Attitudes and Attitude Change - Lecture 5 - PDF

ATTITUDES AND PSYC-2700 Lecture 5 ATTITUDE CHANGE Winter 2025 TODAY’S AGENDA What is an Attitude?  The nature of attitudes  Explicit and implicit attitudes  When attitudes predict behavior Attitude Change  Resisting persuasive messages Cognitive Dissonance Wrap-Up T...

ATTITUDES AND PSYC-2700 Lecture 5 ATTITUDE CHANGE Winter 2025 TODAY’S AGENDA What is an Attitude?  The nature of attitudes  Explicit and implicit attitudes  When attitudes predict behavior Attitude Change  Resisting persuasive messages Cognitive Dissonance Wrap-Up TODAY’S LEARNING OBJECTIVES By the end of this class, you should be able to:  Differentiate between different types of attitudes  Explain when attitudes predict behavior  Recognize how people, advertisements, etc. can attempt to change our attitudes and/or behavior  Describe cognitive dissonance and predict when and how people might try to reduce it WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? Attitu de 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 Do not result from rational examination of issues Not governed by logic  Reasoned arguments don’t really have a big influence Can stem from important personal or moral values  Trying to change affective attitudes can challenge people’s moral values COGNITIVELY-BASED ATTITUDES Focus on objective facts/merits/properties, the pluses and minuses, etc.  Attitude is determined by the balance of positives and negatives We can feel positively about something or someone (positive affective attitude), even if we have negative beliefs about the something or someone (negative cognitive attitude)  E.g., Dating the “bad boy” BEHAVIORALLY-BASED ATTITUDES Stem from people’s observations of how they behave toward something or someone  Ties to self-perception theory 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 AS A BLEND EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES Explicit attitudes: Consciously endorsed, easily reported Implicit attitudes: Involuntary, uncontrollable, and more difficult to verbalize (unconscious?)  Possible that we are aware of our implicit attitudes  At least sometimes, if we focus  Implicit and explicit attitudes towards Coke and Pepsi are more strongly correlated when participants are instructed to focus on their feeling towards Coke and Pepsi than when they are asked to think about why they prefer Coke or Pepsi (Gawronski & LeBell, 2008)  EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES Explicit attitudes are usually assessed with scales “Please rate your class on the following dimensions” Extremely Somew Neith Somew Extremely hat er hat Bad (-2) (-1) (0) (+1) Good (+2) Pleasant (- (-1) (0) (+1) Unpleasant (+2) 2) Worthless (- (-1) (0) (+1) Valuable (+2) 2) EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES Attitu de Type Implicit attitudes are usually assessed in other ways  E.g., Body language, physiological responses, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the name-letter task, etc.  Project Implicit THE IAT Relies on cognitive interference from suppressing “incorrect” responses (like the Stroop effect) Categorizing judgments of words or images (5 blocks) Concept Judgments  Liberal versus Conservative  Canadian versus Foreign  Caucasian versus African-Origin Attribute Judgments  Good (e.g., marvelous, superb)  Bad (e.g., tragic, horrible) THE IAT Block 1: Learn how to categorize a concept Gay people Straight people THE IAT Block 1: Learn how to categorize a concept Gay people Straight people THE IAT Block 2: Learn how to make attribute judgments Good Bad “joyful” THE IAT Block 2: Learn how to make attribute judgments Good Bad “nasty” THE IAT Block 3: Concept – Attribute judgment pairing #1 Gay people or Good Straight people or Bad THE IAT Block 3: Concept – Attribute judgment pairing #1 Gay people or Good Straight people or Bad “Terrible” THE IAT Block 3: Concept – Attribute judgment pairing #1 Gay people or Good Straight people or Bad THE IAT Block 4: Learn new location of the concepts Straight people Gay people THE IAT Block 5: Concept – Attributes judgment pairing #2 Straight people or Good Gay people or Bad OR “decay” THE IAT IAT & Race To get at implicit attitudes, find 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 This technique has been widely used to study implicit attitudes towards black Americans. THE IAT What is it used to measure?  Associations between concepts and positive or negative valence  Strength of unconscious stereotypes  Implicit Self-Esteem Criticisms?  May be contaminated by familiarity  Cultural knowledge vs. personal endorsement Validity?  It predicts behaviour (independent of explicit measures)  Particularly useful for predicting behaviour in socially sensitive 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 “How aesthetically pleasing is this letter?” 1 Not aesthetically pleasing at all 2 3 4 Somewhat aesthetically pleasing 5 6 7 Very aesthetically pleasing THE NAME-LETTER TASK 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 WHEN DO ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOR? TPB ATTITUDE CHANGE ATTITUDE CHANGE Persuasiv e 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 ATTITUDE CHANGE 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 the communication  Nature of the audience SOURCE OF COMMUNICATION The person or source delivering the communication is more persuasive when they are perceived as:  Credible  Trustworthy  Attractive  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) NATURE OF AUDIENCE Listeners are often persuaded to a greater extent if they:  Are distracted during the communication  Have lower intelligence  Have moderate self-esteem  Younger (18-25) rather than older  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 PROCESSING PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATIONS 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 AND ATTITUDE CHANGE Fear works in moderate amounts  Motivates people to pay attention  Most effective when specific recommendations to enable change are included in the message ADVERTISING Advertisi ng 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 ADVERTISING Ad Types 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 Subliminal message: 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 SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES But! Sometimes subliminally priming people with certain products can alter their behavior Fitzsimons et al. (2008) 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 WHAT ABOUT OTHER TYPES OF MEDIA?  COGNITIVE DISSONANCE WHAT IS COGNITIVE DISSONANCE? 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 (sometimes 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 more 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 Mild Extreme makes us feel foolish. Initiation Initiation Read out loud: Read out loud:  Prostitute  Fuck To avoid dissonance, we tend to evaluate rewards more positively  Virgin  Cock when we expend effort to get it.  Petting  Screw  Etc.  Etc. Serious implications for hazing.  +2 Aronson & Mills passages of (1959) erotica 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. Aronson & Mills (1959) 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 WRAP-UP SUMMARY Our attitudes stem from affect, cognitions, and behaviors Specific behaviors are best predicted with specific attitudes Whether or not persuasive messages influence attitudes and/or behavior depends on many factors Attitude change can occur through cognitive dissonance MIDTERM Monday, Feb 10th from 5:30 – 7:30  Readings: Chapters 1 – 6  Lectures: Lectures 1 – 5  100 MC questions