PSY1002: Social Psychology Attitude and Behaviour

What is temperament?

An individual's behavioral style and characteristic way of responding.

Factors Influencing Information Processing Summarise Type I and Type II decision making Type II mortal reasoning, financial reasoning.

We tend to use systematic processing (Type 2) when we are strongly motivated to find the correct answer and we have the cognitive capacity, e.g. •accuracy motivation •impression motivation •defensive motivation (consequences) •We tend to use heuristic processing when: •we are unmotivated •we lack the ability/desire to systematically process complex information

Moderators of attitude-behavior link What is a moderator?

defines when something is true, e.g. when will attitude predict actual behavior. Basically a variable/thing can explain under what situations something else happens. (when attitude happens)Moderator say: When does it happen? For whom does it happen? Under what conditions? That is moderation effect. e.g Under what situation will someone will lie. Looking at someone's attitudes towards telling the truth or lying in a relationship Say: What is your attitudes towards, do you think it is ever acceptable for someone to lie in a relationship? Then you try to use that attitude to predict their behaviour. Doesn't work as you need to think about moderators. It depends e.g you might lie because you don't wanna hurt their feelings. So you could say when people lie in a relationship? Well if its to not to hurt someone's feelings they will lie frequently. Whereas with other situations it is not so likely.

Changing someone's attitude is difficult

e.g in terms of gun control, might have to chance someone's sense of identiy then changing something important to them e.g guns.

Suggest a couple of explanatory reasons as to why attitudes may not predict behaviour

1. Happen because of social desirability bias so many people said they are not going to vote for Donald Trump and then in the end it was already close election and they were ashamed to say to family and friends that they wanted to vote for him. (sometimes people are dishonest) Some people may have a cognitive attitude and different habits e.g might not wanna put sun lotion and not worry too much about the consequences of overtanning leading to cancer - wanna have a good time. May depend on moderators not taking into account e.g other situational factors type of situation other aspects of attitudes

Example of golden triad in terms of attitudes Guns Gun Control Attitudes (changing attitudes of gun control in America)

Affect: "Guns make me sick! Behavior: "I vote for gun control whenever possible." (Obama did you have guns, but no reasons to have a harmful powerful gun, put in control that people in a certain age buy guns) Cognition: "Guns in the house increase the likelihood of children accidentally shooting themselves. (educate people about guns and get evidence that people are more likely to get hurt by their own gun in their own house, protect out that gun can be used against instead of protection, no of times gun is taken and how much times it shoots people) Behavioural and cognition failed because very often when people make decisions they are not only using cognition but affect. Affect is the thing that is often missing in trying to persuade someone to change their attitude. Get to change how they feel about it (thinking negatively about guns) e.g in movies it is shown as cool)

Are attitudes useful for anything other than behavioural intentions? Thinking about attitude change... link between attitudes and behaviour Function of attitude is not only to predict behaviour but tells us a lot about to world, organise information e.g

Attitudes may also influence: •Knowledge functions •E.g. attitudes may help organize and evaluate information •Self-expression functions e.g express climate change, tells people something we value •E.g. attitudes may help people express central values or beliefs •Self-esteem function •E.g. attitudes may help people build and maintain self-esteem e.g. if you have a self serving bias your attitudes can help you to protect what you believe in. e.g. if you not that good at a sport. then student says sport is not that important. You say it is good for you. You have an attitude that being good at stats is good and get good marks it is good for you.

Both models try to explain difference of models

Both: Why in some cases attitudes does not affect behaviour Fazio: In previous model, it was to do with perception and social norms, Theory of Planned Behaviour: This one is saying that attitudes affect behaviour indirectly through intentions. That attiitudes are also affected by and also affect themselves norms. Interplay : norms affect your attitudes and attitiudes affect what you see norms to be. These two both affect attention. The thing they added as unique is idea of behavioural control - your attitude will depend partly on how much control you think you have in the situation. If you don't feel you have much control , that will affect your attitude and intentions. e.g students you have control over your learning and how you do in exam you change attitude in studying (may try harder). If you have no control may have negative attitude may feel bad of exam. - why should I bother attitutide

How can we persuade someone to change their attitudes? Getting someone to change their attitude is very difficult. But they are things to do

Early persuasion research focused on: •The communicator (source) •What they said (message) •Who was listening (audience) e.g Milgram study a lot focused on person in white lab coat giving the order and thats why people are obeying. The focus is on the source. There was less focus on individuals and less focus on the process of the actual message being delivered. Social psychology has evoluted to focus less on the source because actually not interesting in sense that somebody respects the source and trust source in position of authority, they are more likely to change. Beyond that, there is not much there. But if you think about the person and how receptive the particular person is to the message and think by process by which message is delivered. Elaboration-Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) (ELM model) •Two routes through which information is processed •Depends on the route and the message as to whether persuasion is successful Model focusing on the process, two routes.

