PSYC781 - Applied Issues in Cultural and Social Psychology TEST 1

dispositional prediction of human behaviour

- general dispositions are poor p in specific situations - general personality traits and behaviour also not good p in specifc situations - specific locus of control such as health or achievment were better at p - proposed remedy for this = aggregation of specific behaviours across occasions, situations and forms of action. - research shows the workings of the aggregation principle by showing that general attitudes and personality traits do in fact predict behavioral aggregates much better than they predict specific behaviors.

The theory of planned behavior

- is an extension of the theory of reasoned action - made due to original model's limitations (theory of resoned action) dealing with behaviors over which people have incomplete volitional (willful) control. - intentions that influence behaviours - the stronger the intention = more likely for the behaviour to be done only if under volitional control

Problems with self report

Assumptions: (1) people know what their attitudes are- implicit and may be unknown to themselves (2) they will report those attitudes honestly - questionable as social desirability influences how we answer. Eg- most people will not admit to being racist Possible solution: Bogus pipeline (phony lie detector) - deception may be an ethical issue but has been used in the past

Why Do People Have Attitudes?

As you and a friend walk out of a movie that you have just seen, one of the first things that one of you asks the other is "What did you think of it?" When you are introduced to your brother's new girlfriend, he asks you after the meeting "How does she seem to you?" In response to these questions, you are not initially likely to give your beliefs about the movie (e.g., "the direction was weak"), or about the girl (e.g., "she has blonde hair"). The response that you assume the other person wants, and the response that you are most likely to give, is a general attitude: I liked it (or her). Only further probing is likely to elicit your more specific thoughts. Your attitude serves as a convenient summary of a wide variety of beliefs about the movie or the girl. People are usually eager to hear our attitudes, and we are often eager to give them. Why are attitudes such an important part of social interaction? In addition to the fact that attitudes serve as convenient summaries of our beliefs, they are important to other people for another reason-they help others to know what to expect from us. Knowing our attitudes presumably helps others predict the kinds of behaviors we are likely to engage in more accurately than almost anything else we can tell them. If you tell a person that "movies are rated G, PG, R, and X," and that "American movies usually emphasize entertainment rather than a message," that person wouldn't know whether or not to invite you to a movie. However, if you say to this person, "Movies today are sleazy, disgusting, and make me want to vomit," all doubt and uncertainty would be removed! Knowledge of others' attitudes, then, makes the world seem like a more predictable place. Of course, if a person's attitude was neutral (neither positive nor negative), it would not be as informative as if it was very polarized (extreme). Attitudes may also express some important aspects of an individual's personality (Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956). For example, Katz (1960) has described four functions that attitudes might serve for a person. 1. Some attitudes serve an ego-defensive function. These are attitudes that are held because they help people protect themselves from unflattering truths about themselves or about others who are important to them. By despising homosexuals, for example, some men are able to enhance their own feelings of masculinity and self-worth. This negative attitude about homosexuals serves an ego-defensive function. 2. Attitudes may also serve a value-expressive function, which occurs when holding a certain attitude allows the person to express an important value. For example, the person who likes solar hot water heaters because their use demonstrates an important concern about energy conservation has an attitude that serves a value-expressive function. 3. A third purpose served by attitudes is a knowledge function. Such attitudes allow people to better understand events and people around them. If your dislike of former President Richard Nixon helps you to understand his participation in the Watergate coverup (dislikable people do dislikable things), the attitude serves a knowledge function. 5. Finally, attitudes may serve a utilitarian function. These attitudes help people to gain rewards and avoid punishments. When an employee adopts the attitudes of the boss prior to asking for an increase in salary, it is clear that the new attitudes are serving a utilitarian function. According to Katz's functional view of attitudes, different people may hold the same attitudes, but the attitudes may serve very different purposes for them. Thus, Mr. Smith may like the Republican candidate for president because he perceives that he stands for morality in America (value expressive function), whereas Mr. Jones likes the Republican candidate because he perceives that the candidate's election would be good for his business (utilitarian function).

The Validity of the Attitude Change Experiment

Cook and Campbell (1976) have argued that there are four kinds of validity of concern to an investigator when evaluating the outcome of any experiment. As an example of these four kinds of validity, let's examine our hypothetical experiment on source expertise. Recall that we found that the subjects in the experimental group, who were exposed to the Nobel prize-winning source, showed more agreement with the institution of wage and price controls than did subjects in the control group, for whom the source remained anonymous. The question of statistical conclusion validity asks whether the difference observed between the experimental and control groups may have been due to a chance fluctuation, or whether the observed difference is reliable (likely to be obtained again if the experiment is repeated). A statistical test allows determination of the likelihood that the observed difference represents a chance occurrence (Kirk, 1968; Winer, 1971). If the probability that the difference is due to chance is 5% or less (p <.05), as revealed by the statistical test, then the result is considered to be statistically significant (or reliable). A second concern in evaluating an experiment is internal validity. If the experiment passes the conclusion validity test, something other than chance is responsible for the observed difference, but the statistical test does not assure that the manipulation (source expertise) is responsible for the observed difference. It is assured that the attitude change effect is not due to some variable other than the manipulation if there is an appropriate control group and if subjects have been randomly assigned to conditions. Since an appropriate control group is treated identically to the experimental group except for the manipulation, if the two groups are found to differ, then this difference must either be attributed to1 the manipulation or to the fact that the two groups have different kinds of subjects. By randomly assigning subjects to conditions, the latter possibility can be eliminated and it may be concluded that the manipulation was necessary to produce the observed effect. A third kind of validity, external validity, is concerned with how well the observed effect generalizes to other possible subject populations, other locations, and different experimental materials. When only one experiment is conducted, the investigator can never be sure that the observed effect has any general applicability. Perhaps expert sources produce more attitude change only for economic topics but not for others. The only way to check on the external validity of a finding is to conceptually replicate (repeat) the experiment. In other words, in the second and third experiments, the same conceptual hypotheses will be tested, but the specific procedures will be different. An experimenter will use different subjects, in different locations, with different experimental materials. To the extent that the findings can be replicated with a wide variety of different procedures, the findings have external validity. Finally, in evaluating an experiment, the investigator must be concerned with construct validity. This is the question of whether or not what was meant to be manipulated was actually manipulated and what was meant to be measured was actually measured. We have already discussed some of the problems encountered in assessing the construct validity of attitude measures (e.g., sometimes people may attempt to mislead us as to their true attitudes). It is equally important to be sure that the manipulation is valid. In our example, the expert source is a Nobel prize winner. Is the increased persuasion observed in the experimental group due to the source's expertise, or is it due to some irrelevant aspect of the manipulation? Maybe subjects were persuaded because our source had won a prize, and any source that had won a prize-whether it was an Academy Award, the Miss America Pageant, or the South County Hog-Calling Championship would have been liked more by subjects, and this liking would have produced more agreement. In our example, "winning a prize" was confounded (covaried) with the expertise of the source. A certain degree of confounding is probably inevitable in most research, because experimental treatments are complex and are unlikely to manipulate only one thing. Researchers typically deal with this problem in one or both of the following ways. First, a manipulation check measure can be taken, which is designed to see if subjects in the experimental group felt that the source had greater expertise on the issue than did the subjects in the control group. If this occurred, and furthermore if experimental subjects did not report liking the source more than did the control subjects, confidence in the construct validity of the manipulation is increased. A second way to deal with this problem is to employ multiple operations of the treatment. Ideally, the experiment should use several different manipulations of source expertise (expert sources who had won prizes, expert sources who hadn't, male expert sources, female expert sources). If all of these expert sources have the same effect, then one can more confidently attribute their effect to that which they have in common, namely, expertise.

source factors in voting

Credibility and attractiveness work best when they don't appear contrived Study of 1974 Canadian Federal election Attractive candidates received > 2.5 times as many votes as unattractive candidates 73% surveyed strongly denied being influenced by appearance Only 14% would even consider the possibility

problems with observable behaviour

People still tend to moniter their overt behaviour similar to self report. Therefore, may not be valid.

Indirect Procedures

The bogus pipeline method improves the validity of a direct attitude measure when an investigator fears that, for some reason, people are unwilling to provide accurate information about their attitudes. Another approach is to employ an ... With an indirect attitude measure, the subjects are unaware that attitudes are being measured, thus minimizing their concerns about giving an "appropriate" or a "desirable" response. In this section, we will discuss some disguised self-report techniques, some behavioral measures, and some physiological indicators of attitudes.

attitude object

The people, subject or situation towards which an attitude is directed

The Approaches to Persuasion

We have grouped the various theories of attitude change that have developed over the last forty years into seven major approaches, and these are discussed in chapters 2 through 8. Each of the approaches focuses on a different basic process to explain how and why peoples' attitudes change. The approaches are presented roughly in the order in which they captured the imagination of the discipline. All of the approaches, however, continue to retain their adherents, and all of the approaches continue to generate a great deal of research. Our discussion of the approaches to persuasion begins in chapter 2 with theories that emphasize some rudimentary learning principles like conditioning and modeling. These approaches focus on the direct administration of rewards and punishments to the target of influence or on the effects of the target observing others being rewarded or punished for expressing certain attitudes. In chapter 3, we discuss the message-learning approach developed by Hovland and his colleagues at Yale. These researchers examined how different variables affected a person's attention to, comprehension of, yielding to, and retention of the arguments in a persuasive message. Chapter 4 presents perceptual-judgmental theories of persuasion, which focus on how a person perceives the message and how attitude judgments are made in the context of a person's past experiences. These past experiences can lead a person to distort the position of a persuasive message. Next, in chapter 5, we discuss different human motives as they relate to attitude change; we will see that certain motives, like the desire to maintain consistency between beliefs and between attitudes and behaviors, have implications for the manner in which an attitude is changed. In chapter 6 we begin our discussion of the "information processing" approaches to persuasion. The theories in this chapter examine how the inferences that a person makes about a communicator's behavior (why is he saying that?) or the person's own behavior (why am I doing this?) can have implications for a person's attitudes. The theories in chapter 7 present some precise mathematical models of how the information that a person receives in a persuasive message is evaluated and integrated to form an overall attitude about a person, object, or issue. The theories in chapter 8 emphasize the information that people generate themselves, either in response to a persuasive message or in the absence of a persuasive message. These seven different approaches to persuasion emphasize different variables and different processes, but all of them have something to contribute to a complete understanding of how and why people's attitudes change. In the last chapter in this book, we note that, although the various theoretical approaches to persuasion differ in many ways, they really seem to indicate that there are only two fundamentally different "routes" to changing a person's attitudes. One route, which we call the central route, emphasizes the information that a person has about the person, object, or issue under consideration; and the other route, which we call the peripheral route, emphasizes just about anything else (e.g., information about the communicator or about the immediate consequences of adopting a certain attitude). As we will see later, the route responsible for persuasion appears to be an important determinant of how enduring the attitude change will be. Changes induced via the central route tend to be more permanent than changes induced via the peripheral route. We will postpone discussion of these two routes until the final chapter, but as you proceed through the different theories presented in chapters 2 through 8, you might consider whether the theory appears to emphasize a central or a peripheral route to persuasion.

