7-Attitude Chapter and Attitude Change
Thursday, March 24, 2011
10:53 PM
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Attitudes: evaluations of people, objects, and ideas
Where do attitudes come from?
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Some are linked to our genes
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Three components of attitudes:
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Cognitive component: the thoughts and beliefs that people form about
the attitude object
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Affective component: people's emotional reactions toward the attitude
object
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Behavioral component: how people act toward the attitude object
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Cognitively based attitudes: an attitude based primarily on people's beliefs about
the properties of an attitude object
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Affectively based attitudes: an attitude based more on people's feelings and
values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object
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Stem from people's values or can result from sensory or aesthetic
reactions or conditioning
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Classical conditioning: phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an
emotional response (gma) is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not
(smell of mothballs) until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of
the first stimulus
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Operant conditioning: phenomenon whereby behaviors we freely choose
to perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed
by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment
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Affectively based attitudes:
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Do not result from a rational examination of the issues
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Are not governed by logic
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Are often linked to people's values, so that trying to change them
challenges those values
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Behaviorally based attitude: an attitude based on observations of how one
behaves toward an attitude object
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Only under certain conditions:
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Initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous
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People infer their attitudes from their behavior only when there
are no other plausible explanations for their behavior
Explicit versus implicit attitudes
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Explicit attitudes: attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily support
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Rooted more in their recent experiences
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Implicit attitudes: attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times
unconscious
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IAT (implicit association test): people categorize words or pictures on a
computer
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Rooted more in people's childhood experiences
Changing attitudes by changing behavior: cognitive dissonance theory revisited
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One way attitudes change is when people behave inconsistently with their
attitudes and cannot find external justification for their behavior
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Dissonance techniques are very difficult to carry out on a mass scale
Persuasive communication: communication (speech or television ad) advocating
a particular side of an issue
Persuasive communications and attitude change
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Yale attitude change approach: the study of the conditions under which people
are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on
"who said what to whom"-the source of the communication, the nature of the
communication, and the nature of the audience
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Problem: many aspects of persuasive communication turned out to be
important, but it was not clear which were more important than others (unclear
when one factor should be emphasized over another)
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Elaboration likelihood model: a model explaining two ways in which persuasive
communications can cause attitude change; centrally, when people are moticated and have
the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication, and peripherally, when
people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface
characteristics
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Central route to persuasion: case whereby people elaborate on a
persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments,
as occurs when people have both the ability and the motivation to listen carefully
to a communication
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More likely to maintain this attitude over time, more likely to
behave consistently with this attitude, and more resistant to counter
persuasion than people who base their attitudes on peripheral cues
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Peripheral route to persuasion: care whereby do people not elaborate on
the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by peripheral
cues
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What determines which route?: whether people have both the motivation
and the ability to pay attention to the facts
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Personal relevance of the topic-> more, more people are willing
to pay attention to the arguments in a speech
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Personality: some people enjoy thinking thing through more than
others
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Need for cognition: a personality variable reflecting the
extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive
activities
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When people are unable to pay close attention to the arguments, they are
swayed more by peripheral cues
Emotion and attitude change
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Fear-arousing communication: persuasive messages that attempt to change
people's attitudes by arousing their fears
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Does it work?: depends on whether the fear influences people's ability to
pay attention to and process the arguments in a message
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Will fail if they are so strong that they overwhelm people
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Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion: an explanation of the two ways in
which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically
processing the merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts (heuristics), such as
"experts are always right"
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"how do I feel about it" heuristic: feel good-> positive attitude, feel bad>negative attitude
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Can make mistakes about what is causing our mood
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Fight fire with fire: if an attitude is cognitively based, try to change it with
rational arguments; if it is affectively based, try to change it with emotional appeals
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People react most favorably to the ads that matched the type of attitude
they had
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Western cultures tend to stress independence and individualism while many
Asian cultures stress interdependence and collectivism
Confidence in one's thoughts and attitude change
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Want to make sure that people have a lot of confidence in the thoughts that your
message triggers
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Anything you can do to increase people's confidence in their thoughts about your
message will make it more effective, as long as your arguments are strong and convincing
Attitude inoculation
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Attitude inoculation: making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes
by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position
Be alert to product placement
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Warning people about an upcoming attempt to change their attitudes makes them
less susceptible to that attempt
Resisting peer pressure
When persuasion attempts boomerang: reactance theory
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Reactance theory: the idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a
certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can
reduce by performing the threatened behavior
Predicting spontaneous behaviors
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Attitude accessibility: the strength of the association between an attitude object
and a person's evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can
report how they feel about the object
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What makes attitudes accessible?
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The degree of behavioral experience people have with the
attitude object
Predicting deliberate behaviors
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Theory of planned behavior: the idea that the best predictors of a person's
planned, deliberate behaviors are the person's attitudes toward specific behaviors,
subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control
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Specific attitude not general attitude
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Subjective norms: their beliefs about how people they care about will
view the behavior in question
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Perceived behavioral control: people's intentions are influenced by the
ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior
Subliminal advertising: a form of mind control?
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Subliminal messages: words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but
may nevertheless influence people's judgments, attitudes, and behaviors
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Do not work in everyday life, but there is evidence that people can be
influenced by subliminal messages under carefully controlled lab conditions