Lecture 4: Attitudes and Attitude Change PDF

ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGE WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? Attitude - An evaluation of a person, object, or idea Can be positive, negative, or both (ambivalence) Can also be neutral Attitudes have three components (sources): Affective component: Emotional reactions...

ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGE WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? Attitude - An evaluation of a person, object, or idea Can be positive, negative, or both (ambivalence) Can also be neutral Attitudes have three components (sources): Affective component: Emotional reactions Cognitive component: Thoughts and beliefs Behavioural component: Actions and observable behavior AFFECTIVELY-BASED ATTITUDES COGNITIVELY-BASED ATTITUDES Do not result from rational examination of issues Focus on objective facts/merits/properties, the pluses Not governed by logic and minuses, etc. Reasoned arguments don’t really have a big Attitude is determined by the balance of positives influence and negatives Can stem from important personal or moral values Can feel positively about something/someone (positive Trying to change affective attitudes can affective attitude), even if we have negative beliefs challenge people’s moral values about them (negative cognitive attitude) BEHAVIORALLY-BASED ATTITUDES E.g., Dating the “bad boy” Stem from people’s observations of how they behave toward something or someone TYPE OF ATTITUDE MAY BE RELATED TO THE VALENCE When attitudes are negative toward a particular group, they often have a stronger cognitive basis A group is believed to threaten a person’s value system; or is seen as competition for resources, etc. Immigrants and atheists displacing white Christians in US? When attitudes are positive toward a particular group, they often have a stronger affective basis Attitudes are typically a blend of all three EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES Explicit attitudes: Consciously endorsed, easily reported Usually assessed with scales Implicit attitudes: Involuntary, uncontrollable, and more difficult to verbalize (unconscious?) Possible that we are aware of our implicit attitudes Usually assessed in other ways (body langues, IAT, physiological responses, etc. THE IAT Relies on cognitive interference from suppressing “incorrect” responses (like the Stroop effect) Categorizing judgments of words or images (5 blocks) Concept Judgments Attribute Judgments Liberal versus Conservative Good (e.g., marvelous, superb) Canadian versus Foreign Bad (e.g., tragic, horrible) Caucasian versus African-Origin Block 1 - Learn how to categorize a concept // easy visual diff like gay vs straight Block 2 - Learn how to make attribute judgments // easy word diff good vs bad Block 3 - Concept/Attribute judgement pairing // sort gay or good vs straight or bad Block 4 - Learn new location of the concepts // visual switched Block 5 - Concept/Attributes judgement pairing 2 // sort straight or good vs gay or bad Implicit attitude is found through the reaction time difference between Block 3 and Block 5 If you favor Straight people over Gay people you should respond faster to Block 5 (Straight people paired with good) than to Block 3 (Straight people paired with bad) Can also examine the rate of errors Commonly used to study implicit attitudes towards black Americans. What is it used to measure? Criticisms? Validity? Associations between concepts May be contaminated by It predicts behaviour (independent of and positive or negative valence familiarity explicit measures) Strength of unconscious Cultural knowledge vs. Particularly useful for predicting stereotypes personal endorsement behaviour in socially sensitive Implicit Self-Esteem contexts (e.g. discrimination) THE NAME-LETTER TASK Based on Name-Letter Effect People tend to favor letters in their name over other letters in the alphabet People rate each letter of the alphabet e.g. "How aesthetically pleasing is this letter?” The degree that you favor name initials over other letters in the alphabet predicts: Self-esteem Depression Romantic satisfaction and longevity (LeBel & Campbell, 2009)? WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOR? The theory of planned behavior claims that the best predictor of planned, deliberate behavior is intention Intentions are determined by: Specific attitude(s) toward the behavior Subjective norms Perceptions of the attitudes of others Perceived behavioral control Tophat Questions: It's Friday night and Gerald is going out with some friends. He has always wanted a Explict matches Conscious boyfriend and believes that approaching receptive men at the bar is one way to meet Implicit matches Involuntary people (he's obviously not on Grindr). His friends seem to have no problem with this and have always encouraged him to try his luck when they spot a cute guy in the crowd. Unfortunately, however, Gerald believes that he lacks the social skills and will only embarrass himself if he meets someone new. Gerald is not planning on talking to anyone new tonight because: d) He has low perceived behavioural control ATTITUDE CHANGE Even though attitudes don’t always predict our behavior, people will try to change our attitudes and hope that the behavior they want will follow Persuasive communication - Some medium of communication that advocates a particular point of view Ads provide an example of persuasive communication in everyday life The Yale Attitude Change Approach (1950s) suggests that whether people change their attitudes is a question of “Who said what to whom”: Source of the communication NATURE OF AUDIENCE The