Attitudes

The Discounting -Cue Hypothesis(Kelman &Hovland, 1953)

-discounting cue: something (besides the arguments) that causes a person to reject an advocacy -augmenting cue: something (besides the arguments) that causes a person to accept an advocacy Cues become dissociated with the message over time

Social Judgment Theory (e.g., Sherif & Hovland, 1961)

-similar to adaptation level theory but makes more specific predictions -Proposes 2 judgmental distortions: Contrast and Assimilation Contrast- judgment away from an anchor or reference point Assimilation: shifting judgment toward an anchor Example: Sherif, Taub, & Hovland (1958)

Theoretical approaches to attitude change

1) Learning theories 1940s-1950s (e.g., Classic & Operant conditioning, Message Learning Approach 2) Cognitive consistency Theories 1950s-1960s (e.g., Balance Theory, Cognitive Dissonance Theory 3) Message Processing Theories 1970s-present (e.g., Elaboration Likelihood Model, Heuristic Systematic Model)

attributional approaches history & defintion

Attributional approaches were most prominent in the 1960s and 1970s Attribution: an inference about why something happened - could be about the self or someone else People infer underlying characteristics ( such as attitudes or intentions) from the verbal and overt behaviors they observe

Self-affirmation theory (1988)

Dissonance is actually a threat to general integrity -not simply inconsistency with specific aspects of self or actions by self Self is like a bowl of integrity -some is poured out when inconsistencies or other threats are leveled by self Creates a need to reaffirm self-worth (feel worthwhile)

Aronson (1968) Self-inconsistency

Dissonance is created only in instances where our self-concept is threatened e.g., see self as decent and truthful, but lied and treated someone badly Aronson would say that attitude change is not to resolve cognitive consistency, but to repair damage to the self

Zajonc (1968)

Mere exposure Showed participants novel stimuli (i.e., nonsense words, ideographs, faces) ranging from 0 to 25 exposures participants rated stimuli for liking and there was greater liking for stimuli presented more often

Tesser (1993); Olson et al. (2001)

Tesser (1993) found that strong likes and dislikes toward a variety of things are rooted in our genetic make up Olson et al. (2001) had 672 twins individually rate their attitudes on a range of issues and factors. Results indicated that there were higher correlations among identical twins

Bogus Pipeline (Jones & Sigall, 1971)

a researcher(s) convince subjects that sophisticated equipment being used allows for a determination of "true" attitudes shown to be effective, people are more likely to report socially-undesirable opinions (e.g., greater prejudice, Sigall & Page, 1971)

Allport (1935)

attitude is "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology."

Balance Theory (Heider, 1953; 1958)

balance is a harmonious state with which all elements are perceived as consistent to the person

three primary theories: Balance theory, Congruity theory, Cognitive Dissonance Theory

each of these assumes that we are motivated to maintain consistency among cognitive elements

Resolving the CDT vs SPT theory--> Fazio, Zanna, & Cooper (1974)

each theory is accurate but they apply to different domains SPT occurs when peoples' behavior is generally consistent but not in total agreement with the initial attitude -within the latitude of acceptance (LOA) -no experience of discomfort, and thus not motivated to reduce dissonance CDT processes occur when peoples' behavior is opposite to initial attitudes and there is insufficient justification -within the latitude of rejection (LOR) -experience discomfort and motivated to reduce dissonance

According to Social Judgment Theory there are three categories or "latitudes"

latitude of acceptance -one's most preferred position but also includes the range of other opinions on an issue that a person finds acceptable latitude of rejection -range of opinions that one finds objectionable latitude of noncommitment -range of positions a person finds neither acceptance or unacceptable According to SJT the greater the discrepancy between the latitude of acceptance, the greater attitude change will result. The greater the discrepancy in latitude of rejection the less attitude change will result

Congruity Theory (Osgood & Tannenbaum, 1955)

one of the major criticisms of Balance Theory is that it does not take into account degrees of liking. Congruity theory can be thought of as a special case of Balance Theory

2 primary types of learning

operating conditioning- specific repsonses are followed by positive or negative consequences Insko (1965) Classical conditioning- pair neutral objects with stimuli that already bring about desired response essentially this takes advantage of an existing response to a stimulus Berkowitz & Knurek (2969)

attitude definition (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993)

psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor

Wicker (1969)

reviewed 42 studies and found that the average correlation between attitudes and behavior was .15

Self-persuasion theory

thinking about an attitude object causes your attitude to become more extreme or polarized