Central Route

If the message is important, e.g quitting smoking Then you don't wanna show them lots of images of people smoking (thats when you want people to smoke more) Instead you want to focus more on the logical reasonds why people shouldn't smoke (direct, type II reasoning) Doesn't matter about nonverbal cues, it matters all the reasons. e.g cost a fortune, smells terrible, get cancer, hurt other people - then get them to quite However.. smoking is hard to quit. Difficult as biologically addictive More clearer if you want someone to recycle, cycle to work. Doesn't work: Trevor as change how people feel about it. (central route)

List three factors that play a role in persuading people to change their attitude

If the speaker is credible Attractive The way they speak

Why are moderators important in psychology?

Important in understanding any type of psychology, not just social psychology. One of the reason why moderators as so important because they show critical thinking. Moderators so nuance (finer grained understanding of what's going on through looking at moderators).

Idea of conscious and non conscious attitudes Model by Fazio

In this model saying that something happens and this thing has an effect on your attitude. Whether or not your attitude then predict your behaviour depends how you perceive the event as well as social norms. Basically saying: something happens and your attitudes will affect your behaviour. It will affect your behaviour through how you perceive the situation. e.g. Safe drinking/night out/encouraged to drink more/drinking contest Your perception of the event as well as thinking about social norms in that situation depends whether you took part or not.

Attitude-behavior link? During this time a lot of American had stereotypes and discmrination against Chinese imigrants in the States

LaPiere (1934) restaurant study •Surveyed restaurant owners about their attitudes towards Chinese immigrants and compared with actual behaviour •Most businesses served Chinese couples courteously, despite restaurant owners holding negative attitudes in this time period (given survey they had attitudes) dissociation between attitudes and what they would actually do if somebody Chinese walked into the shop.

How to change attitudes? - Balance Theory (Heider, 1958) Early theory

People like to maintain a balance between the cognitive and affective components of their attitude and the conative component (behaviour) When there is a balance, we experience cognitive consistency When there is an imbalance, we experience cognitive inconsistency (cognitive dissonance) So, we change either our beliefs, feelings or our behaviour Balance theory: What we know logically to be true and how we feel about things should be harmony with each other. When there is a change in something we experience/something we believe we have experienced it causes cognitive dissonance. If we are doing something and what we are doing doesn't match with what we think it causes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable and do something to change that. e.g Classic study Festinger looking at cognitive dissonance. Festinger is a famous psychologists that developed cognitive dissonance theory. A study where he had students who studied the environment and got them to read out loads of sentences e.g "Climate change isn't real and pollution is good". - created cognitive dissonance as they are asked to read something that they don't believe in. (feel uncomfortable). Found out they were more likely to vote for non extreme policies polcies/ or to change to support non climate change policies because they were forced to read out these statements before. If you experience cognitive dissonance you will want to change either your attitude or your behaviour.

LaPiere (1934) Graph

Phoned people but also observed what would happen in real life Phone response was less than 10% of shop owners, hoteliers would say they were happy to serve Chinese person. But in real life they nearly all did. Interesting expect to be flipped around. How bad racism was in 1930s.

Theory of Planned Behaviour Model (Azjen, 1991) Intentions are a function of attitudes toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control

Similar to the previous one. However, this adds an extra element regarding control. Again you have got this attitude and this attitude will affect your behaviour. But in this model, there isn't a direct link from attitude to behaviour. Instead attitude form intentions, then intentions influence behaviour (extra step)

Golden triad what is it used for?

Social and Clinical Psychology talk about three things that affect, cognition and behaviour. e.g If you want to change someone's attitude. Thereby change their behaviour. You have to tackle in three levels. Have to tackle cognitive (thinking), what they feel (affect) and the behaviour. If you want to change someone's health behaviour you might tackle anyone one of these separately or three of them together. e.g we might tackle the behaviour to change the attitude or you might change the cognitive/affect to change behaviour (do into different ways) What is first? Do you change the affect/cognitive/behaviour first? environmental psychologists that wanted people to try recycle more. Before climate change really started to become big. They tried neighbourhood program schemes to encourage people to recycle and how they felt/thought about recycling (so affect and cognitive) in order to change behaviour. Didn't work well. What worked was changing the law - have to recycle until they get a fine. Once they did people's attitudes (affect and cognition started to change as well)