theory of planed behaviour

in 1991 Ajzen added - percieved behavioural control to TRA became dom behavioural prediction shown to be very influential can have direct effect to behaviour skipping intentions. Therefore, superior to reasoned action behavioural control perception has to be realistic. Life can get in the way despite our best intentions unrealistic illusion of our own control is not helpful on his website he has a bibliography of behaviour prediction -- successfully predicted a wide range of behaviours eg- blood donation, crime etc

Decision making (dissonnance)

"Spreading of alternatives" we can ignore the negative aspects of the chosen alternative or we can remove the positive aspects of the rejected alternative. In hindsight the option we chose seems better Example study Brehm (1959): Tested women's preference on toasters etc, gave them 2 products that were wither close in desirability or two that were not close, one was better (easy decision) Results: more positive about the product that they chose for difficult decision this was lessened with the easy decsion Easy decisions vs. difficult decisions Spreading of alternatives greater for difficult desicions

Theoretical approaches to attitude change

(1) Message Processing Theories - Hovland Model (Yale Program) - Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (2) Cognitive Consistency Theories - Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Self-report attitude measures

(Direct): measures that ask a person to directly report his or her attitude *Likert-Type scales:* require respondents to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with several statements on an issue. Extent of agreement with a statement on odd or even numbered scale. Some argue that even numbers should be used as some researchers believe everyone has an opinion/attitude. *Semantic Differential*: asks respondents to rate an attitude object on several evaluative dimensions. Opposing adjectives on a scale- slider or check where they are on the scale. Usually balanced. we have tendancy to chose to the right and agree with statements -- bias to be noted and reduced when possible

Specificity Matching

(Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974) - Action - Target - Context - Time all four of these componants need to match when wanting to measure how the attitude will predict behaviour eg- how would you feel about using (action) condoms (target), when having sex (context) over the next 2 weeks (time). -- Much more specific way of asking a question A single behaviour can be viewed as involving an action directed at a target, performed in a given context, at a certain point in time.

Why should we care about attitudes?

- Attitudes are pervasive We are constantly evaluating things: we have attitudes about everything if we are pressed, varies in strength - Attitudes are adaptive Allow us to quickly separate helpful from harmful: eg- if we are in the wild and come across a snake we don't have time to evaluate the size and speed of snake, we want to have an immediate reaction of whether it is helpful or harmful to keep us safe. Could happen with our intuition meeting someone new and having a gut feeling. - Attitudes reduce effort Reduce cognitive load and ease decision making: eg- crossing a busy road we have to make a quick judgment of when to cross - Attitudes guide behaviour Increase the speed and quality of behavioural decisions: allows us to be more confident in what we do. Attitudes structure our social universe

Pairs of cognitions

- Consonant: when one cognitive element implies or follows from the other - Dissonant: when one cognitive element implies or suggests the opposite of the other. Can lead to psychological distress when a belief does not line up with another. This leads to avoidance of information that does not line up with existing beliefs - comes from musical notes -- 2 notes that are distant from each other sound good -- consonant 2 notes that are too close together sounds bad and they clash -- dissonant Examples- consonant: liking chocolate and ordering a chocolate dessert dissonant: when you are in a cult and it says that the world will end on a date but it does not happen. Irrelevant: when one cognitive element in no way implies or suggests anything about the other.

LaPiere (1934) study limitations

- No way of knowing if the same people that served them on thier trip wrote back the letter it could have been a different person. -- Not valid - People's attitudes might have changed in the time between them visiting and the letter. - Being accompanied by a tall white man people may have made an exception

Contrast Principle

-If a second item or choice is fairly different from the first, it seems more different than it actually is. -Ex: After buying an expensive suit, a belt doesn't seem like so much, so you're more likely to buy it. not using this principle in retail can be harmful as selling the cheap item first makes the expensive items seem more costly the temperature of previously presented water, it is possible to make the price of the saSo, just as it is possible to make the same bucket of water appear to be hotter or colder depending on me item seem higher or lower depending on the price of a previously presented item. Clever use of perceptual contrast is by no means confined to clothiers.

three general biasing factors that may be confounded with an experimental manipulation

1. Demand characteristics (Orne, 1962). This occurs when the experimental treatment gives the subject a hint about the "correct" response or the response that the experimenter would like the subject to make. 2. Evaluation apprehension (Rosenberg, 1969). This occurs when the experimental treatment makes the subjects concerned about being evaluated by the experimenter. This makes subjects more likely to engage in a socially desirable response, a response that makes them look good (but not necessarily a response that would confirm the experimenter's hypothesis). 3. Experimenter bias (Rosenthal, 1966). This occurs when the experimenter's behavior, rather than the experimental manipulation, influences the subjects' responses. For example, if the experimenter were to nod his head in agreement when subjects listened to the expert source but not when they listened to the anonymous source, this could produce the observed difference between conditions.

Variables influencing stages of persuasion process

1. Source factors (who): Characteristics of the originator of the persuasive communication Credibility (expertise & trustworthiness) Ross et al. Tape recorded speech about the dangers of vigorous exercise Credible (Dr. James Rundle) vs. Non-credible (Fat is Beautiful Organisation) source Source factors: Characteristics of the originator of the p communication Credibility (expertise & trustworthiness) Liking (similarity & appearance) 2) Message factors (what): Features of the communication itself One-sided vs. two-sided messages Inoculation hypothesis - exposure to weak versions of a persuasive argument increases later resistance to that argument - compared with stong counterargument Order of the messages - primacy effect - go 1st recency effect - go 2nd IF there is a gap between speakers start with your position, present opposition moderate agrument then refute strongly - innoculation, recency and primacy - all 3 used Fear appeals - do sometimes work - increases our tendency to think about the message but only sometimes. Have to meet criteria (see fear appeals) Subliminal messages - only work in labs that are highly controlled- no evidence of effectivness in ads 3) Recipient factors (whom): characteristics of who is receiving the message - target Intelligence - low intelligence people are more gulliable bc smarter people have critical thinking skills and are more certain, forming stronger attitudes and making counterarguments of their views. BUT if there is a strong counterargument, intelligent people are more easily swayed bc they can understand complex theories/info Need for Cognition (Cacioppo et al.) - people high in need for cognition would prefer cognitvely challanging activities such as crosswords rather than tv. High need = think about argument, better memory, understanding, recall, more persuaded by strong arguments. Low need = don't remember message but influenced by simple cues such as speakers reputation and attractivness. Self-monitoring- ability to adapt according to social situation High sm = act diff more in diff situation Low sm = stays consistant High level more p by = status, image, social elements Low = value systems, quality of product 4) Channel Factors (how): characteristics of the mode by which the message is communicated Face-to-face vs. mass media - repeated ftf is much more effective, mm more quickly reaches more people. Eg- 1000 ftf influence less than if mm influences 1% out of millions is more effective in number. Print, audio, and audio-visual: messages have to be related to the channel to be effective - eg- complex messages work best in print, more unpleasent when audio-visual simple messages more persusive by audio-visual presentations.

The Tripartite Theory (ABC model of attitude)

3 components of attitudes: Affective: the emotional reactions toward the attitude object. Cognitive: thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object. Behavioural: observable behaviour toward the attitude object. eg- looking at a ferrari A- feeling excited, asthetic pleasure C- How fast it goes, space, how much gas it takes and other rational thoughts B- could prime you to drive fast after see picture, might go to test drive or purchase *these dimensions don't always align* eg- on an affective level the ferrari is cool but on a cognitive level it is negative bc it's too expesive and takes too much gas. When deciding on utalitarian things like food processers or heater you will focus on cognitive features for purchase. Appeals to emotion might override cognition with things like purfume or flowers. --- *Varies depending on the attitude object*

Indirect Procedures- Behavioral Indicators of Attitudes

A number of behavioral measures have been used to obtain an indication of attitude toward people, objects, and issues. For example, Wells and Petty {1980) secretly videotaped peoples' head movements as they listened to a proattitudinal or a counterattitudinal message. People listening to a message that supported their own positions engaged in more vertical and fewer horizontal head movements than people listening to a message that contradicted their own attitudes. Researchers interested in interpersonal attraction have used the following measures of attitude toward other people: the amount of eye contact (Argyle, 1967; Rubin, 1970), one's body position (Mehrabian, 1968), and the physical distance that two people stand from each other (Byrne, Ervin, & Lamberth, 1970). The more eye contact, the more people lean toward each other; and the closer they stand to one another, the greater the liking that has been reported. Virtually any positive act toward a person might be viewed as indicating a positive attitude toward that person, and any negative act might be viewed as indicating a negative attitude. We presumably do not often do positive things for people that we dislike, nor do we often do negative things to people we like. Milgram, Mann, and Harter (1965) reasoned that people would be willing to mail a lost letter addressed to a group that they liked (e.g., UNICEF) but would be less willing to mail a lost letter to a group that they disliked (e.g., the Communist party). In a test of this lost letter technique for measuring attitudes, these researchers scattered a number of letters addressed to various positive and negative groups around several different cities. The people who found the letters mailed significantly more of them that were addressed to the positive groups than to the negative groups. Presumably, this technique could be used to predict the outcome of a political election in a city. Letters addressed to the various candidates would be "lost" in each target city and the return rates monitored. This technique is expensive, since a stamp is required for each "lost letter," but in some cases the technique may be cheaper than hiring interviewers to poll the electorate (although not as accurate). The technique may be particularly useful in assessing political attitudes in a country where people may be afraid to give their true opinions to interviewers (Milgram, 1977).