Mere Though (Tesser, 1978)

-the epitome of self-persuasion Sadler & Tesser (1973)- introduced subjects to either a likeable or dislikeable person who was going to be their partner on some task

Four steps needed for dissonance-based attitude change

1) The individual must perceive the action as inconsistent 2) Must take personal responsibility for the act 3) Must experience physiological arousal 4) Must attribute the arousal to the action

three stages for constructing and evaluating measures

1) stating the goals and theoretical assumptions of potential measures (s) 2) compiling a pool of potential items 3) selecting the final item(s)

Fishbein & Azjen (1974) "Compatibility correspondence"

1)Action 2) Target 3) Context 4) Time

Fishbein & Azjen (1974)

A general attitude measure should be able to predict a general behavioral criterion

The Psychological Study of Attitudes and Persuasion Timeline

1920s-1940s:measurement Thurstone (1928) 1950s-1960s:Propaganda & Persuasion 1950s Carl Hovland 1960s Leon Festinger 1960s-1980s-:Cognitive Revolution Belief based models (Fishbein & Azjen) Cognitive-response (Greenwald) Dual Process models (Petty & Cacioppo; Chaiken & Eagly) 1990s-Present: Dual-Process model dominate renewed interest in emotions indirect(implicit) measures metacognition

Freedman and Fraser (1966)

A research finding consistent with self-perception theory. Specifically foot-in-the-door technique Method: Researchers asked households in California whether they would allow them to place a big ugly public-service sign reading "drive carefully," in their front yard. Another set of homeowners were asked whether they would display a small "be a safe driver" sign. Nearly everyone agreed to this request. Two weeks later, these homeowners were asked by a "volunteer worker" whether they would display the bigger and ugly "drive carefully" sign. Results: In the first set of homeowners, only 17% of householders agreed with putting the large sign in their front yard In the second set, 76% of them complied with this request

Tripartite (ABC) Model (Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960)

ABCs (affect, behavior, cognition) will tend toward consistency--lack of consistency meant lack of attitude Affective- emotional reactions and feelings toward an attitude object Behavioral-actions toward an attitude object Cognitive- thoughts & beliefs about an attitude object

Types of Indirect Attitude Measurement Procedures

Behavioral Indicators (e.g., physical distance, head nodding) Physiological Indicators (e.g., GSR, Pupillary Response, Facial EMG) Cognitive indicators (e.g., Information Error Test, Bona Fide Pipeline, IAT)

Source Factors(Hovland et al., 1953)

Credibility Attractiveness Power

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1953)

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) showed that when participants lied by telling a confederate that an extremely boring task was actually fun, they can to believe that the task was really fun to a greater degree if they were paid a smaller ($1) rather than larger ($20) amount of money for saying so. A small incentive provides insufficient justification for the counterattitudinal behavior. Attitude change is necessary to justify the behavior and to reduce dissonance. The MLA approach claims that increased incentive leads to greater likelihood of attitude change

Message Learning Approach

Four independent variables: 1. Source (who?) 2. Message (says what?) 3. Recipient (to whom?) 4. Medium (through which channel?)

Resolving the CDT vs SPT theory--> Greenwald (1975)

Greenwald (1975) pointed out that resolution is nor likely because both make the same predictions But one big difference is that dissonance is supposed to create physiological discomfort. Focusing on this difference ended up being the key to solving the debate

Zanna & Cooper (1974)

In 1974, Zanna and Cooper conducted an experiment in which individuals were made to write a counter-attitudinal essay. They were divided into either a low choice or a high choice condition. They were also given a placebo; they were told the placebo would induce either tension, relaxation, or exert no effect. Under low choice, all participants exhibited no attitude change, which would be predicted by both cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory.[20] Under high choice, participants who were told the placebo would produce tension exhibited no attitude change, and participants who were told the placebo would produce relaxation demonstrated larger attitude change. These results are not explainable by self-perception theory, as arousal should have nothing to do with the mechanism underlying attitude change. Cognitive dissonance theory, however, was readily able to explain these results: if the participants could attribute their state of unpleasant arousal to the placebo, they would not have to alter their attitude. Thus, for a period of time, it seemed the debate between the self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance had ended.

