Attitudes

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Attitudes
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Attitudes

• How do you feel about gun control?
• Which do you prefer, Target or Walmart?
• How much do you like the new format of American
  Idol ?

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Attitudes

• What do they all have in common?
• like/dislike
• good/bad
• love/hate
• warm/cold

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Attitudes

• What do they all have in common?
• like/dislike
• good/bad
• love/hate
• warm/cold
• all ATTITUDES

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Why Study Attitudes?

• attitudes are the most distinctive and
  indispensable concept in contemporary social
  psychology
• Gordon Allport, 1935

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Why Study Attitudes?

• prejudice
• liking/attraction
• voting behavior
• conformity
• attention to health
• prosocial behavior
• persuasion in advertising

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Why Study Attitudes?

• attitudes
• are pervasive
• help predict future behavior
• influence our social perceptions and memories

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What is an Attitude?

• unidimensional view

negative
positive
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What is an Attitude?

• single-component view

absence of good
good
bad
absence of bad
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What is an Attitude?

• tri-component view
• affective reactions to an object
• behavioral disposition toward an object
• cognitive evaluation of an object
• ABCs of attitudes

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What is an Attitude?

• 3 important components
• evaluation
• valence
• object of the attitude

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What is an Attitude?

• attitude strength
• How do you feel about gun control?
• Target or Walmart?

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What is an Attitude?

• attitude are strongest when
• directly affect own outcomes and self-interest
• related to deeply held values
• concerned friends, family, or social ingroups

(Boniger et al., 1995)
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What is an Attitude?

• attitude are strongest when
• directly affect own outcomes and self-interest
• related to deeply held values
• concerned friends, family, or social ingroups
• formed through direct experience
• puzzles work, observe (Fazio Zanna)

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What is an Attitude?

• attitude accessibility
• Target or Walmart?
• new format of American Idol ?

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• consider the following situation

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• How do parents shape their kids attitudes?
• control rewards and punishments
• control the information

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• How do parents shape their kids attitudes?
• parents are very influential
• parent-influenced attitudes are resistant to
  change

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• How do parents shape their kids attitudes?
• political attitudes (Sears, 1975)
• depends on the strength of the relationship
  (Zanna Rohm, 1982)

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• peers/reference groups
• Bennington College study
• faculty and advanced students liberal
• incoming students conservative families

(Newcomb, 1943)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• peers/reference groups
• support for Alf Landon
• 62 of incoming students
• 43 of sophomores
• 15 of juniors and seniors

(Newcomb, 1943)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• peers/reference groups
• followed incoming class of 1935
• tended to shift toward more liberal attitudes
• correlated with popularity and prestige
• no shift stronger family attachment and concern
  about response

(Newcomb, 1943)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• peers/reference groups
• interviewed 25 years later
• compared to other similar women
• Bennington women 60 supported JFK, compared to
  30
• married to men who were more liberal

(Newcomb, 1943)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• peers/reference groups
• attitudes about sexual behavior, drug and alcohol
  use
• shift from family to peers

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• mass media
• compared men who view pornography with those who
  do not
• exposure to pornography more willing to engage
  in sex crimes

(Check Guloien, 1989)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• mass media
• effects of pornography on attitudes
• 18/36 films (pornographic/neutral) for 6 weeks
• read rape trial -- asked attitudes about trial
  and womens liberation movement
• 36 pornographic films lighter sentence and less
  favorable attitudes toward liberation movement

(Zillman Bryant, 1984)
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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• direct exposure/experience
• classical conditioning
• self-perception

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• genectics
• MZ twins more similar than DZ twins
• reared apart as similar as reared together

(Tesser, 1993)
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Measuring Attitudes

• Can you see (feel, touch, taste, hear) an
  attitude?

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Measuring Attitudes

• tricomponent view seems promising
• but not all attitudes are alike
• consider the following situations

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Measuring Attitudes

• tricomponent view seems promising
• complicated and cumbersome
• which component?

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Direct Measures of Attitudes

• Likert-type scales (Likert, 1932)

Strongly Disagree Strongly
Agree -2 -1 0 1 2 I think capital
punishment good. -2 -1 0 1 2 I think
capital punishment is fair. -2 -1 0 1 2
I think capital punishment is unfair. -2 -1 0 1 2
I think capital punishment deters
people from committing crimes.
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Direct Measures of Attitudes

• Guttman scales

Circle each response that you agree with until
you get to an item with which you dont
agree. 1. I think criminals should be
punished. 2. I think murderers should be
punished severely. 3. I think capital
punishment is a good thing. 4. I think all
murderers should be subject to capital punishment.
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Direct Measures of Attitudes

• semantic differential scales (Osgood et al. 1957)

Capital punishment is Good ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ Bad Fair ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ Unfair
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Direct Measures of Attitudes

• problems
• Do people know what their attitudes are?
• Do they have direct access to them?
• If they do, will they always tell the truth?