two rationals for this hypothesis

According to the theory of planned behavior, perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention, can be used directly to predict behavioral achievement. First, holding intention constant, the effort expended to bring a course of behavior to a successful conclusion is likely to increase with perceived behavioral control. For instance, even if two individuals have equally strong intentions to learn to ski, and both try to do so, the person who is confident that he can master this activity is more likely to persevere than is the person who doubts his ability. 2. The second reason for expecting a direct link between perceived behavioral control and behavioral achievement is that perceived behavioral control can often be used as a substitute for a measure of actual control. Whether a measure of perceived behavioral control can substitute for a measure of actual control depends, of course, on the accuracy of the perceptions. Perceived behavioral control may not be particularly realistic when a person relatively little information about the behavior, when requirements or available resources have changed, or when new and unfamiliar elements have entered into the situation. Under those conditions, a measure of perceived behavioral control may add little to accuracy of behavioral prediction. However, to the extent that perceived control is realistic, it can be used to predict the probability of a successful behavioral attempt (Ajzen, 1985).

Past behaviour and predicting behaviour

Addition of past behavior should not significantly improve the prediction of later behavior In sum, past behavior is best treated not as a measure of habit but as a reflection of all factors that determine the behavior of interest. The correlation between past and later behavior is an indication of the behavior's stability or reliability, and it represents the ceiling for a theory's predictive validity. If an important factor is missing in the theory being tested, this would be indicated by a significant residual effect of past on later behavior. Such residual effects could reflect the influence of habit, if habit is not represented in the theory, but it could also be due to other factors that are missing.

Attitudes and Behaviors That Are Measured Appropriately

Ajzen and Fishbein (1977) noted that a behavior can be viewed as consisting of four elements. The first element is the action performed: is the behavior one of cooking, smoking, or driving? The second element is the target at which the action is directed: is the action directed at a cake, a cigarette, or a bus? The third element is the context in which the action is performed: is the action performed in the kitchen, in front of the minister, or on the interstate highway? Finally, every behavior has a time component: is the action performed on New Year's Eve, in the morning, or at noon? By putting these components together, the complete behavior is specified: the person is cooking a cake in the kitchen in the morning, or the person is smoking a cigarette on the interstate highway on New Year's Eve. In order to predict one of these specific behaviors, Ajzen and Fishbein argue that the attitude measure employed should correspond to the behavior on the action, target, context, and time categories. If there is no correspondence, a significant relationship between attitudes and behaviors will usually not be obtained. Given this analysis, it is understandable why Corey was unable to predict cheating behavior from attitudes toward cheating. The problem was that he employed a general measure of attitude toward cheating (assessing attitudes toward the action component) but tried to predict a very specific behavior (whether the students would cheat on a particular kind of test, in a particular course). A study by Davidson and Jaccard (1979) illustrates the enhanced prediction that can be obtained by measuring attitudes and behaviors at corresponding levels of specificity. In this study, they attempted to predict whether women would actually use birth control pills during a particular two-year period. Table 1.2 shows how well different attitude measures predicted the women's use of the pills. The attitude toward birth control pills (target component only) does not predict behavior very well. After all, the women may think that the pills themselves are wonderful (they are small, round, colorful, and should be available to women who want them), but they may not have positive feelings about using the pills. By adding this action component to the attitude measure, prediction is increased. Finally, by adding the time component, prediction is increased even further. This is because a woman might have favorable feelings about using birth control pills generally but does not have favorable feelings about using them in the next two years because she wants to have a baby then. In the example on birth control pills, the investigators were able to predict a specific behavior by employing a specific attitude measure. According to Ajzen and Fishbein's analysis, however, a general attitude measure should be able to predict a general behavioral criterion. See chap for more egs

The Validity of Direct Measurement Procedures

All of the scales that we have just discussed make the assumption that people are perfectly willing and able to tell you about their attitudes. Sometimes this assumption is unwarranted. For example, at different points in history people have been afraid to respond to attitude surveys for political reasons. A more common problem is that people may be so concerned about making a good impression on the investigator that only desirable attitudes are reported correctly, and attitudes that may be socially undesirable are concealed or misrepresented. These and other problems that may lead to attitude misrepresentation (Cook & Selltiz, 1964) have caused psychologists to search for a way to ensure that the self-report attitude scales really reflect a person's true feelings (see box 1.3). One interesting procedure for assessing a person's true feelings is called the bogus pipeline (Jones and Sigall, 1971), in which the investigator convinces the subject that the sophisticated equipment being used allows a determination of the subject's true attitudes. For example, the subject might be asked to hold onto a steering wheel connected to a pointer; turning the wheel allows the pointer to move in either a positive or negative direction on some attitude scale. The subject is told that electrodes will be attached to his or her wrist so that electromyographic (EMG) recordings can be made. The EMG, which measures minute muscle movements, presumably provides a measurement of the subject's initial tendency to move the wheel in either a positive or negative direction. The intensity of the EMG response allows a determination of how far the wheel would be turned. A few "practice" trials are then conducted in which the investigator asks the subject to respond to some inocuous questions (for which the subject's true responses are already known), and the EMG is shown to "predict" the subject's true answers. Once the subject is convinced that the EMG can read minds, the experimenter can ask the real questions of interest. The subject is told to give the responses, and the experimenter will check to see how well the subject knows his or her own true feelings by comparing the verbal responses to the true responses given by the EMG. The logic of the bogus pipeline procedure is that a subject prefers to tell the experimenter his or her true feelings rather than be proven a liar by the EMG. Several pieces of evidence suggest that the bogus pipeline procedure produces more truthful statements on the part of subjects. For example, in one study (Quigley-Fernandez & Tedeschi, 1978) subjects were first wrongly informed about how to perform well on an experimental test. They were then given a chance to "cheat" on the test and were later asked if they possessed any prior information about the test. Subjects questioned under the bogus pipeline condition "confessed" more often than those who were not. In a study more directly related to attitudes (Sigall & Page, 1971 ), white subjects attributed more negative characteristics to blacks with the bogus pipeline procedure than with the regular self-report rating scales. These studies indicate that the bogus pipeline procedure may be effective in getting people to reveal socially undesirable information about themselves, thus providing a more valid measure of attitudes.

What Other Variables Enhance Behavioral Prediction?

Although it is now clear that attitudes can be used to predict behavior with considerable success under the appropriate conditions, some investigators argue that by considering some variables in addition to attitudes, prediction of behavior can be substantially improved. Snyder (1979), for example, has argued that people low in the personality trait of self-monitoring typically show greater attitude-behavior consistency than people who are high in the trait. Low self monitors tend to guide their behavioral choices on the basis of salient information about their internal states (e.g., they eat when they are hungry), whereas high self-monitors tend to guide their behavior more on the basis of situational information (e.g., they eat when it is dinnertime). Attitudes, which are internal predispositions, will therefore generally be a better predictors of behaviors for low than high self-monitors (Snyder & Monson, 1975; Snyder & Tanke, 1976; Zanna, Olson, & Fazio, 1980). Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) have argued that norms, or what other people think about the behavior, are also important considerations for predicting an individual's behavior. They have formulated and tested a model of behavioral prediction based on attitudes and norms that they call "the theory of reasoned action." This theory, discussed in depth in chapter 7, has generated a considerable amount of research. In addition to attitudes, norms, and personality, Triandis (1980) argues that, of the several other factors to consider in attempting to predict behavior, the most important is habit. Habits are behaviors that have become automatic in certain situations. These behaviors occur without much, if any, thought. Triandis suggests that the first few times a person performs a particular behavior, cognitive factors such as attitudes and norms play a significant role in determining the nature of the behavior; but as the person engages more and more in the behavior, there is a shift away from these cognitive factors, and habit plays a more important role (see also Triandis, 1977). In fact, some social psychologists have characterized much of a person's day-to-day behavior as "mindless" (Langer, Blank, & Chanowitz, 1978). For these highly routine, relatively unimportant daily behaviors, attitudes will likely be poor predictors. Furthermore, even though the person may have a great deal of direct experience with a particular attitude object, if the person engages in the behavior so often that it becomes automatic, attitudes may change, but the behavior may persist due to habit. Nevertheless, even behaviors that have become almost completely automatic, in that they occur without much thought, may again come under the control of attitudes if the person once more becomes motivated to think about the behavior. For example, Smith (1977) found that, on a typical work day, the attitudes of the employees of a large corporation toward their jobs could not be used to predict who would show up for work. On the day after an unusually severe blizzard, however, attitudes toward work did predict employee attendance. On a typical work or school day, for example, most people go without much thought. When a blizzard leaves ten-foot high snowdrifts outside, however, people have to make a conscious decision about whether or not they want to leave the comfort of their homes. On such "thoughtful" days, attitudes will have an important influence on their behaviors-the more they like their jobs, the more they are likely to brave the weather and attempt to get to work.

Direct procedures - likert scale

Although the Thurstone scale is rather difficult to construct, it does allow a fairly precise estimate of where a person stands on the underlying attitudinal dimension. In many instances, however, this precision is not necessary. Often it is sufficient merely to know how people can be ranked relative to each other (without the equal interval assumption). In 1932, Rensis Likert published a paper, with the relatively restrained title, "A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes," that described such a scale. The first step in constructing a Likert scale is similar to the Thurstone procedure-a large number of opinion statements relevant to the attitude issue are collected. Each statement should clearly express, either a positive or negative feeling about the issue under consideration. In the next step, a large sample of people express the extent of their own agreement with each of the statements on a five-point scale (see box 1.2). Since the scale assumes that each of the items measures the same underlying attitude, any items that do not correlate highly with the total test score (obtained by summing the responses to the individual items) are eliminated from the scale. Thus, the person's attitude score is obtained by summing the responses to the items that remain. Unlike the Thurstone procedure, scale construction and administration can be accomplished with the same set of people. Because the Likert scale is easier to construct than the Thurstone scale, and because both scales have equivalent reliabilities (McNemar, 1946; Poppleton & Pilkington, 1964) and typically correlate highly with each other (Edwards & Kenney, 1946), the Likert procedure is more popular.2 One unwieldy aspect of both the Thurstone and the Likert procedures, however, is that a different scale (with new items) must be constructed each time an attitude toward another issue is to be measured.

