Lecture 1: Attitudes and Attitude Change
Attitudes and attitude objects
- Attitude represent evaluation to an entity
- Attitudes are a non-observable construct
- Way to measure attitudes through observable responses
- Attitude object refer to any aspects of social world eg person, event, issue, behaviour
etc
What to attitudes consist of?
- Tripartite/three component model
Affective
• Expressions of feelings / emotional reaction towards an attitude object
Cognitive
• Expression of beliefs about an attitude object
Behavioural
• Overt action/verbal statements concerning behaviour (eg what they’d do in a
circumstance)
- Critique: Prejudge link between attitudes and behaviour, should we include behavioural
aspect in model of attitudes?
Where do attitudes come from? (Mere exposure effect)
- Repeated exposure of a stimulus —> enhances preference for that stimulus
Where do attitudes come from? (Conditioning)
Classical conditioning
- Repeated association — previously neutral stimulus elicits a creation that was
previously elicited by another stimulus
Instrumental conditioning
- Behaviour followed by positive consequences — more likely to be repeated
- Behaviour followed by negative consequences — less likely to be repeated
,Where do attitudes come from? (Self-perception theory)
- Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions eg observing our own
behaviours
• Infer attitudes from our behaviours (eg read one novel a week, so must like
reading)
Attitude functions (Katz, 1960)
Knowledge function
- Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence
- Saves cognitive energy; don’t have to think how to we relate to a particular object in
question
Utilitarian function
- Help achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes
- Express attitude to make self more favourable eg present self more positively to
prevent social disapproval
Ego-defensive
- Protecting ones self-esteem
- Defence mechanisms to cope with eternal/internal threats
- Value Expressive
- Facilitate expression of ones core values and self concept
- Attitudes and behaviour reflected by own values
How are attitudes revealed?
- Self-report and experimental paradigms:
• Attitude scales eg rate statement, semantic differential scale eg bad, good,
unpleasant
• Implicit Association Task —> assess people’s attitudes that they’re unaware they
have —> reaction time used to measure attitudes and response eg gender
attitudes —> response of association gives indication of attitudes
Advantages: Cheap, easy
Disadvantages: Sensitive content — not disclose truth
- Physiological measures:
, • Eg. skin resistance, heart rate and pupil dilation
- Measures of overt behaviour:
• Freq. of behaviour
• Trends and preference over various object
• Non-verbal behaviour
• Physical distance used to measure social distance
Why do we study attitudes? Why do we want to know?
- Core of self-self-concept —> beliefs about selves, others, hobbies
- Understand why and predict how people behave
- Want to change people? consider their behaviour?
Attitudes and behaviour
LaPiere (1934):
- Find out if people served Chinese customers in establishment, they did in person
but more than 90% said no in survey —> doesn’t reflect people’s behaviour
- No real link between attitudes and behaviours
- Methodological problems: Specificity, time
- Attitude strength: Stronger attitudes more accessible eg passionate about cause,
more likely to donate to that charity
- Direct experience: Direct, predicts consequent attitudes more accurately respondents
might to have been those who accepted them in establishment 6 months prior
- Attitudes and relation to behaviour have to be measured at a specific level
Attitude - behaviour relationship
- Wicker: Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour —> average correlation was 0.15
(perfect correlation is 1)
- Gregson and Stacey: Small positive correlation between attitudes and alcohol
consumption
- Other variables:
• Moderator variables (factors that specify conditions which attitude relations may be
stronger/weaker)
Attitudes and attitude objects
- Attitude represent evaluation to an entity
- Attitudes are a non-observable construct
- Way to measure attitudes through observable responses
- Attitude object refer to any aspects of social world eg person, event, issue, behaviour
etc
What to attitudes consist of?
- Tripartite/three component model
Affective
• Expressions of feelings / emotional reaction towards an attitude object
Cognitive
• Expression of beliefs about an attitude object
Behavioural
• Overt action/verbal statements concerning behaviour (eg what they’d do in a
circumstance)
- Critique: Prejudge link between attitudes and behaviour, should we include behavioural
aspect in model of attitudes?
Where do attitudes come from? (Mere exposure effect)
- Repeated exposure of a stimulus —> enhances preference for that stimulus
Where do attitudes come from? (Conditioning)
Classical conditioning
- Repeated association — previously neutral stimulus elicits a creation that was
previously elicited by another stimulus
Instrumental conditioning
- Behaviour followed by positive consequences — more likely to be repeated
- Behaviour followed by negative consequences — less likely to be repeated
,Where do attitudes come from? (Self-perception theory)
- Gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions eg observing our own
behaviours
• Infer attitudes from our behaviours (eg read one novel a week, so must like
reading)
Attitude functions (Katz, 1960)
Knowledge function
- Organise and predict social world; provides a sense of meaning and coherence
- Saves cognitive energy; don’t have to think how to we relate to a particular object in
question
Utilitarian function
- Help achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes
- Express attitude to make self more favourable eg present self more positively to
prevent social disapproval
Ego-defensive
- Protecting ones self-esteem
- Defence mechanisms to cope with eternal/internal threats
- Value Expressive
- Facilitate expression of ones core values and self concept
- Attitudes and behaviour reflected by own values
How are attitudes revealed?
- Self-report and experimental paradigms:
• Attitude scales eg rate statement, semantic differential scale eg bad, good,
unpleasant
• Implicit Association Task —> assess people’s attitudes that they’re unaware they
have —> reaction time used to measure attitudes and response eg gender
attitudes —> response of association gives indication of attitudes
Advantages: Cheap, easy
Disadvantages: Sensitive content — not disclose truth
- Physiological measures:
, • Eg. skin resistance, heart rate and pupil dilation
- Measures of overt behaviour:
• Freq. of behaviour
• Trends and preference over various object
• Non-verbal behaviour
• Physical distance used to measure social distance
Why do we study attitudes? Why do we want to know?
- Core of self-self-concept —> beliefs about selves, others, hobbies
- Understand why and predict how people behave
- Want to change people? consider their behaviour?
Attitudes and behaviour
LaPiere (1934):
- Find out if people served Chinese customers in establishment, they did in person
but more than 90% said no in survey —> doesn’t reflect people’s behaviour
- No real link between attitudes and behaviours
- Methodological problems: Specificity, time
- Attitude strength: Stronger attitudes more accessible eg passionate about cause,
more likely to donate to that charity
- Direct experience: Direct, predicts consequent attitudes more accurately respondents
might to have been those who accepted them in establishment 6 months prior
- Attitudes and relation to behaviour have to be measured at a specific level
Attitude - behaviour relationship
- Wicker: Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour —> average correlation was 0.15
(perfect correlation is 1)
- Gregson and Stacey: Small positive correlation between attitudes and alcohol
consumption
- Other variables:
• Moderator variables (factors that specify conditions which attitude relations may be
stronger/weaker)