Elaboration Likelhood Model Peripheral Route

The first route e.g Type I and Type II reasoning (drawing links not Chopper said, two way making decisions and two ways forming attuites Peripheral route says instead of tackling it directly. You can take a roundabout approach. This works particularly well if the message is not specifically important/interesting/not super relevant. e.g not talking about cancer not talking about life or death (talking trivial - buying a product, coke, iphone) This route says that things that are not super important, the best way to persuade someone is basically use heurtics. Instead of tackling analogical and analytical way by arguing reasons why Coke is better - actually get people seeing Coke and associating coke with something cool. (hence product placement - you see in the field of vision, hero of story drinking coke and going around saving the day - associate product with cool and more likely to get the product like near exposure effect - just by exposing someone to these products, they are more likely to like it because it becomes familiar e.g go somewhere and feels familiar it feels nice. The peripheral route that the strength of argument doesn't matter but nonverbal cues how they feel about it.

1. With regards to research on attitudes, what is the 'golden triad' and how does it relate to the attitude-behaviour (A-B) link? Give a real-world example. [max 100 words, 5 marks

The golden triad refers to attitudes having three components: affect (how you feel), behaviour (what you do), and cognition (your reasoning). The A-B link refers to how poorly attitudes are at predicting behaviour. For example, many people support climate change, but they might still drive to work and use a non-electric car. According to the golden triad approach, to create a positive attitude towards commuter cycling, we would need to target how they feel about cycling, their reasoning about the benefits of cycling, and their actual habitual behaviour. Failing to address all three components may not be effective.

How do we form attitudes Most attitude formation come from social experiences

There are several ways we can acquire an attitude: •social learning = acquire attitudes from others •classical conditioning = learning based on association (e.g something positive always happens, might start having a positive attitude of things associated with it) e.g My cat has a very positive attitude towards me because I give her treats all the times. You can use it in opposite context e.g if you are constantly hearing negative things in the news about Muslims e.g relate Muslim directly relating to terrorism and islamophobia then you can learn negative attitudes towards other people as well. •operant conditioning = learn to hold the "right" views e.g you might get rewarded then that might change your attitudes. Last two are more about non conscious ways: •subliminal conditioning = without awareness e.g attitudes that are not consciously aware of. E.G Advertising does this a lot by doing product placements, they can change your attitudes towards a product by just exposing it to you frequently. •observational learning = learning by observing actions of others and exposure to mass media Observation led by imitating others through the media. Takeaway message: Lots of different ways to form attitudes. Most we form attitudes for social environment and form attitudes consciously and non consciously as well.

What is attitude?

a learned predisposition to respond to an object or a class of objects in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way. These predispositions are situational but also enduring.

Affective Approach to Attitude Change e.g used in health psychologists to change behaviour e.g drink driving, smoking better to give solution after being scared smoking kills but use nicotine patches e.g in terms of COVID, like telling not to go to pubs, instead make more outdoor pubs. or give things they can do while they are outdoors. , much safer and an alternative instead of saying not to do, more likely to resist. If you think about the message as well e.g COVID for young people, found when fair approach to COVID not effective (try to scare young person under 25 by yelling they generally resist saying it is not affect them) However, this works in elderly. Again moderate age is an important moderator in understanding attitudes. One message may work for younger (e.g saying you will be fine but somebody else in the community may die from it) than older people. Different messages for different parts of the communities.

Inducing fear - works best when you also offer advice or coping strategy (how to avoid danger) •cigarette smoking •drinking and driving Inducing good feelings •enhance positive thinking •unhappy people think more before making decisions •"rose tinted spectacles" •Associating a message with good feelings might lead to more impulsive choices? Targetting affect how you feel than cognition is important

Reducing Cognitive Dissonance What does cognitive dissonance refer to?

•Cognitive dissonance refers to the discomfort of having a discrepancy between what we think (attitude) and what we do (behaviour) - The need to remove this unpleasant state may change our attitudes or behaviours

Two ways of attitude formation: Social comparison Trevor would argue more of our attitude forms from the social function (how we learn, environment raised in, past experience - why someone have a particular attitude) e.g if fireworks would be banned or attitude due to fireworks. might be positive or negative (scary). If you have a pet you might be anti -fireworks as a pet might be scared In general environment on how you learn form attitudes more than genetic reasons.

•Comparing ourselves to others to determine if our view of reality is correct •Attitudes may be shaped by social information from others we like or respect (or vice versa) Likely to learn attitudes from others e.g parents, friends, impress people, imitate people.