Intentions and behavior

As a general rule it is found that when behaviors pose no serious problems of control, they can be predicted from intentions with considerable accuracy (see Ajzen, 1988; Sheppard, Hartwick, & Warshaw, 1988). Good examples can be found in behaviors that involve a choice among available alternatives. For example, people's voting intentions, assessed a short time prior to a presidential election, tend to correlate with actual voting choice in the range of .75 to .80 (see Fishbein & Ajzen, 1981). A different decision is at issue in a mother's choice of feeding method (breast versus bottle) for her newborn baby. This choice was found to have a correlation of .82 with intentions expressed several weeks prior to delivery (Manstead, Proffitt, & Smart, 1983).3

Theory of Planned Behavior summary

At the same time, there are still many issues that remain unresolved. The theory of planned behavior traces attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control to an underlying foundation of beliefs about the behavior. Although there is plenty of evidence for significant relations between behavioral beliefs and attitudes toward the behavior, between normative beliefs and subjective norms, and between control beliefs and perceptions of behavioral control, the exact form of these relations is still uncertain.

Do Attitudes Predict Behaviors?

Before we discuss how psychologists study attitude change experimentally, there is one more important question to be addressed: do attitudes predict behaviors? Recall that psychologists have focused on the concept of attitude because of the assumed relationship between attitudes and behaviors. Defense attorneys want you to like their clients so that you will vote to acquit them; manufacturers want you to like their products so that you will buy them; and other people want us to like them so that we will do favors for them or protect them or marry them. Soon after the first attitude scales were developed, questions arose about the usefulness of attitudes in predicting behaviors. In perhaps the most widely cited early study on the attitude-behavior "problem" (as it came to be known), LaPiere (1934) investigated whether or not he could predict peoples' prejudiced behaviors from their self-reports of prejudice. In the early 1930s, LaPiere, traveling with a Chinese couple, stopped at sixty-six hotels and 184 restaurants across the United States. The Chinese couple was refused service at only one of the establishments. Six months later, LaPiere wrote to all of the places at which they stopped, asking them if they would give service to Chinese guests. Of the 128 places that responded, ninety-two percent stated that they would not serve Chinese guests. On the surface, at least, there appears to be an extreme discrepancy between the verbal reports and the actual behavior toward Chinese. On closer examination, however, it is clear that there are several problems with this study. One major problem is that there is no way to be certain that the people who admitted the Chinese couple to the hotels and restaurants were the same people who completed the questionnaire when it arrived six months later! In fact, it is highly unlikely that the two measures were obtained on the same people. If this were the only study failing to find a relationship between verbal reports and behaviors, the attitude-behavior "problem" would never have arisen. However, there were numerous other more carefully conducted studies that also failed to find significant relationships. Corey (1937), for instance, measured his students' attitudes toward cheating and then attempted to predict cheating on the tests that he gave during the semester. He was able to determine whether or not the students cheated by grading their true-false tests before giving them back, but allowing the students to believe that they were going to grade the tests themselves (students beware!). The difference between the score the students assigned to themselves and their actual scores, as determined by Corey's initial grading, served as the index of cheating. Corey found that the correlation between the students' attitudes toward cheating and the extent to which they actually cheated on five tests was close to zero. Students with positive attitudes toward cheating were no more or less likely to cheat than students with negative attitudes toward cheating. Moreover, in this study, there was no problem in ensuring that the same people who completed the attitude measures also completed the behavioral ones.

subliminal messages

Can we be influenced by stimuli that are presented below our threshold of awareness (s l)? Visual stimuli quickly flashed before a person can process it or masked by other stimuli Audio stimuli sounded below audible volumes, masked by other sounds, recorded backwards, etc. Little empirical evidence for the effectiveness of s messages if defined by objective threshold Some evidence for priming effects (defined by subjective threshold) We can be influenced without being aware of it, but it is probably not actually s (below detection threshold)

study of persuasion began with

Carl Hovland, a Yale psychologist who took a leave of absence during World War II to become chief psychologist and director of experimental studies for the War Department. During the war, Hovland and his colleagues investigated the social-psychological variables responsible for military morale and, in the process, completed a number of studies that documented the importance of different factors in persuading people (Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949). Hovland continued this research on communication and persuasion when he returned to Yale after the war. This research program produced a number of highly influential volumes (e.g., Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953; Hovland et al., 1957). Hovland was a student of a prominent learning theorist, Clark Hull, and so it is not surprising that Hovland emphasized the role of learning processes in persuasion

behavioural beliefs and predicting behaviour

Generally speaking, we form beliefs about an object by associating it with certain attributes, i.e., with other objects, characteristics, or events. In the case of attitudes toward a behavior, each belief links the behavior to a certain outcome, or to some other attribute such as the cost incurred by performing the behavior. Eq. (l), the strength of each salient belief (b) is combined in a multiplicative fashion with the subjective evaluation (e) of the beliefs attribute, and the resulting products are summed over the n salient beliefs. A person's attitude (A) is directly proportional (a) to this summative belief index studies support the hypothesis of salient beliefs linking with attitudes but correlations are low Various factors may be responsible for relatively low correlations between salient beliefs and attitudes. First, of course, there is the possibility that the expectancy-value model is an inadequate description of the way attitudes are formed and structured. For example, some investigators (e.g., Valiquette, Valois, Desharnais, & Godin, 1988) have questioned the multiplicative combination of beliefs and evaluations in the expectancyvalue model of attitude. Most discussions of the model, however, have focused on methodological issues. see week 3 reading for specific methodological issues

Dissonance reduction

How can we reduce uncomfortable feelings of dissonance? 1. Change a cognitive element 2. Add a cognitive element (bolstering) 3. Reduce the importance of the elements (trivialization) example - We know that smoking isbad but we keep doing it 1) smoker learns that smoking causes cancer - smoker stops smoking however it is not easy as nicotene is addictive and hard to quit 2) seeking information that says smoking is not that bad 3) smoker can reason that the pleasure from smoking outweighs negative effects.

Evaluating a Theory

If the experiment passes all four of the validity tests, you can conclude that source expertise increases persuasion. You may not conclude, however, that your theory of why source expertise increases persuasion is correct. The experiment has provided evidence for an empirical statement of the nature "X produces Y." The process by which this occurs has not been demonstrated. If you refer to the initial conceptual diagram for the example on source expertise (fig. 1.2), you will note that the theory states that source expertise enhances persuasion by facilitating the learning of the message arguments. This suggests that, in addition to measuring attitude change, the investigator should also obtain some measure of the number of arguments that subjects in the experimental and control groups have learned. If experimental subjects show more attitude change than control subjects and also show more learning of the message arguments, support is obtained for the investigator's theory of why source expertise works. On the other hand, just because a researcher measures the hypothesized mediating or process variable (message learning in this case) and finds the expected result, this does not prove that the theory is correct. It might be that an expert source affects both learning and persuasion but that message learning is not whal produces the persuasion. For example, an alternative theory might say that the reason an expert source sometimes produces more attitude change is that people do less thinking about messages from highly credible sources. So, if the audience would normally be counterarguing (thinking up arguments against) the position advocated, an expert source would inhibit them from doing this, and more persuasion would result than if no source were specified. Furthermore, if an investigator wanted to provide support for this hypothesis, the number of counterarguments that experimental and control subjects think of could be measured. If experimental subjects generate fewer counterarguments than control subjects, evidence for this alternative theory is obtained. It is actually quite common for different theorists who are trying to explain the same effect to obtain data that appears to support two or more different theories. When this occurs, it is desirable to perform a crucial experiment (Stinchcombe, 1968)-one which attempts to set up a situation in which two plausible competing theories make different predictions about how the data should come out. For example, a crucial experiment to allow a choice between the message learning and thought inhibition explanations for the effects of source expertise might go as follows. Instead of using a message for which subjects would normally be generating many negative thoughts, a message would be used for which subjects would normally be generating many positive thoughts. According to the message-learning theory, switching the messages should make no difference. Learning should still be greater for the expert than for the anonymous source, and the expert should produce more persuasion than the anonymous source. On the other hand, according to the thought inhibition explanation, if subjects do less thinking when a message is presented by an expert, they should generate fewer thoughts than they normally do. If they normally would have generated many favorable thoughts to the message, and the expert source inhibits these favorable thoughts, the expert source might actually produce less persuasion than an anonymous source. Since the two theories make different predictions in this situation, the outcome of this simple experiment would allow a choice between them.