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Indirect Measures of Attitudes

• bogus pipeline

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Indirect Measures of Attitudes

• unobtrusive behavioral measures
• Leventhal (1970)
• toilet flushing

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Indirect Measures of Attitudes

• unobtrusive behavioral measures
• What are the most popular exhibits at the Science
  Museum?
• How much do people like their job?
• What are peoples attitudes toward their social
  psychology course?

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Indirect Measures of Attitudes

• psychophsiological measures
• galvanic skin response (GSR)

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Indirect Measures of Attitudes

• psychophysiological measures
• facial electromyography (EMG)
• agreeable message cheek muscle activity
• disagreeable message forehead and brow activity
• independent observers did not notice

(Cacioppo Petty, 1981)
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Implicit Attitudes

• When an attitude changes from A1 to A2, what
  happens to A1?
• dual attitudes (Wilson et al., 2000)

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Implicit Attitudes

• implicit attitudes
• have an unknown origin
• activated automatically
• influence uncontrollable responses

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Implicit Attitudes

• extra credit opportunity
• https//implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo
• What was your reaction? What did you think of the
  Implicit Association Test (IAT)?

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Implicit Attitudes

• IAT
• often interpreted as an implicit bias or
  prejudice
• others have argued that it is a reflection of
  associations in the environment (Karpinski
  Hilton, 2001)

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• fundamental assumption
• if you know someones attitude about an object,
  you can reliably predict their behavior

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• fundamental assumption
• visited 251 restaurants, hotels, and campgrounds
• refused service only once
• wrote to establishments -- 90 said they would
  not accept Chinese patrons

(LaPiere, 1934)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• fundamental assumption
• meta-analysis
• r .30
• revised assumption general attitudes do not
  predict specific behaviors

(Wicker, 1969)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• When, and how, do attitudes influence behavior?
• moderators

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• moderators
• aspects of the situation
• social norms can prevent or facilitate
• time constraints

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• moderators
• aspects of attitudes
• strength (origin)
• specificity

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• principle of compatibility
• attitudes and behaviors should be measured at the
  same level of specificity
• attitude must be compatible with the target
  behavior

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• principle of compatibility

Attitude Use of BCP Birth control in
general r .08 Birth control pills
r .32 Using birth control pills r
.53 Using BCP in the next 2 years r .57
(Davidson Jaccard, 1979)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• principle of aggregation
• by averaging behavior over repeated occasions,
  things that vary from one occasion to another
  tend to cancel out

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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• principle of aggregation
• environmental concerns
• measured petitioning behavior, litter pick-up,
  and recycling behavior -- different times

Attitude Correlation petitioning behavior
r .50 litter pick-up r .36
recycling r .39
(Weigel Newman, 1976)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• principle of aggregation
• environmental concerns
• measured petitioning behavior, litter pick-up,
  and recycling behavior -- different times

Attitude Correlation Behavioral
Index petitioning behavior r .50 litter
pick-up r .36 r
.62 recycling r .39
(Weigel Newman, 1976)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• Theory of Reasoned Action

attitude
intention
behavior
subjective norm
(Fishbein Ajzen, 1980)
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Attitude-Behavior Relationship

• Theory of Planned Behavior

attitude
subjective norm
intention
behavior
perceived control
(Ajzen, 1991)
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Why Do People Hold Certain Attitudes?

• functional approach
• attitudes serve and reflect needs and goals
• I vote because it is an expression of my values
  and civic obligations.

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Why Do People Hold Certain Attitudes?

• different functions of attitudes
• utilitarian
• knowledge
• ego-defensive
• value-expressive
• social-adjustment

(Katz, 1960 Smith et al., 1956)
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Why Do People Hold Certain Attitudes?

• personality as a measure of attitude function
• high self-monitors social-adjustment
• low self-monitors value-expressive

(Snyder DeBono, 1985)
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Why Do People Hold Certain Attitudes?

• personality as a measure of attitude function
• high self-monitors social-adjustment
• low self-monitors value-expressive
• HSM more persuaded by image-related messages
• LSM more persuaded by value/quality-related
  messages

(Snyder DeBono, 1985)
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Why Do People Hold Certain Attitudes?

• The Persuaders
• How can we understand the effectiveness of
  branding from a psychological perspective?

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Conclusion

• attitudes vary in their components and strength
• attitudes can come from various sources
• measuring attitudes can be a difficult endeavor
• important to understand the attitude-behavior
  relationship
• attitudes can serve different needs

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Next Time

• changing attitudes -- processes of persuasion