Understanding Attitudes

Attitudes

• Attitudes are viewed in different ways, including affective or emotional orientations toward an objective.
• Attitudes can be a thought or set of thoughts that organize our perspective on a focus, and also feelings and behavioral intentions related to the focus of our attention.
• Attitudes are specific to attitude objects.
• Values are a set of attitudes or beliefs related to higher-order situations in life.
• Ideologies are attitudes related to social or political contexts.

Function of Attitudes

• Attitudes structure knowledge using schemas.
• Attitudes provide instrumentality via a goal orientation.
• Attitudes serve as a psychological defense.
• Attitudes express value and help one position themselves relative to others.

Attitude Formation

• The mere-exposure effect states that the more one sees something, the more one likes it.
• Attitudes can arise from reinforcement and punishment.
• Observational learning is achieved through modeling and social learning theory.
• The saying-becomes-believing effect is when someone convinces themselves of something while trying to convince others.

Accuracy of Reported Attitudes

• Smoking results in 10,000 deaths per day worldwide.
• Smoking results in 420,000 deaths per year in the US.
• Smoking deaths are more than all deaths from RTC, AIDS, suicide, alcohol and drug use combined.
• In 1997, the US Surgeon General called tobacco executives "a sleezy bunch of people who misled us, deceived us and lied to us for 3 decades."
• In 1994, Tobacco VP R. Roseblatt stated "Is addiction an issue? I don't believe it. People do all sorts of things to express their individuality and to protest against society. And smoking is just one of them, and not the worst."

Attitudes and Behavior

• The question arises, do attitudes drive behavior/action, and to what extent?
• Key questions involve the accuracy of reported attitudes and whether people believe what they say.
• People do not always report their own attitudes honestly.
• LaPiere researched prejudice agains Chinese people in China in 1931.
• The anecdotal evidence showed no correlation between prejudice and discrimination
• The 2 phased LaPiere (1931) study:
• Travelled across US (10,000 miles) with Chinese couple
• 67 Hotels, camps and restaurants; 184 Restaurants
• Recorded actions of waiters etc.
• LaPiere (1931) allowed the Chinese couple to enter first.
• The second phase of LaPiere (1931)'s research mailed a questionnaire to each establishment
• The 1931 questionnaire asked "Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishment?”
• 51% of questionnaires were responded to.
• Interaction with the couple could have biased attitudes in sample (towards positive).
• A control for this research was needed

Actual Behaviour vs Social Attitudes

• Much better than expected if investigator had been alone:
  • Lodgings: 25 (37%)
  • Restaurants: 72 (39%)
• Good but due to increased curiosity:
  • Lodgings: 25 (37%)
  • Restaurants: 82 (45%)
• Equal to normal expectations:
  • Lodgings: 11 (16%)
  • Restaurants: 24 (13%)
• Hesitant for racial reasons:
  • Lodgings: 4 (6%)
  • Restaurants: 5 (3%)
• Very different:
  • Lodgings: 1 (1%)
  • Restaurants: 1 (1%)
• Not accepted: lodgings: 1 (1%)
  • Restaurants: 0 (0%)
• Social attitudes questions asked "Will you accept members of the Chinese Race as guests in your establishment?"
• Lodgings visited - No: 43 (91%)
• Restaurants visited - No: 75 (93%)
• Lodgings not visited - No: 30 (93.75%)
• Restaurants not visited - No: 76 (90%)
• Lodgings visited - Undecided: 3 (6%)
• Restaurants visited - Undecided: 6 (7%)
• Lodgings not visited - Undecided: 2 (6.25%)
• Restaurants not visited - Undecided: 7 (8%)
• Lodgings visited - Yes: 1 (2%)
• Restaurants visited - Yes: 0 (0%)
• Lodgings not visited - Yes: 0 (0%)
• Restaurants not visited - Yes: 1 (1%)
• Behavior may shape attitudes.

Questions and Scenarios

• People's attitudes may not actually predict their actions.
• Leon Festinger (1964) suggested that changing attitudes did not change behavior, but that behavior changes attitudes.
• A scenario involves two tasks: a value task (Childline post, 2 hours per week, €10 per hour) and a no-value task (Childline post, 2 hours per week, no pay).
• Most will allocate themselves and one other to the posts, say that the morally correct thing to do is to flip a coin (or similar), and 80% will assign themselves to the value task.
• the 80% falls into 'Moral Hypocrisy'.
• The 80% justifying their actions post-hoc by saying 'he would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed',
• Attitudes do not always equate to behavior.

Behavior Driving Attitudes

• Examples of behaviour driving attitudes exist in self-persuasion.
• During self-persuasion, one believes "I acted, therefore I believe."
• The Stanford Prison Experiment:
  • Role playing with prison guards adopted a role and negative attitudes towards prisoners.
  • Behaviou occurred came first followed by justification for actions.
• The foot-in-the-door principle indicates that when people agree to a small request, they are more likely to comply with a larger request later.
• Changing behavior slowly creates slow change in attitude.
• Poker utilizes this principle by drawing people in with small bets.
• Sales may use this by getting someone to agree to an amount.
• The sales adds ‘delivery and related charges' for increased profit
• You inadvertently pay more than you expected, but justify it by changing attitude (it is worth it).
• Cognitive dissonance: People avoid inconsistency between behavior and attitude, so they change their attitude.
• Self-perception: When witnessing someone else's actions, one infers their attitudes.
• The person does the same of themselves, discerning their own attitudes from their behavior.

Theory of Planned Behaviour

• The best predictors of a person’s planned, deliberate behaviors are the person’s attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control.
• A specific attitude towards behaviour may not exist in studies such as LaPiere's.
• Subjective norms are norms held by close reference groups.
• 'Perceived behavioral control' indicates one's perceived ability to engage in a behavior.
• Atitudes are important in shaping behaviour, but the process is much more.