Conceptual and Operational Levels of Research

In a simple research effort, diagrammed in figure 1.2, the conceptual level represents what the theory of attitude change states should occur and why. The theory in figure 1.2 says that an expert source should increase attitude change by increasing the number of message arguments that a person will learn from the advocacy. The operational/eve/ represents how the researcher translates the conceptual (theoretical) variables into variables that can actually be manipulated and measured. Two types of experimental designs are most often used to study attitude change (Campbell & Stanley, 1963). The first design-the pretest-posttest control group design-is diagrammed below. Experimental Group Control Group R R In this design, subjects are randomly assigned (R) to one of the two groups, so that any given subject has an equal chance of being assigned to either the experimental or the control group. The pretest attitudes of the experimental group ( 0 1) and the control group ( 0 3) are measured using any of the attitude measurement techniques described earlier in this chapter. Some treatment or manipulation (called the independent variable X) is then presented to the experimental group only, followed by a posttest measurement of the attitudes of both the experimental (02) and control (04) groups. For example, to test the hypothesis that an expert source increases attitude change, two groups might hear a speech advocating that wage and price controls be instituted. For one group, the source of the speech would be a Nobel prize-winning economist (experimental group); for the other group, the source would remain unidentified (control group). Attitudes about wage and price controls (on semantic differential scales) would be taken both before and after the speech for both groups. If the experimental group shows more change in the direction of favoring wage and price controls as a result of hearing the speech ( 0 2 - 0 1) than does the control group ( 0 4 - 0 3), then the hypothesis is supported. An alternative experimental design for testing the same hypothesis is the posttest-only control group design. In this design (see diagram below), subjects are again randomly assigned to experimental and control groups, but only one measure of attitudes is taken-the posttest. Because of random assignment to conditions, subjects in the experimental and control groups can be assumed to have the same initial attitudes. Attitude change, then, can be defined as the difference between the posttest attitudes of the experimental group and control group. Since the subjects are randomly assigned to the two groups, and the two groups are treated identically except for the independent variable (X), nothing should contribute to the differences between the attitude measures ( 0 1 and 0 2) except the effects of the manipulation. The posttest-only design is sometimes preferred over the pretest-posttest design because (1) completing a pretest may commit subjects to an initial attitude, and when they are c~mfronted with the same attitude scales at the time of the posttest, they may simply report their pretest attitudes again; and (2) completing an initial attitude measure may sensitize subjects that attitude change is being studied, and,they may not show change to avoid the appearance of indecisiveness. 4 Of course, the two basic experimental designs that we have discussed are often extended to include more than one experimental and control group.

Direct procedure - The Semantic Differential

In an attempt to understand the dimensions of meaning of words, Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957) developed a convenient way to assess attitudes toward a wide variety of people, objects, and issues. These researchers discovered that three factors accounted for most of the meaning that we assign to different words: evaluation (how good· or bad, valuable or worthless something is), potency (how strong or weak, heavy or light something is), and activity (how fast or slow, excitable or calm something is). The first factor corresponds to what we consider an attitude. Osgood (1965; Osgood et al., 1957) suggested that attitudes could be measured by having subjects rate the attitude object on bipolar adjective pairs that represented the evaluative dimension of meaning. An example of how such a scale might look is presented in box 1.2. The person's attitude score would be the sum of the numbers corresponding to the positions checked on the four subscales. The semantic differential technique is comparable in reliability to the Thurstone and Likert procedures (Robinson & Shaver, 1969).

Affect versus Evaluation

In developing the theory of reasoned action, no clear distinction was drawn between affective and evaluative responses to a behavior. Some investigators, however, have suggested that it is useful to distinguish between hot and cold cognitions (Abelson, 1963) or between evaluative and affective judgments For example, with respect to spending time at the beach, beliefs of an evaluative nature included, as mentioned earlier, developing skin cancer and meeting people of the opposite sex, while among the beliefs of an affective nature were feeling the heat and sun on your body and watching and listening to the ocean. Consistent with the expectancy-value model of attitude, respondents rated the likelihood of each consequence as well as its subjective value, and the products of these ratings were summed over the set of salient beliefs of an evaluative nature and over the set of salient beliefs of an affective nature. In addition, the respondents were asked to rate each activity on a item semantic differential containing a variety of evaluative (e.g., harmful-beneficial) and affective (e.g., pleasant unpleasant) adjective pairs. A factor analysis of the semantic differentials revealed the two expected factors, one evaluative and the other affective in tone. Of greater interest, the summative index of evaluative beliefs correlated with the evaluative, but not with the affective, semantic differential; and the sum over the affective beliefs correlated with the affective, but not with the evaluative, semantic differential. two separate measures of attitude did not significantly improve prediction of leisure intentions. In Table 3 we saw that the within-subjects prediction of intentions from subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and the total semantic differential measure of attitudes resulted in a multiple correlation of 25. When the evaluative and affective subscales of the semantic differential were entered separately, each made a significant contribution, but the multiple correlation was virtually unchanged (R = .86).

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

In the 1970s and 80s... Attitude research was in decline Reasons for the decline: - Attitude-Behaviour consistency - Persuasion was often transitory (short lived) - Conflicting findings "ambiguities and unknowns still abound" (Eagly & Himmerfarb, 1978)

cognitive dissonance theory

Inconsistent cognitions arouse psychological tension that people become motivated to reduce. - We are motivated by a desire for cognitive consistency (Festinger, 1957)

Attitude behaviour consistancy

Is the assumption that attitudes influence behaviour a valid one? - LaPierre (1934): Flawed? - Allan Wicker (1969) Kraus (1995): "Attitudes significantly and substantially predict future behaviour"

beliefs in predicting human behaviour

It is these salient (important) beliefs that are considered to be the prevailing determinants of a person's intentions and actions. Three kinds of salient beliefs are distinguished: 1. behavioral beliefs which are assumed to influence attitudes toward the behavior, 2. normative beliefs which constitute the underlying determinants of subjective norms, and 3. control beliefs which provide the basis for perceptions of behavioral control.

La Pierre Study (1934)

LaPierre went on a US sightseeing trip with Chinese couple, at a time when racism and discrimination was very common to asian and minority groups. 251 establishments including restaurants and hotels accepted them, only 1 refused entry to his surprise After returning home, wrote to the establishments and asked if they would accept/ serve chinese members in their establishment 128 replied 92% said they would not accept chinese race in your establishment the rest said undecided and only 1% said they would. Concluded that behaviour and attitudes are inconsistant

Indirect attitude measures

Measures designed to assess attitudes without people knowing that their attitudes are being measured *Observable behavior* E.g., Hazlewood & Olson, 1986 "Lost letter technique" Most envalopes addressed to favourable persons were returned to sender eg- research places, white names "Walter Carnap" vs Friends of the Nazi Party or communist party. another trend shown opened letters were more prevelent in the unfavourable names. This shows that despite being unfavourable and not wanting to help them, they were still interested in what the letters had to say. Hazlewood & Olson also found body language, behavioural indicators can tell us who we have prejudice towards: Participants expecting to interact with rude person: Sat further away Smiled less Less expressive body language *Unobservable behaviour* Physiological measures Arousal - positive vs negative? Facial Electromyograph (EMG): records facial muscle activity associated with emotions and attitudes Implicit assosiation test (IAT): Measures the speed with which one responds to pairings of concepts Based on notion that we have implicit attitudes: Attitudes that one is not aware of having Has become very popular, eg of congruence and incongruence of pleasant and unpleasant, me and not me. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Attitudes history

Most studied, some say the fundamental aspect of social psych. Gordon Allport "An attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour" (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993) a positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object or idea readiness to act, behaviour. To change behaviour we first must change their attitude - Allport.

Cognitive elaboration will tend to increase as

Motivation increases with - Involvement - Personal responsibility - Need for cognition Ability increases with - Distraction - Intelligence - not enough knowledge

Normative Beliefs and Subjective Norms

N beliefs are concerned with the likelihood that important referent individuals or groups approve or disapprove of performing a given behavior. The strength of each n belief(n) is multiplied by the person's motivation to comply (m) with the referent in question, and the subjective norm (SN) is directly proportional to the sum of the resulting products across the n salient referents, as in Eq. (2) A global measure of SN is usually obtained by asking respondents to rate the extent to which "important others" would approve or disapprove of their performing a given behavior. Empirical investigations have shown that the best correspondence between such global measures of subjective norm and belief-based measures is usually obtained with bipolar scoring of normative beliefs and unipolar scoring of motivation to comply (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). As an illustration we turn again to the study on leisure behavior (Ajzen & Driver, in press, b). The salient referents for the five leisure activities elicited in the pilot study were friends, parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, brothers/sisters, and other family members. With respect to each referent, respondents rated, on a 7-point scale, the degree to which the referent would approve or disapprove of their engaging in a given leisure activity. These normative beliefs were multiplied by motivation to comply with the referent, a rating of how much the respondents cared whether the referent approved or disapproved of their leisure activities. It can be seen that, as in the case of attitudes, the correlations-although significant-were of only moderate magnitude. When motivation to comply was omitted, the sum of normative beliefs correlated with the global measure of subjective norm at a level close to the correlations obtained after optimal resealing of the normative belief and motivation to comply ratings

Aristotle identified three kinds of persuasion

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. . . . Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers when a speech stirs their emotions. . . . Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Direct procedure- The One-item Rating Scale

One way to assess attitudes that is popular in much attitude research but is not as reliable as the Thurstone, Likert, and semantic differential scales is the one-item rating scale. For this procedure, the investigator selects one question that he or she feels would most directly assess a particular attitude of interest. For many research and survey purposes, this very simple procedure is sufficient.

Attitudes can change through

Rationalization: constitutes a form of self-persuasion whereby people convince themselves that their decisions or actions are justified. Persuasion: attitude change that results from a communication initiated by someone else. Propaganda: ideologically motivated and often intentionally misleading. can influence joining a cult, political parties

Davidson and Jaccard (1979)

Researched birth control use attitudes and behaviours. Started with vauge questions then more specific First used standard self report meaures - what more market researchers use -- asked what their attitudes towards birth control was -- attitude behaviour correlation was low .08. Does not tell us anything about attitude and behaviour correlation. Next they narrowed the question to attitudes toward birth control pills -- behaviour correlation was .32 - higher that the last question, statistically sig but not great Adding another layer they asked about attitude towards USING birth control pills -- behaviour correlation of .53 Finally, added a time element of using birth control pills over the next 2 years -- correlation of .57. -- might have been better predictabilty with a tighter time frame A good correlation considering s is not the only determining factor of behaviour Results: showed that the more specific questions, the more corrospondance to attitude and behaviour

Do subliminal self-help tapes work?

S-h tapes with s messages designed to improve either self-esteem or memory Labels randomly assigned No objective improvements, but participants reported subjective improvements in whatever the label said!

Attitude strength

Specificity not the only thing to determine behviour but this as well. strong attitudes are consequential Defining features: 1. Persistence (stability) -- remains the same over time 2. Resistance -- even when attitude is attacked or attempted to be changed with persuasion or arguments 3. Impact on information processing & judgment -- make it more likely that certain information comes to mind 4. Impact on behaviour -- more clearly guide behaviour weak attitudes lack these characteristics making them less durable and can be changed or swayed to another attitude.

