Psychology Chapter on Attitudes

Attitudes: Definition and Components

• Attitude: An evaluation of people, objects, or ideas
• Components of Attitude (ABC Model):
  • Cognitive: Beliefs and thoughts about a target (e.g., "I think puppies are friendly")
  • Affective: Emotions and feelings towards a target (e.g., "I feel happy when I see a puppy")
  • Behavioral: Actions or observable behavior towards a target (e.g., "I pet the puppy")

Types of Attitudes

• Explicit Attitudes:

  • Conscious and aware of these attitudes
  • Endorsed deliberately and in control
  • Social desirability bias: May lie to align with social norms
  • Measurable through introspection (self-reflection)

• Implicit Attitudes:

  • Subconscious and less accessible to awareness
  • Automatic and outside of control
  • Less affected by social desirability biases
  • Can conflict with explicit attitudes
  • Measured using reaction time (e.g., Implicit Association Test or IAT)

Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT)

• Purpose: Measures implicit attitudes by assessing response speed
• Criticisms:
  • Validity: Questions if it truly measures implicit attitudes or cultural associations
  • Reliability: Poor consistency in results upon retesting
  • Language and cultural factors (e.g., non-native speakers) can affect results

Implicit vs Explicit Attitudes (Gawronski, 2019)

• Findings:
  • People are aware of their implicit attitudes
  • Low correlation between implicit and explicit attitudes due to:
    • Motivation and opportunity influencing attitudes
    • Different content in implicit and explicit attitudes
    • People can predict their own implicit attitudes
    • People believe they are aware of their implicit attitudes

Schemas

• Schema: Mental frameworks or blueprints of knowledge and expectations
  • Purpose: Reduce cognitive load, save time, and help predict how things work.
  • Example: Feng Min expects to line up at a fast-food restaurant based on previous experiences.
• Schemas help us navigate the world by simplifying complex information

Heuristics

• Heuristics: Mental shortcuts or rules of thumb for decision-making and judgment

  • Purpose: Reduce cognitive effort and make quick decisions
  • Example: Judging how likely something is based on how easily examples come to mind

• Types of Heuristics:

  • Representative Heuristic: Assessing similarity to a category or prototype (Ignoring base-rate information). Example: Claudette assumes a chihuahua is a dog because it looks like other dogs
  • Availability Heuristic: Judging likelihood based on how easily something comes to mind (Common or recent events are more easily recalled). Example: Meg believes school shootings are more common in the USA than China because they are more frequently reported in the media.

Illusory Correlations

• Illusory Correlation: Perceived association between two events or variables that are not actually related.
  • Example: Yui believes people act stranger on full moons despite no actual connection

Cognitive Miser vs Naïve Scientist

• Cognitive Miser: Uses heuristics and schemas to conserve cognitive resources, makes quick decisions, reluctant to analyze information
  • Example: Stereotyping, automatic judgments based on minimal information
• Naïve Scientist: Seeks logical explanations and evidence for decisions, spends more time to analyze situations, flexible thinking
  • Example: Logical explanations and evidence for decisions, more time and effort to analyze situations

Motivational Tactician Framework

• Explains how people switch between the Cognitive Miser and Naïve Scientist approaches based on time, cognitive resources, and the importance of the decision

Attribution Theory

• Attributions: Beliefs about why things happen (Internal or external factors)
• Types of Attribution Biases:
  • Actor-Observer Bias: We attribute our own behavior to external factors (e.g., situational), and others' behavior to internal factors (e.g., personality)

Cultural and Psychological Attributions

• Mezulis et al. (2004): Found that children and older adults have a larger self-serving bias compared to middle-aged people.
• Cultural Differences: Western cultures (e.g., USA) tend to have higher self-serving biases, and non-Western cultures (e.g., China, Korea) tend to attribute success to external factors.

Origin of Attitudes

• Genetic Influences: Suggest genetics play a role in attitudes toward various issues (political, social etc.).
• Social Learning: Attitudes acquired through observation and imitation (e.g., Bandura's Social Learning Theory).
  • Attitudes and conditioning: Classical and operant conditioning can shape attitudes

Classical Conditioning & Operant Conditioning

• Classical Conditioning: A neutral stimulus is paired with an emotional stimulus to elicit an emotional response (e.g., neutral stimulus paired with positive experience to elicit positive feelings towards the product).
• Operant Conditioning: Behaviors followed by rewards are more likely to be repeated, those followed by punishments are less likely to recur

Attitudes and Experiences

• Direct Experience or Mere Exposure: Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases familiarity and positive feelings.
• Example: Repeated exposure to a foreign word can increase positive associations.
• Self-Perception Theory: We infer our attitudes by observing our own behaviorin a given situation.
• Example: If you frequently engage in environmentally-friendly actions, you may infer that you have a positive attitude toward the environment.
• Cognitive Dissonance: Discomfort from conflicting beliefs or behaviors.
  • Reducing cognitive dissonance: Change behavior to align with cognition, change cognition to justify behavior, add new cognitions to justify behavior
• Example: After making a choice between two similar options, people tend to increase the attractiveness of the chosen option and decrease the attractiveness of the rejected option (Brehm, 1956).

Explore the definition and components of attitudes, including the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects. Discover the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes, and learn about the Implicit Attitudes Test (IAT) as a measurement tool in psychology.