MODUAL 2: Attitudes

Chapter 6 Attitudes Summary (pp. 243–283)

• This chapter explores attitude measurement, formation, the link to behavior, routes to persuasion, cognitive dissonance, and attitude change processes.
• Attitudes significantly influence social behavior and are defined as positive, negative, or mixed evaluations of objects, expressed at varying intensity levels.

Measuring Attitudes

• Explicit attitudes are measured through self-report questionnaires, which can be influenced by wording, order, and context.
• Researchers use multiple-item questionnaires as attitude scales to improve accuracy and reduce single-question limitations.
• The bogus pipeline technique increases truthfulness by simulating a lie-detector, reducing socially desirable responses.

Covert Measures of Attitudes

• Covert methods indirectly measure attitudes through non-verbal behavior and physiological responses.
• Facial electromyography (EMG) detects subtle muscle changes, indicating positive or negative attitudes.
• Measuring electrical brain activity can reveal reactions to liked or disliked stimuli.
• The Implicit Association Test (IAT) assesses implicit attitudes by measuring the speed of associations between concepts.
• The IAT measures how readily people respond to black-bad/white-good versus black-good/white-bad pairings to determine implicit attitudes about African Americans.

Attitudes and Behavior

• Attitudes influence behavior, but the link is not always direct and can be affected by several factors.
• High attitude-behavior similarity increases the likelihood that attitudes will predict behavior.
• Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein's (1977) research shows close alignment between attitude measures and behavior strengthens correlation.
• The theory of planned behavior states specific attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control combine to influence intentions and subsequent behavior.
• David Boninger and colleagues (1995) identified that attitudes linked to self-interest, values, and close social groups are the strongest.
• Repeated attacks can increase confidence more in existing attitudes.

Persuasion through Communication

• Persuasion involves changing attitudes through communication, such as advertising or speeches.
• Richard Petty and John Cacioppo's (1986) dual-process model outlines two routes to persuasion: central and peripheral.
• The central route involves careful consideration of a message's content and arguments.
• The peripheral route involves reliance on superficial cues without critical thinking.
• A speaker's competence influences their impact.

Peripheral Route with Superficial Factors

• The peripheral route involves the audience using behavior such as nodding because we agree.
• We are influenced by bodily sensations of agreement in the peripheral route, like nodding while listening to an editorial.
• A source affects persuasion by credibility and likeability.
• High-credibility sources have competence and trustworthiness.
• Celebrity endorsements can backfire if a celebrity loses credibility or endorses too many products. -The sleeper effect describes a delayed change of attitudes over time.
• Hila Riemer and colleagues (2014) viewed Western views as emphasizing self-centered logic based attitudes, and Eastern views as having norms based attitudes.

Message Factors

• Message strength determines persuasive power in high-involvement scenarios, while low-involvement relies on source.
• Message length enhances persuasion on the peripheral route but dilutes impact if weak or repetitive.
• Presenting arguments first (primacy effect) or last (recency effect) depends on the time gap between messages and decision-making.
• Using humor has increased persuasion.
• Fear appeals serve an influence, particularly to convey certain behaviors.
• People are more receptive to persuasion when feeling positive and have increased sociability, therefore more open to influence.

Audience Factors

• An audience's willingness and ability to process information determines the route to persuasion.
• Petty and Cacioppo find individuals high in the need for cognition prefer information-oriented messages.
• Tailoring messages to match values increases persuasion.

Audience Resistance

• Forewarning of persuasive attempts increases resistance.
• Reactance is a motive to protect freedom that is triggered by a forceful communicator leading to negative attitude change.

Persuasion through our own Actions

• Actions can also shape attitudes.
• As Patty Hearst demonstrates in the book the "Hidden persuaders", attitudes can be dramatically changed.
• Evaluative conditioning has strong and obvious impacts.
• Engaging in attitude-discrepant behavior can change attitudes.

Theories of Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance theory suggests that inconsistencies between cognitions cause tension, motivating attitude change.
• Insufficient justification occurs when people engage in attitude-discrepant behavior without a large reward, the less severe the punishment, the greater attitude change.
• Justifying effort increases liking for what one suffers for, and is a result of those with severe initiation looking at the other group favorably.
• One theory is difficult decisions making should mean the decisions we make should in effect, make us excited or favorable in our perspective. -The four steps for cognitive dissonance are unwanted consequence/negative experience, self responsibility, and attribution.

Alternatives to Cognitive Dissonance:

• Self-perception theory asserts we infer attitudes from observing our behavior.
• Impression management theory claims self-presentation concerns spur reported attitude change.
• Self-affirmation theory claims a threat to self-concept motivates change.
• Ethical Dissonance Is the internal state of turmoil that arises from behaving in ways that violate our own moral code.
• Moral Licensing Is the tendency to justify an anticipated misdeed by citing good things that were done.