Personal or Moral Norms

Such moral obligations would be expected to influence intentions, in parallel with attitudes, subjective (social) norms and perceptions of behavioral control. In a recent study of college students (Beck & Ajzen, in press), we investigated this issue in the context of three unethical behaviors: cheating on a test or exam, shoplifting, and lying to get out of taking a test or turning in an assignment on time. It seemed reasonable to suggest that moral issues may take on added salience with respect to behaviors of this kind and that a measure of perceived moral obligation could add predictive power to the model. Results concerning the theory's ability to predict intentions, averaged across the three behaviors, were presented earlier in Table 2. Table 5 displays the results of hierarchical regression analyses in which the constructs of the theory of planned behavior were entered on the first step, followed on the second step by perceived moral obligation. It can be seen that although the multiple correlations in the first step were very high, addition of perceived moral obligation further increased the explained variance by 3 to 6%, making a significant contribution in the prediction of each intention.

The ELM two routes to persuasion

The ELM is a theory about the processes underlying changes in judgments of objects, the variables that induce these processes, and the strength of the judgments resulting from these processes. Elaboration: The process by which people carefully scrutinize and think about the central merits of attitude relevant information in order to arrive at an attitude. It's not the message itself but how we interpret and think about it ourselves elaboration continuum: At the high end of the continuum (Central Route), p occurs as a result of extensive cognitive elaboration of attitude-relevant information. At the low end of the continuum (Peripheral Route), p occurs due to peripheral cues (attractivness, music, reputation, no. of arguments rather than quality of arguments). Less cognitive effort depends on how able and motivated we are which end of the continuum we will be. ability + motivation -- central route and strong attitude Not -- periphreal route and weak attitude

effort justification (dissonance)

The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Article by Elliot Aronson; Judson Mills Aronson & Mills (1959) studied the psych of sex - risque and exciting at the time - Sex was chosen as the topic for the groups to discuss in order to provide interesting subject matter so that volunteers for the discussion groups could be obtained without much difficulty. Group initiation: Severely unpleasent Mildly unpleasent Control each participant rated enjoyment, how smart they thought other participants were etc. little or no effort for initiation - didn't enjoy as much more effortful initiation - enjoyed same discussion more justified that this ost positiv manner possible process makes participants take all the ambigous points of the discussion to interpret in the m displeasant activity for positive outcome -- dis should be greater when displeasent - can be reduced by making the outcome seem greater where people's tendency to attribute a greater value to an outcome they had to put effort into acquiring or achieving. Examples are hazing rituals are done in order to increase loyalty among group members

Control Beliefs and Perceived Behavioral Control

The more resources and opportunities individuals believe they possess, and the fewer obstacles or impediments they anticipate, the greater should be their perceived control over the behavior.

ACCOUNTING FOR ACTIONS IN SPECIFIC CONTEXTS:

The principle of aggregation, however, does not explain behavioral variability across situations, nor does it permit prediction of a specific behavior in a given situation. It was meant to demonstrate that general attitudes and personality traits are implicated in human behavior, but that their influence can be discerned only by looking at broad, aggregated, valid samples of behavior.

How Are Attitudes Measured?

The procedures for measuring attitudes can generally be divided into two major categories-direct and indirect. With direct procedures, a person is asked to provide a self-report of his or her attitude. With indirect procedures, an attempt is made to measure a person's attitude without the person knowing it. In some cases, the person may think that something other than an attitude is being measured, and in other cases the measurement may be completely unobtrusive.

sufficency of planned behaviour

The theory of planned behavior distinguishes between beliefs-behavioral, normative, and control-and between the related constructs of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. The necessity of these distinctions, especially the distinction between behavioral and normative beliefs (and between attitudes and subjective norms) has sometimes been questioned (e.g., Miniard &z Cohen, 1981). It can reasonably be argued that all beliefs associate the behavior of interest with an attribute of some kind, be it an outcome, a normative expectation, or a resource needed to perform the behavior. It should thus be possible to integrate all beliefs about a given behavior under a single summation to obtain a measure of the overall behavioral disposition. The primary objection to such an approach is that it blurs distinctions that are of interest, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. Theoretically, personal evaluation of a behavior (attitude), socially expected mode of conduct (subjective norm), and self-efficacy with respect to the behavior (perceived behavioral control) are very different concepts each of which has an important place in social and behavioral research. Moreover, the large number of studies on the theory of reasoned action and on the theory of planned behavior have clearly established the utility of the distinctions by showing that the different constructs stand in predictable relations to intentions and behavior.

What Kinds of Attitudes Predict Behaviors?

These and other studies that seem to show an inability of attitudes to predict behaviors led one relatively recent reviewer to conclude that "taken as a whole, these studies suggest that) it is considerably more likely that attitudes will be unrelated or only slightly related to overt behaviors than that attitudes will be closely related to actions" (Wicker, 1969, p. 65), and that "it may be desirable to abandon the attitude concept" (Wicker, 1971, p. 29). Wicker was not alone in his disillusionment with the attitude concept, and by the mid-1970s the study of attitudes by social psychologists declined dramatically (Lambert, 1980). The fact that you are now reading a current book on attitudes and persuasion suggests that this pessimism did not last very long. In the past decade, enough careful research has been conducted by a number of scholars, most notably Fishbein and Ajzen (1974, 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977, 1980), to conclude confidently that attitudes are related to behaviors. Furthermore, the recent research outlines the conditions under which the relationship is likely to be strong rather than weak.

Attitudes vs beliefs

They are not the same thing! But they can affect each other, related Beliefs - convictions that things held in the mind are true in the world vs global evaluation - attitude Eg- Belief: 5G use is harmful to humans Attitude: I am against our country using 5G networks Eg- Jacinda is the prime minister = belief. I don't like the PM = attitude.

Direct Procedures - Thurstone Scale

Thurstone had been working on scaling human perceptions of such sensory stimuli as light and sound, and he reasoned that similar techniques might be employed to develop scales for more emotionally involving stimuli. Just as people can rank-order noises in terms of their loudness, Thurstone realized that people could also rank opinion statements in terms of their favorableness toward some object or issue. If a scale of opinion statements relative to an issue could be constructed, then an indication of people's attitudes could be obtained by finding out what statements they personally favored. Construction of a Thurstone scale begins with obtaining a list of about one hundred opinion statements relevant to some issue. These may be self-generated by the investigator or taken from newspapers, books, and magazines. The statements should represent the full range of favorableness toward the issue about which attitudes are being measured. Any statements that are confusing or open to multiple interpretations should be eliminated. The investigator then asks about one hundred people to serve as judges to rank-order the statements in terms of how favorable they are to the issue. Specifically, the judges are asked to sort the statements into eleven categories, where category one indicates that the statement is as opposed to the issue as it could possibly be and eleven indicates that the statement is as favorable toward the issue as it could possibly be. The judges would try to categorize the statements on an equal interval basis so that the difference in favorableness between any two positions on the scale would be equal. After the judges rate each statement, the investigator assigns a "scale value" to each statement corresponding to the median (middle) category to which the judges have assigned it. Thus each statement is assigned a scale value such that it is rated higher than this value by half the judges and lower than this value by the other half. In the final step in scale construction, the investigator selects from the one hundred statements about twenty that have a high degree of agreement among the judges on their appropriate category and that represent every position on the underlying one to eleven scale. An abbreviated Thurstone scale appears in box 1.2. When using the scale, the statements would appear in a random order without the accompanying scale values. To measure an attitude, the investigator asks each person to check all items with which he or she personally agrees. The attitude score is the median of the scale values of the statements that the person endorses.

Attitudes That Are Based on Direct Experience

Two people may have identical attitudes toward some person, object, or issue, but these attitudes may have been formed in different ways. In fact, the remaining chapters in this book discuss the many different ways in which an attitude may be formed. Fazio and Zanna ( 1981 ), focusing on attitudes formed as a result of direct experience with the attitude object, have proposed that these attitudes should predict behaviors better than attitudes that are not based on direct experience. In a test of this hypothesis, Regan and Fazio (1977) tried to predict the proportion of time that people would spend playing with different types of puzzles from their attitudes toward the puzzles. In this experiment, they gave subjects in the direct-experience condition an opportunity to play with some sample puzzles before their attitudes were measured. For subjects in the indirectexperience condition, the experimenters only described the various types of puzzles to them before their attitudes were measured. Subjects in both conditions expressed the same attitudes about the puzzles on the attitude scales, but the method by which their attitudes were formed was different. Later, all subjects were given an opportunity to play with the different puzzles, and the experimenters recorded the order in which the different types of puzzles were attempted and the proportion of available puzzles of each type with which the subjects played. The average correlation between the attitude and the behavior measures for direct experience subjects was .53, whereas for indirect experience subjects, the correlation was only .21. see chap for another study

Direct versus Indirect Assessment of Attitudes

We have reviewed a potpourri of procedures developed by psychologists to assess the degree to which people feel positively or negatively about other people, objects, and issues. Without question, the great majority of attitude change studies reviewed in the remaining chapters of this book (and the vast majority of persuasion studies conducted) rely almost exclusively on direct self-report measures of attitude. There is a good reason for this. When reliability and validity checks are made on the various direct and indirect procedures, the indirect procedures are often found to be inferior to the direct attitude scales (Lemon, 1973). Researchers therefore prefer the direct techniques. Another advantage of the direct techniques is their greater precision or sensitivity-that is, they are better than the indirect techniques at pinpointing relatively small differences in attitudes that may exist between subjects. In contrast, the indirect techniques have been most useful in detecting relatively large differences in affect between people. The primary disadvantages of the direct techniques-that people may be unwilling to give their attitudes or may be deliberately misleading about their attitudes-have not really proven problematic in research. This is probably because most attitude research does not deal with highly sensitive issues, and in many studies the subjects' attitudinal responses are kept anonymous. If the issues are relatively uninvolying and anonymity is assured, there is little reason to misrepresent one's attitude. Nevertheless, social psychologists have developed a wide variety of indirect assessment procedures that are highly useful in those few (but important) situations in which it is reasonable to question the validity of a direct attitude measure.