Source and Message Characteristics Moderator things when persuading someone to change their attitude. Things that depend on when people change their attitude doesn't matter on the argument itself e.g credibility

•Important Nonverbal Cues •Credibility •expertise •trustworthiness •Attractiveness •Speaking style Listening about COVID do they trust the message, what is science is saying? That's why government have Chief Medical Advisors because not they want to listen to them but it is more credible to convice public to behave in a certain way if there are credible experts saying it s a good thing. e.g Trust in independent experts can change someone attitudes. e.g getting someone who is attractive saying the message is effective thats why Boris Johnson isn't doing very well. e.g. Speaking style if someone is speaking articularly and posh depends on people trusting native accent more. Rather than just attending to source, you are more likely to listen and engage/process with the message. (attractiveness level high for example) •Important Message Characteristics •soft sell is often better than over persuasion •if audience is skeptical - use two-sided message Soft sell works better than e.g if you suddenly change attitude about product people may push back Soft sell put foot in door approach, small you get them to listen about small thing and get to sell about other things. If audience skeletal, change attitude and approach. Tailor message if they area. (moderator - if audience is skeptical)

Two ways of attitude formation: Genetic factors (biological focus on why people have attitudes and how they form)

•Inherited general dispositions (e.g., infant temperament > some infants tend to be more sensitive to their environment and cry more, while others might smile) •'Heritable attitudes' or 'gut-level preferences' (e.g. noise preference, possibly music) may be influenced Studies showing inherent disposition for certain attitudes studies looking at temperament in young infants. You find they might be more sensitive to their environment. As some babies cry and might don't. Might suggest at even at an early age we do have a preferences which might then form attitudes in a way. Small infant preferences at only a few weeks/months can see how it might affect or encourage a certain attitude towards something. Even as older we have "gut instinct/gut level preferences" - preferences for particular environmental stimuli.

Humour & fear in advertising Fear used in a lot of advertising e.g smoking , tanning elicit defensive responses (people don't like to be manipulated , push back) e.g COVID also face masks (fear usually in COVID ads) Humour is a good by pass defensiveness in a funny way more likely to process image.

•Mukherjee & Dubé (2012): humour can reduce defensive responses and increase the persuasiveness of fear inducing messages •No humour + increasing fear = lower persuasion •Humour + increasing fear = higher persuasion Cartoon using sun lotion

Possibilities of a moderators include:

•Other situational factors, e.g., sparing one's feelings may prevent us from expressing our true attitudes and therefore not lead to a corresponding behaviour •The type of situation, e.g. whether the situation is consistent with our attitude (e.g. we may have an attitude against heavy drinking, but at a wedding we drink much more than we usually do) •Other aspects of attitudes, e.g. how attitudes were formed (conscious or non-conscious), strength of the attitude, and specificity e.g. is our attitude very specific or general? If specific, it will likely encourage a specific behaviour

Student learning outcomes

•Suggest a couple of explanatory reasons as to why attitudes may not predict behaviour •Draw an attitude-behaviour model, e.g. TPB •List three factors that play a role in persuading people to change their attitudes

Attitude-behavior link? •Contrary to conventional wisdom, attitudes do not always predict behavior, e.g.:

•Sun-worshippers know the dangers of exposure to the sun, yet they tan anyway... why? •Looking good takes precedence (outweight) over attitudes toward personal health Social psychologists only tend to study a specific attitude e.g. stereotyping and predjuce. Less research on attitudes on general as they do not predict behaviour as well. Contrary to conventional wisdom, attitudes do not always predict behaviour, 1. Happen because of social desirability bias so many people said they are not going to vote for Donald Trump and then in the end it was already close election and they were ashamed to say to family and friends that they wanted to vote for him. (sometimes people are dishonest) Some people may have a cognitive attitude and different habits e.g might not wanna put sun lotion and not worry too much about the consequences of overtanning leading to cancer - wanna have a good time.

How to reduce cognitive dissonance? may or may not change your behaviour

•Ways to reduce dissonance (e.g., "dieter binges - say they are on a diet but order Dominos") •Direct methods •change attitude to be consistent with behavior, e.g. "diets don't really work anyway"/ "Fine to be overweight" •acquire supporting information, e.g. "many overweight people live long healthy lives" •trivialize the behaviors in question, e.g. "looking thin is not all that important" Changing behaviour to match attitudies(war) •Indirect methods •restore positive self-evaluations, e.g. "I like the way I look, regardless of my weight" •distractions e.g research of fat is good interventions. They get to go into focus group talk positive things about being overweight (fat) and negative things about being thin. The idea is that this creates dissonance and you are going to change your attitudes towards your won body shop because you've had to say all these statements similar to Festinger study.