person or source delivering the communication is Listeners are often persuaded to a greater extent if they: more persuasive when they are perceived as: Are distracted during the communication Credible Have lower intelligence Trustworthy Have moderate self-esteem Attractive Younger (18-25) rather than older Likeable Nature of Communication: The communication itself is more persuasive when it: Does not seem to be designed to influence attitudes Is two-sided (i.e., represents both sides of an argument) and refutes the arguments of the side that opposes the view you’re advocating Is longer (more arguments) PROCESSING PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATIONS Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo) People can be influenced by: What is being said How it is being said Validity Credibility Logic Attractiveness Strength of arguments etc. Length of argument etc. The effectiveness of one type of persuasion as compared to the other varies depending on the motivation and ability of the audience to pay attention and process the persuasive communication  When motivation and ability are high people reflect on the merits of the argument Central Route (what is being said) When motivation and ability are low people use mental shortcuts and surface characteristics Peripheral Route (how it is being said) FEAR AND ATTITUDE CHANGE Sometimes persuasive messages will try to induce attitude change by arousing fear Too much fear is not ideal Fear works in moderate amounts Motivates people to pay attention Most effective when specific recommendations to enable change are included in the message ADVERTISING Many of us think that advertising works on everyone but ourselves But…when a product is advertised, sales tend to increase Must work on some level for large numbers of people However, the impact of advertising is generally small Media messages are much less impactful than real-world interaction It’s hard to make someone buy something they hate The type of ad that works best depends on the basis of the attitude For affectively-based attitudes, using emotion is best For cognitively-based attitudes, using rational arguments and personal relevance is best SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES Words or pictures, intended to persuade, that are not consciously perceived No empirical evidence supports the idea that subliminal messages in advertising in everyday life exerts influence over consumers’ purchases, but sometimes subliminally priming people with certain products can alter their behavior RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES Warn people in advance that someone is about to try to change their attitude Attitude inoculation: Make people immune to attitude change attempts by exposing them to “small doses” of weak arguments for that position and make them defend their position COGNITIVE DISSONANCE Feelings of discomfort caused by the realization that your behavior is inconsistent with your attitudes, or that you hold two (or more) conflicting attitudes Basically, dissonance is about feeling conflicted Often occurs when we do something that makes us feel stupid or immoral The discomfort of dissonance motivates us to try and reduce it REDUCING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE People try to reduce cognitive dissonance in a few ways: Change cognition(s) to be more in line with the dissonant behavior Change behavior to be more in line with the dissonant cognition(s) Add new (sometomes mistaken) cognitions POST-DECISION DISSONANCE Simply making a decision can trigger cognitive dissonance When this happens, we typically enhance the attractiveness of the thing we chose, and devalue the thing(s) we rejected The need to reduce post-decision dissonance is stronger when the decision is more permanent Post-decision dissonance can occur when making moral decisions If we choose to act immorally, we sometimes change our value systems to support that decision E.g., “Once a cheater always a cheater” JUSTIFICATION OF EFFORT We like things more because we put in effort to obtain them Wasting effort for little or no reward makes us feel foolish. To avoid dissonance, we tend to evaluate rewards more positively when we expend effort to get it. Serious implications for hazing. JUSTIFYING DISSONANCE Experiencing dissonance and motivation to reduce dissonance is partly a matter of attributions. External justification: Explaining our dissonant behavior in terms of things outside ourselves (e.g., to get a reward, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings) Does not contribute to unpleasant feelings of discomfort Internal justification: If we can’t find an external reason for dissonant behavior, we attribute it to ourselves and try to reducing discomfort by changing something about ourselves (e.g., attitudes, behavior) COUNTER-ATTITUDINAL ADVOCACY Occurs when we express an opinion or attitude that counters our private beliefs or feelings If we can identify external justification, we experience no dissonance and don’t change our attitudes If we can’t find external justification, we find or create internal justification To reduce the dissonance produced by the internal attribution we come to believe the counter-attitudinal opinion or attitude that we expressed THE POWER OF MILD PUNISHMENT Perhaps surprisingly, sometimes the key to lasting attitude change when you want someone to stop doing something is mild punishment Severe punishment provides too much external justification JUSTIFYING BAD DEEDS According to cognitive dissonance theory, when we hurt someone we sometimes come to dislike or hate that person more Justifies our cruelty E.g., Dehumanizing victims of war