Motivation: Internal vs. External

Intrinsic Motivation: doing something because you wan to. Extrinsic Motivation: doing something because it's a means to some external end

Fazio et al. (1977)

Measured participants' latitudes on a liberal-conservative continuum, then had people write an essay -1/2 most extreme position they labelled acceptable (self-perception) -1/2 least extreme position they labeled unacceptable (cognitive dissonance) Choice manipulation... -1/2 told they had no choice but to write the message (high external justification) -1/2 told that they had a choice to do it or not (low external justification) Misattribution procedure -1/2 told that booth they were sitting in might make then tense or uncomfortable -1/2 were told nothing After essay writing, attitudes were measured

Fazio, Powell, & Williams (1989)- attitude accesibility

Participants rated attitudes toward several products -reaction times (how quickly they could respond) were used as a measure of accessibility -later, Participants shown all products and took they could take 5 home Results- Greater attitude behavior consistency when accessibility was high vs when it was low

Self-Perception Theory vs. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

SPT says that people don't need to have unpleasant tension and inconsistency to change attitudes they just need to observe their own behaviors CDT says that people paid $1 to lie felt discomfort and therefore changed their attitude SPT says that people just inferred their attitude from their behavior and didn't feel dissonance. $1 to lie is a weak and ambiguous cue for one's behavior whereas $20 to lie shows clear external reason for behavior

Types of Direct Attitude Measurement Scales

Thurstone (1928) scale (paired comparisons) but they are difficult to construct and incredibly time consuming Likert scales (Rensis Likert, 1932) preferred over Thurstone scale because they are easier to construct and less time consuming to develop Semantic Differential Scale (Osgood et al., 1957)

Trivialization

Trivialization a form of minimization, a cognitive distortion. Some interpret self-affirmation as "trivialization" mode of dissonance reduction (e.g., Simon, Greenberg, & Brehm, 1995)

Four Functions of Attitudes (Katz, 1960l Functional Theory)

Utilitarian function- maximize rewards and minimize punishments Ego-defensive function-protect self from a painful reality Value-expressive function- express our important beliefs, individuality, values, etc. Knowledge-expressive function- guidelines to simplify decision-making; organize our beliefs

Biased scanning (Janis, 1958,1959)

When a person self-generated - the message is being "tailored" to the way the person thinks about the issue - generates arguments that would be compelling to them -also likely to seem self-relevant as people generate the arguments

the role-playing approach (Janis & King, 1954)

active participation vs. passive exposure Randomly assigned participants to either generate and present a message a topic ("role play") or just listen to a message Results: improvisation satisfaction because participants could receive some internal reward for presenting (feeling satisfied) Having to generate information producing changes in attitudes lasting longer when self-generated rather than passively listened to

Adaptation Level Theory (Helson, 1964)

all stimuli can be arranged in some meaningful order e.g., lighting to heaviest; coldest to warmest -should also work for attitudes...most negative to most positive The term "adaptation level" corresponds to the psychological neural point on some dimension of judgment

External attribution (situational)

an inference that you or someone else is behaving a certain way because of external factors

internal attribution (dispositional)

an inference that you or someone else is behaving a certain way because of internal characteristics (e.g., personality, attitude)

Corey (1937)

measured students' attitudes toward cheating, then let students grade their own exams Attitudes toward cheating did not predict who cheated or not. The correlation was close to 0

Davidson & Jaccard (1979)

the more specific you get the better predictor of behavior enhanced predicition can be obtained by measuring attitudes at corresponding levels of specificity. Attitude behavior correlation of using birth control pill when the measure was: Attitude toward birth control- .08 Attitude toward birth control pill- .32 Attitude toward using birth control pills- .52

over-justification effect

the tendency for people to view their behavior as caused by compelling extrinsic reasons, making them underestimate the extent to which it was caused by intrinsic reasons Kids & math games (Lepper et al., 1973)

LaPiere (1934)

traveled with a Chinese couple, and stayed at hotels and ate in restaurants. They were only refused at one establishment. However, later when letters were sent to hotels and restaurants asking if they served Chinese customers 92% of people said they would not serve Chinese customers. The attitude did not match the behavior but this study was problematic due to temporal issue, social pressure, matching of participant

expectancy-value (Fishbein, 1967)

view attitudes as summaries of one's beliefs Attitude = sum of products of belief (b) that attribute is associate with the object and evaluation (e) of desirability of the attribute

Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1967)

we make inference about our own attitudes by observing our own behaviors when "internal cues" are weal or ambiguous "when we have insufficient justification for our internal cues" You are likely to draw inferences when behavior is freely chosen and/or driven by internal motivation According to SPT, when people realize their behavior is caused by an external factor, they do not assume that it reflects their internal feelings