitudinal objects we tend to have cognitively complex attitudes towards - Social status is also an influencing factor

Channel

The means by which a message is sent - i.e. verbal or nonverbal, visuals and imagery or no visuals or imagery, face-to-face or via other media.

Attitude importance

The personal relevance and psychological significance of the attitude to an individual. Higher importance leads to higher attitude strength and vice versa

Message

Type of appeal (which argument it enforces) and way it's delivered affects recipient's willingness and ability to pay attention/think about message and therefore be persuaded, inducing fear to persuade can work if it's not too intense - otherwise people will tune out to deal with their anxiety/deny the realities, but can be useful if the person believes the danger applies to them and they can change it

Attitudes and behaviour - 6 points

• Attitudes that are specific predict behaviour (i.e. recycling) • Attitude cannot just predict behaviour, as the environment also plays a part - environment may constrict certain behaviours that would be too difficult or too frowned upon to demonstrate • Attitudes more likely to predict behaviour if those attitudes are validated by members of groups relevant to an individual • Explicit attitudes can affect behaviour when they're reflected upon, however implicit attitudes/habits formed through experience predict behaviour the majority of the time • Stronger the attitude - more likely to influence behaviour • Attitudes formed through personal experience more likely to affect behaviour

Conservation Psychology

• Scientific study of reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of nature, and how to encourage conservation of the natural world • Climate change is a BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEM not an environmental problem - despite beliefs against environmental damage, we still commit environmentally damaging crimes, due to: • Learned helplessness: belief that the problem is too out of control to do anything about • Time lag before consequences - we won't receive the punishment that is full-blown climate change immediately after bad behaviours, which is bad because we need to experience punishment immediately after bad behaviour for change to occur • Change requires internal (emotional, cognitive, spiritual, behavioural) and external (political, economic, legal) changes and interdisciplinary collaboration

Attitude accessibility - 6 points

• The ease with which an attitude comes to mind - Higher accessibility = higher attitude accessibility, more likely to affect behaviour - Higher accessibility: comes to mind rapidly and automatically when primed by environmental factors - Highly accessible attitudes can interfere with our ability to notice changes in the attitude object (our evaluation occurs too quickly) - Evolutionary idea: more we encounter something, the more of an impact it likely has on us, therefore our brain makes our attitude towards it more accessible so we're able to react to it more quickly. - Precedes attitude importance - the more accessible an attitude is, the more we assume that attitude is important