How Is Attitude Change Studied Experimentally?

We now know that attitudes can serve important functions for people, that they can be measured with high reliability and validity, and that they can be useful in predicting behaviors. We are now ready to focus on persuasion, or the process of changing attitudes. First of all, it is important to note that virtually all of the research on persuasion conducted by social psychologists is guided by some theory. A theory of attitude change specifies the variables that are important in producing persuasion, and it further specifies the processes by which these variables induce attitude change. Despite many differences in variables and processes that persuasion theorists claim are responsible for inducing attitude changes, investigators from all theoretical approaches have relied on the experimental method for testing their theories. So before we begin our descriptions of the major theoretical approaches to persuasion, it is necessary to discuss the attitude change experiment.

Voting attitude and behavior

Why is there a strong relationship between attitudes and behaviour in this instance? V itself is a behaviour, time is known, minimized situational pressure, target is specified, those who intend on voting have stronger attittudes than those who do not.

Indirect Procedures- Disguised Self-reports

With a disguised self-report, people provide verbal reports about themselves, but they are unaware that the purpose of the self-report is to measure their attitudes. For example, if you want to measure a person's attitudes toward the church, you might show the person a picture of a minister standing at the pulpit and ask the person to make up a story about the picture. The idea of this projective technique (Proshansky, 1943) is that people will project their own personal feelings into their stories. To the extent that a group of judges can agree on-the themes expressed in a person's story (pro- or antichurch), an inference about the person's attitude can be made. A technique called the information error test (Hammond, 1948), involves giving people what appears to be an objective multiple-choice test. The test is unique, however, in that none of the answer~ are correct! To measure attitudes toward the church using this technique, the subject is presented with a series of questions like this: What has happened to church attendance in the United States in the past ten years? a. It has decreased 15%. b. It has decreased 10%. c. It has stayed the same. d. It has increased 5%. If church attendance has actually declined by five percent, two of the responses overestimate the decline and two of the responses underestimate the decline. The person is thus forced to select a position that is relatively favorable or relatively unfavorable to the church. This technique assumes that, over a series of items, the person's own attitude toward the church will consistently influence the direction of the bias (either pro- or antichurch). Hendrick and Seyfried (1974) introduced a clever technique for obtaining a disguised measure of peoples' attitudes based on the well-documented finding that people generally like those who have attitudes similar to theirs and generally dislike people whose attitudes are dissimilar (Byrne, 1969). To determine, then, if subjects are generally favorable or unfavorable toward the church, the investigator could show them some attitude scales that were presumably filled out by various other people. The subjects would be asked to indicate whether or not they would like the people whose attitudinal responses they saw. Presumably, if the subjects said that they would like another person who expressed antichurch attitudes and dislike one who expressed prochurch attitudes, the inference could be drawn that the subjects themselves had unfavorable attitudes toward the church.

Can we like and dislike at the same time?

Yes Positive, negative, indifference, amivalance can be low or high on any level. Eg of ambivalance - Like chocolate but want to be healthy, both positive and negative feelings another eg- racism, systemic inequality, privilage - may find it unfair that in jobs those that have privilage are not considered equally or mixed feelings about abortion, on one hand you want choice but on the other hand you value life.

facial electromyography (facial EMG)

a procedure for measuring muscle contractions in the face that may be sensitive to positive versus negative responses to a stimulus agree = cheek musscle activation involuntary not seen disagree= forehead musscle activation problem: expensive equipment makes it difficult to use

aggregate definition

a whole formed by combining several separate elements.

biasing factors are minimized by the use of one or more of the following procedures

a. giving subjects a cover story-a false rationale that presumably explains to subjects why they are participating in the study; b. removing the attitude measure from the experimental setting; c. testing nonobvious hypotheses that are unlikely to be guessed by subjects; d. minimizing the status difference between the experimenter and the subjects; e. automating experimental procedures and keeping the experimenters blind to the experimental condition that subjects are in. (See Carlsmith, Ellsworth, & Aronson, 1976; Crano & Brewer, 1973; Petty & Brock, 1981; and Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1969, for more details on the experimental method.)

Allan Wicker

also found inconsistancies in attitude and behavior correlation large scale study

Persuasion

an active attempt by a person, usually through some form of communication, to change another person's mind this is a type of social influence P communication: Advertisements Interpersonal influence Institutions

Fear appeals

can work but they must attend to four important problems: They must not induce too much f They must increase the target's perceived vulnerability They must suggest a clear path to prevention (response efficacy) They must suggest easy enactment of the prevention behavior (self-efficacy)

Problems with physiological measures

cannot differentiate between emotional arousal such as love and hate facial Electromyograph (EMG) is a response to this issue

multimethod investigations

combining different approaches such as lab, observational, field research combo 1970s to 1990s

attitudes real life examples: cults

cult in canada - suspected responsible for 5 deaths - Luc Jouret leader - religious/spiritual leader. 53 people died by fire ritual. Convinced ritualized suicide where they would be reborn, followers including Jouret died. Continued to 74 deaths Jim Joans - convinced over 900 people to knowingly commit mass suicide drinking kool-aid with cyanide. David Kuresh often there is nothing unusual about them in fact, they were successful people so why would they follow a cult. People can be swayed by their hopes and desires, once people change attitude, self justification occurs.

integration of hot and cold perspectives

different psych perspectives hot = emotion, motivation, social interation cold = memory, cognition, information processing social cognition emerged 1970s to 1990s

social psychology history

emerged late 1800s 1897: Norman Triplett: published paper on the effect of the precense of others on indiv performance - finding people performed better in cycling 1913: Max Ringelmann: Published same thing but found opposite effect in tasks like tug of war First book on social psych - William Mcdougall then Edward Ross Later on 1924 - Floyd Allport - published a review on social psych, looked at effect of individual and social environment and had a scientific approach which was new and started soc psych as a science. Adolf Hitler: biggest influence in soc psych- 1930s to 1950s. Studied causes of violence etc American dominated psych Allport: Attitudes in human behaviour - predict and change - most important in soc psych Muzafer Sherif: robbers cave study, informational social influence, demonstated that we can examine social behaviour scientifically Kurt Lewin: interactionist perspective -- we should put research into action 60s and 70s - experiments such as zimbardo, milgram etc helped understand stress, obediance, agression, helping etc ethical problems with these experiments, limited topics you can study in a lab

Steps in Persuasion Process

exposure - need to see or hear - subliminal message goes against this somewhat attention comprehension - cannot be too complex yielding retention (memory) - main one - contravertial - some disagree

Steven Kraus (1995)

found that attitudes significantly predict future behaviour analysed all previous research identified conditions and factors that should be taken into account when looking at how attitudes predict behaviours

conditions of behaviour prediction

intentions and perceptions of control must be assessed in relation to the particular behavior of interest, and the specified context must be the same as that in which the behavior is to occur. For example, if the behavior to be predicted is "donating money to the Red Cross," then we must assess intentions "to donate money to the Red Cross" (not intentions "to donate money" in general nor intentions "to help the Red Cross"), as well as perceived control over "donating money to the Red Cross." The second condition for accurate behavioral prediction is that intentions and perceived behavioral control must remain stable in the interval between their assessment and observation of the behavior. The third requirement for predictive validity has to do with the accuracy of perceived behavioral control. The relative importance of intentions and perceived behavioral control in the prediction of behavior is expected to vary across situations and across different behaviors. When the behavior/situation affords a person complete control over behavioral performance, intentions alone should be sufficient to predict behavior, as specified in the theory of reasoned action. The addition of perceived behavioral control should become increasingly useful as volitional control over the behavior declines. Both, intentions and perceptions of behavioral control, can make significant contributions to the prediction of behavior, but in any given application, one may be more important than the other and, in fact, only one of the two predictors may be needed.

automaticity in humans vs animals

learned vs inborn more flexible than the lock-step patterns of the lower animals responsive to a larger number of triggers example by Langer et al showed that when we request something we are more likely to get what we want by specifying a reason, even if there is no real reason. Eg- saying - can I use the printer, I have 5 pages to copy only 60% said yes compared to over 90% saying yes when asking - can I use the printer because i'm in a rush, I need to make 5 copies and - can I please use the printer because I need to make 5 copies. -- the trigger word being "because". another example of jewelry sold for double price sold compared to not selling at normal price as the automatic assumption is made that expensive = good. automatic, stereotyped behavior is prevalent in much human action, because in many cases, it is the most efficient form of behaving (Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996), and in other cases it is simply necessary (Bodenhausen, Macrae, & Sherman, 1999; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Sometimes the behavior that unrolls will not be appropriate for the situation, because not even the best stereotypes and trigger features work every time. We will accept their imperfections since there is really no other choice.

Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)

links behavioral intentions with attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control; assumes we rationally weigh costs and benefits of our actions Many other things apart from attitudes influence behaviour and should be taken into account 1. intentions -- most influential 2. attitudes 3. subjective social norms -- how much individuals percieve significant others think that they should engage in a specific behavior go to intention then behaviour (TRA; Ajzen & Fishbein 1977)

evolutionary psychology

mating, attraction, sex difference gender politics - contraversial according to them 2000s and beyond

Judgmental Heuristics

mental shortcuts people use to make judgments quickly and efficiently can be wrong, examples in chap of error made by a crew member not correcting captains mistake bc of trusting authority automatically

Perceived behavioral control

plays an important part in the theory of planned behaviour refers to people's perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior of interest. Whereas locus of control is a generalized expectancy that remains stable across situations and forms of action, perceived behavioral control can, and usually does, vary across situations and actions. Another approach to p control can be found in Atkinson's (1964) theory of achievement motivation. An important factor in this theory is the expectancy of success, defined as the perceived probability of succeeding at a given task The present view of p behavioral control, however, is most compatible with Bandura's (1977, 1982) concept of perceived self-efficacy which "is concerned with judgments of how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations" behaviour is strongly linked to p behavioural control Self-efficacy beliefs can influence choice of activities, preparation for an activity, effort expended during performance, as well as thought patterns and emotional reactions. The theory of planned behavior places the construct of self-efficacy belief or perceived behavioral control within a more general framework of the relations among beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behavior.

persuasion by communication

prompted by WW2 Yale Attitude Change Program (Carl Hovland): Examines the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to a p appeal and focuses on who said what to whom. Looked at all variables that could affect this process In order for a p message to have influence, the recipiant must learn the message and accept it. This is called the *message learning approach*

contolled responding

reacting on the basis of analysis of all the information. People are more likely to do this when they have the desie and ability For instance, in one study (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981), students at the University of Missouri listened to a recorded speech that supported the idea of requiring all seniors to pass comprehensive examinations before they would be allowed to graduate. The issue affected some of them personally, because they were told that the exams could go into effect in the next year— before they had the chance to graduate. Of course, this news made them want to analyze the arguments carefully. However, for other subjects in the study, the issue had little personal importance— because they were told that the exams would not begin until long after they had graduated; consequently, they had no strong need to carefully consider the argument's validity. The study's results were quite straightforward: Those subjects with no personal stake in the topic were primarily persuaded by the speaker's expertise in the field of education; they used the "If an expert said so, it must be true" rule, paying little attention to the strength of the speaker's arguments. Those subjects for whom the issue mattered personally, on the other hand, ignored the speaker's expertise and were persuaded primarily by the quality of the speaker's arguments.

multicultural approaches

shift from only eurocentric studies data from WEIRD (Western, educated, and from industrialized, rich, and democratic participants) -- limits application history of psych 1980s to 1990s

social neuroscience

social psych and neuroscience combined psych processes having effect on brain activity seen on scans social cultual neuropsych - new subfields emerging

Indirect Procedures - Physiological Indicators of Attitudes

techniques that we have discussed so far all rely on various inferences about how attitudinal biases might influence certain things-the stories people tell about pictures, the answers people select to multiple-choice tests, or the behaviors they perform that appear relevant to the attitude object or issue. If the assumptions about how certain behaviors relate to the underlying attitude are incorrect, or if the behavior observed is not representative of the behaviors that the person typically engages in, the measure of attitude will contain error. The ideal attitude measure would be one that avoids the major problems of the direct self-report techniques (e.g., that people are sometimes unwilling or unable to report their attitudes correctly) and the problems of the indirect techniques already discussed (e.g., that the assumptions on which the measures are based may be faulty or that unrepresentative behaviors may be observed). Some researchers have sought such a "perfect" measure in the human body's natural physiological responses to attitudinal stimuli (see review by Cacioppo & Sandman, 1981). In this section we discuss three physiological measures that have been employed to assess attitudes. One of the first measures used was the galvanic skin reflex (GSR). The GSR measures the electrical resistance of the skin, or how well the skin conducts an electric current that is passed between two electrodes that are usually placed on the surface of the hand. When the hand is sweaty, it conducts electricity better than when it is dry, and the GSR measures this change in the activity of the sweat gland. Because people perspire more when emotionally aroused, it was thought that the GSR could be used to assess a person's emotional response to a stimulus. Early investigators reported that the GSR predicted such things as the intensity of racial prejudice (Westie & DeFleur, 1959) and the effectiveness of an advertisement for pancake flour (Ekstrand & Gilliland, 1948). In a representative early study, Dysinger {1931; reported in McCurdy, 1950) monitored the GSR of subjects as they were presented with words that varied in their pleasantness. For example, if the following words were rated on a scale of -3 (very unpleasant) to + 3 (very pleasant), love would be a very pleasant word, rape would be a very unpleasant word, and chair would fall somewhere in between. Dysinger found that the closer the word was rated to either extreme, the greater the GSR that the word elicited. The GSR did not, however, predict whether the subjects' responses to the words were positive or negative. Because the GSR correlates with the intensity of an emotion but not the direction, its use for assessing attitudes is rather limited. A more important drawback of the GSR measure, however, is that it also correlates with other features of stimuli. The more strange, the more novel, and the more unexpected a stimulus is, the greater the GSR that is elicited (Sokolov, 1963). Thus, until a study is conducted in which all of these features of the stimuli are controlled, it is not even clear that the GSR can provide a unique measure of the intensity of attitudes. Hess (1965) reported that the pupillary response might be used to assess the direction of an attitude toward a stimulus. The pupil of the eye is capable of both expanding, as when the lighting becomes dim, and constricting, as when the lighting becomes bright. Hess suggested that pupillary expansion would accompany the repeated presentations of stimuli that the person liked; whereas pupillary constriction would accompany the repeated presentations of stimuli that the person disliked. To test the validity of the pupillary response measure, Atwood and Howell ( 1971) monitored the pupillary responses of ten pedophiliac prisoners (convicted of child molestation) and ten control prisoners (convicted of nonsexual crimes) while they viewed nude or partially nude pictures of adult females and young girls. Table 1.1 presents the average change in the prisoners' pupils when viewing the experimental pictures as opposed to blurred slides. Note that all but one of the pedophiliacs' pupils dilated more when viewing the pictures of the children than the pictures of adult females; and all but one of the control prisoners' pupils dilated more to the pictures of the adults than to the pictures of the children. Although other demonstrations (e.g., Barlow, 1969) suggest that the pupillary response measures subjects' attitudes, there are far more studies that fail to find support for the pupils' response as an indicator of attitudes (see review by Woodmansee, 1970). There appear to be several problems with the pupillary measure. First, it is clear that the pupils respond to various features of a stimulus. Besides the obvious feature of the amount of light in a picture, the pupillary response also correlates with the interest or attention value of a stimulus and the amount of cognitive effort devoted to thinking about a stimulus (Kahneman, 1973; Libby, Lacey, & Lacey, 1973). Second, some studies have shown that the pupils dilate to both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli rather than distinguishing these two states, and there is presently no evidence that the pupils are successful in predicting attitudes for nonvisual stimuli (Goldwater, 1972). The initial promise, then, of the pupillary measure has yet to be documented. In a series of studies, Schwartz and his colleagues (e.g., Schwartz, Fair, Salt, Mandel, & Klerman, 1976) demonstrated the usefulness of the facial EMG procedure for assessing positive and negative affective states. Specifically, they have shown that people who are asked to imagine positive events or "think happy thoughts" generally show more electrical activity in the depressor and zygomatic muscles, but less electrical activity in the corrugator and frontalis muscles, than subjects who are asked to "think sad thoughts." Cacioppo and Petty (1979a) reasoned that measures of facial EMG might distinguish positive from negative reactions to a persuasive communication. To test this hypothesis, they asked college students to listen to either an involving proattitudinal message (e.g., advocating more lenient visitation hours in dormitory rooms) or an involving counterattitudinal message (e.g., advocating more strict visitation hours in dormitory rooms) while their facial muscle activity was monitored. Subjects hearing a proattitudinal message displayed the facial muscle pattern of happiness, whereas those hearing a counterattitudinal message displayed the facial muscle pattern of sadness. These subtle facial muscle patterns, as in the Schwartz research, were not detectable by observers-the patterns were only distinguishable in the highly sensitive electromyographic recordings. It appears that the facial EMG measure may be sensitive to gross differences in the direction of one's feelings, but it is not yet clear whether the measure will be useful in determining the intensity of feelings as well.

self justification

the need to rationalize one's attitude and behavior

What Is an Attitude?

used to refer to a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue (Bern, 1970; Insko & Schopler, 1972; Oskamp, 1977). "I like Chevrolets," "I hate Chuck," and "Capital punishment is horrible!" would all be considered attitudes because they express a general positive or negative feeling toward something. "Chevrolets are economical," "Chuck is prejudiced," and "Capital punishment is legal in my home state," are all examples of beliefs. The term belief is reserved for the information that a person has about other people, objects, and issues. The information may be factual or it may be only one person's opinion. Furthermore, the information may have positive, negative, or no evaluative implications for the target of the information. The following represent the behavioral or overt action category: purchasing a Chevrolet, throwing a pie in Chuck's face, and campaigning against capital punishment. Behaviors may also have positive, negative, or no evaluative implications for the target of the behavior. Gordon Allport called attitude "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology" in his chapter in the original Handbook of Social Psychology (1935); and since then, the study of attitude change has been the primary focus of persuasion researchers. "Attitude" became the preeminent concept because of the important psychological functions that attitudes were thought to serve and because of the presumed ability of attitudes to direct (and thus allow prediction of) behaviors. Beliefs were thought to be related to behaviors only because they contributed to the formation of attitudes. Thus, an advertiser might want to convince you that a certain kind of car got good gas mileage (belief change), so that your liking for the car would increase (attitude change) and that you would become more likely to buy the car the next time you needed one (behavior change). Our discussion of the various approaches to persuasion in this text focuses on attitude change; but because of the interrelationships among beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors hypothesized by some theorists, our discussion also necessarily deals with belief change and behavior change when appropriate. Furthermore, the principles that are involved in persuading someone to change an attitude are the same as those that are involved in persuading someone to change a belief or a behavior.

Measuring attitudes

vauge, hypothetical, multi faceted, subjesct to social pressures - may be difficult to measure 500 ways found, will focus on main ones self report vs indirect

Problems with implicit assosiation test

was originally used to measure thing that people don't usually openly admit to such as racism, sexism etc. Black and white faces paired with the words good and bad Studies showed that even the more non racist countries showed a delay in the white = bad incongruence trials. Critique - not necessarily tapping into individial racism but rather the wider socital views that we have absorbed, does not mean you endorse individually. Is this better or worse? Answer not known, shows complexity of attitudes in general.

Belief disconfirmation (dissonance)

what happens if beliefs are disproved? - Festinger et al. (1956) group that believed aliens would come and get them on a specific day from an alien messanger The believers became more faithful Cannot change actions, cannot disavow belief, so reinterpret to align with what occured - The world was saved because of the faith the believers had maintained "I have to belief, i've spent all my money, quit computer school etc" -- motivation for believing we can either reject or believe even more