The Social Psychology of Attitudes

several factors that influence the attitude-behavior link

*cognitive accessibility of attitudes,consistency between cognitive and evaluative elements of attitudes, direct experience with objects of attitudes, certainty of attitudes, specificity of attitudes, normative constraints, beliefs about self-efficacy.

audit studies

-send resumes and actors out to interviews and see how many calls they get. Want to see if people have stereotypes when hiring such as a black man without a criminal record was less likely to be called back than a white man with a criminal record.

direct measures

attitude measures that ask people straightforwardly what their attitudes are about particular objects. ie: How do you feel about local congress person examples include single-item and likert scale questions asking how people feel about particular objects.

indirect measures

attitude measures that use people's behavior toward an object to measure their attitudes about the object.

attitude and behavior chart

attitude toward behavior subjective norms perceived behavior control lead to behavioral intention which leads to behavior.

direct experience with objects of attitudes

attitudes based on personal experiences with the objects of attitudes are more likely to predict behavior than attitudes not based on personal experience. gives people actual information about objects, and this information influences future behavior regarding these objects.

evaluations

attitudes have an emotional component that varies in direction and intensity people feel negative, positive, or neutral emotions regarding particular objects likert scale can tell attitude as well as intensity that they like or dislike something

cognitions

attitudes have specific thoughts and ideas regarding a particular object. These thoughts and ideas may or may not be objectively true.

three main functions of people

attitudes serve as heuristics, attitudes express personal identities, attitudes express social identities and group memberships

Three specific elements of attitudes

cognitions, evaluations, behavioral dispositions

Where do attitudes come from and why do people hold certain attitudes?

direct personal experiences with objects, socialization, natural selection, intelligence

attitude

favorable or unfavorable evaluation of a particular object(person, place, thing, idea) ie: heavy metal is terrible, I love my social psychology instructor, I hate getting up in the morning.

direct personal experience with objects

form attitudes toward objects in which they have had direct and personal experience. many people have "non-attitudes" about objects because they have no direct experience with these objects. NIU students' attitudes toward the mayor of DeKalb...many may not know who he is.

structures of attitudes (fundamental belief and justification)

fundamental belief: I believe in Christianity and the bible justification: premarital sex lead to teenage pregnancy, the bible says premarital sex is wrong, premarital sex spreads STDs--therefore premarital sex is bad.

behavioral intentions

how much energy and effort people are willing to exert to perform a particular behavior. Intentions lead to behavior.

beliefs about self efficacy

influences whether their attitudes will translate into behavior. DEF. people's beliefs about their abilities to perform certain behaviors. People may want to act on an attitude, but don't believe that they have the ability to do so.

vertical structure

linkages between fundamental beliefs and minor beliefs that are based on fundamental beliefs for a particular attitude

horizontal structure

linkages between two or more justificatory beliefs for an attitude. attitudes are difficult to change if there are two or more horizontal linkages in the structure of an attitude.

examples of indirect measures

lost letter, audit studies, response latency

heuristics

mental shortcuts and rules-of-thumb people use to make decisions quickly and efficiently people develop favorable attitudes toward things that favor and do not favor. Attitudes toward particular parties not necessarily toward the candidate.

consistency between cognitive and evaluative elements of attitudes

more consisten the cognitive and evaluative elements of people's attitudes are, the more likely the attitudes will predict people's behavior.

socialization

often socialized by others to hold particular attitudes. Children often share many specific attitudes with their adult caregivers. Attitudes are taught through modeling and instrumental conditioning.

perceived behavior control

people's self-efficacy regarding a particular behavior. (SELF EFFICACY_

response latency

the time between the presentation of a stimulus and a behavioral response. Some social psychologists measure racial attitudes and how fast the reactions are.

biggest reason social psychologists measure attitudes

predict people's actual behavior. believed that people's expressed attitudes toward objects strongly predicted how people would behave toward these objects.

lost letter

researchers stamped envelops addressed to political organizations and dropped them out on the street without postage. Researchers that monitored wanted to see how many letters were returned to them....if more democrat, more of the area is democratic than republican.

subjective norms

social pressure people feel to perform or not perform a particular behavior (NORMATIVE CONSTRAINT)

behavioral dispositions

social psychologists argue that attitudes also consist of tendencies to act in particular ways toward specific objects.

specificity of attitudes

social psychologists have found that attitudes toward objects in general aren't very good at predicting behavior. Women's attitudes to birth control in general, pills, yourself using them, using them in the next few years. from general to specific attitudes toward objects specifically are much better predictors of behavior. as the topic became more specific, people's attitudes increased

normative constraints

social psychologists have found that normative constraints influence the attitude-behavior link. When people don't perform actions because they believe actions would violate normative standards. Person may not like school but they go because it's right.

cognitive accessibility of attitudes

social psychologists have found that the more accessible the attitudes are in people's minds, the more likely the attitude will influence people's behavior.

certainty of attitudes

social psychologists have found that the more certain people are of their attitudes the more likely these attitudes will predict behavior.

intelligence

some argue that high intelligence allows some people to "override" the attitudes that natural selection has made humans prone to have.

natural selection

some evolutionary social psychologists argue that humans are prone to have certain attitudes because these attitudes helped early human ancestors survive. Early humans that did not have a positive attitude toward children probably did not have children.

theory of planned behavior

summarizes the many findings regarding the link between attitude and behavior. argues that the attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control ads to behavioral intentions, which in turn leads to actual behavior.

social desirability

the tendency for people to give answers to questions that don't actually reflect their true beliefs, but rather answers that they believe are socially appropriate. ie: how upset would you be if your son or daughter started dating someone who was black or hispanic? How many black people would have to move into your neighborhood before you would move out?

Structures of attitudes

vertical and horizontal

Political ideology preference by IQ

very conservative-94, liberal-105, very liberal-106