Attitude

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Attitude
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Attitude vs. Belief

• Belief is a thought (cognition) about something
• Raw fish is bad
• Exercise is important
• Attitude adds two components ABCs
• Affective evaluation, emotion
• Behavioral tendency to take action
• Cognitive belief or thoughts

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Components

• Affective
• I hate raw fish and sushi
• I enjoy exercise
• Behavioral
• I wont eat sushi
• I will exercise regularly
• Cognitive
• Raw fish is bad
• Exercise is good

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Consistency

• We always want our ABCs to agree
• What if we dont have an attitude?
• Behavior will shape our attitude
• What if our ABCs are inconsistent?
• Caveats

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Attitudes

• Explicit attitude
• Implicit attitude
• Involuntary, uncontrollable, often unconscious
• IAT

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Attitudes toward groups

• Prejudice
• Affective component
• Hostile or negative attitude toward people just
  because they are a group member
• Stereotypes
• Cognitive component
• Generalization in which identical characteristics
  are assigned to all members
• Discrimination
• Behavioral component
• Unjustified negative or harmful action toward a
  group member because of their membership

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Prejudice in the classroom

• Jane Elliott
• Prejudice can be taught
• Told students blue-eyed people were better than
  brown-eyed people
• Brown-eyed children had to wear collars and sit
  in the back of class
• Over the course of one day brown eyed children
  became self-conscious, depressed, and demoralized
• Next day Elliott switched the stereotypes about
  eye-color (browngood)
• Brown-eyed kids exacted their revenge

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Why are stereotypes maintained?

• Illusory correlation
• See correlations where they dont exist
• Remember confirmatory examples more
• Example Cheerleaders are outgoing
• Out-group homogeneity effect
• Us vs. them
• All ______ are alike
• In-group bias
• Positive feelings for people who are part of our
  in-group
• Alumni, state residency

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Fundamental Attribution Error

• Interpret behavior as a characteristic of the
  individual rather than the situation
• Do not take into account the situation
• Person unemployed is a bad worker
• Bush caused war
• Jeopardy player is really smart
• Maintain stereotypes
• Attribute confirmatory examples to the individual
• Ignore/attribute to the situation examples which
  dont fit or stereotype

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Persuasion

• Yale Attitude Change
• Hovland, 1953
• The effectiveness of communication depends on who
  says what to whom.
• Who The persuader or source
• Credibility (expertise, knowledge)
• Attractiveness

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Persuasion

• What The message
• One- vs. two-sided messages
• Blatantly persuasive
• Primacy vs. recency
• Depends on when decision is made
• Fear arousing
• To whom The recipient
• Distraction
• Intelligence
• Age

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Persuasive techniques

• Foot in the door
• Door in the face
• Reciprocitycreate an obligation
• Low-ballobtain commitment then up the price
• Sweeten the deal
• Exclusivity
• Prestige

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Heiders Balance Theory

• We want to maintain consistency among our
  attitudes
• Prefer to agree with someone I like
• Disagree with someone I dislike

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Balance Theory

• What if my attitudes are imbalanced?
• Change beliefs about the object
• Change beliefs about the person
• Change whichever is easier