Chapter 7 - Attitudes, Beliefs, and Consistency

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Chapter 7 - Attitudes, Beliefs, and Consistency

• What Are Attitudes and Why Do People Have Them?
• How Attitudes Are Formed?
• Consistency
• Do Attitudes Really Predict Behavior?
• Beliefs and Believing

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Attitudes and Beliefs

• Attitudes
• Global evaluations toward some object or issue
• Beliefs
• Information about something facts or opinions

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Attitude

• Attitude one's evaluative orientation toward a
  person, thing, idea, etc.
• Do you like Shredded Wheat?
• Do you prefer lecture course or seminars?
• What's your favorite Friday evening activity?
• Is Seinfeld funny?

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Three Parts of Attitudes

• Cognitive
• Our knowledge of the attitude target
• Affective
• Our feelings or beliefs toward the attitude
  target
• Behavioral
• Our intention to act toward the attitude target

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Dual Attitudes

• Different evaluations of the same target
• Implicit attitude
• Automatic evaluative response
• Explicit attitude
• Conscious evaluative response

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Dual Attitudes

• Some attitudes are not shared with others
• Stigma
• We may not be aware of all our own attitudes
• We may unconsciously dislike something we
  consciously like.

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Measuring Attitudes

• Self-Report Measures
• Open Ended Scales
• Likert Scales
• Issues with Self-Report
• Reliability / Validity
• Assumes you know your attitudes
• Ambivalent Attitudes
• Self-Report Biases

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Non-Verbal Measures

• Behavioral Measures Overt behavior to infer
  attitude
• Physiological Measures Arousal and muscle
  action
• Implicit Attitudes Reaction time

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Implicit Association Test (IAT)

• Measures implicit attitudes
• Those we are unwilling or unable to report
• Attitudes about stigmatized groups

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Why People Have Attitudes

• Attitudes help us deal with complex world
• Attitudes are evaluations (like or dislike)
• Initial evaluations are immediate and unconscious
• Attitudes are helpful in making choices
• Two Functions
• Object Appraisal
• Value-Expressive

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Attitude Formation

• Genetic
• Affective
• Cognitive
• Behavioral

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Attitude Formation - Genetic

• Genetic
• Tesser (1993) believed that some attitudes are
  heritable.
• Some possibilities
• Sensory
• Body Chemistry
• Intelligence

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Attitude Formation - Affective

• Mere-exposure effect - Zajonc (1968)
• Repeated exposure increases liking for an object
• Exception - If you dislike something initially,
  repeated exposure will not change that attitude

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Attitude Formation - Affective

• Classical Conditioning
• Can form both explicit and implicit attitudes
• Develop a positive attitude toward the
  conditioned stimulus
• Helps explain prejudiced attitudes
• Negative information in the media linked to
  social groups
• Advertisers link celebrities and products

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Attitude Formation - Affective

• Operant Conditioning
• Develop a positive attitude toward something
  being reinforced
• Social Learning
• Learn attitudes acceptable through observation
  (Bobo Dolls)

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Attitude Formation - Cognitive

• Evaluation of the merits of an object
• Polarization - Attitudes become more extreme as
  we think about them
• Especially true in strong initial attitude
• Evaluate evidence in a biased manner
• Accept evidence that confirms attitude
• Accept evidence from ingroup members

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Attitude Formation - Behavioral

• Bems Self-Perception Theory
• At work when we dont have a well-defined
  attitude
• If I said it, it must be true
• If I ate it, I must like it
• We are making an attribution about our behavior.

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Consistency

• Commonalities in theories about consistency
• Specify conditions required for consistency and
  inconsistency
• Assume inconsistency is unpleasant
• Specify conditions required to restore consistency

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Balance Theory

• P-O-X Theory
• Person Other Person Attitude Object
• Relationships among P-O-X
• Unit relationships Things that belong together
• Sentiment relationships Liking or Disliking
  (Attitudes)

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Balance Theory

• Individuals prefer balanced to unbalanced
• Jim likes Sally (P O)
• Jim is a vegetarian and dislikes eating meat (P -
  X)
• Jim believes Sally to dislike meat (O - X).
• What happens when Jim realizes Sally likes to eat
  meat?

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Balance Theory
balanced (consistent) psychological states
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imbalanced (inconsistent) psychological states
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Balance Theory

• When we are balance, there is not need to change.
• I don't like John.
• John has a dog.
• I don't like the dog either.
• When we are unbalanced, we are motivated to
  change
• "I love my child.
• She made this ashtray.
• I hate the ashtray."

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Cognitive dissonance refers to unpleasant state
  when attitude and behavior are inconsistent
• If there is an inconsistency between thoughts,
  you will feel an unpleasant state of arousal
  (i.e., cognitive dissonance) as a result.
• Causes people to rationalize their behavior and
  bring their attitude into line with actions
• Festinger Carlson (1959)

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Festinger Carlson (1959)
• Stage 1
• First, participants were asked to twist wooden
  pegs placed in a board for 30 minutes.
• Second, participants were asked to put spools of
  thread on to pegs and take them off again for 30
  minutes.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Festinger Carlsmith (1959)
• Stage 2
• Participants were told that to test the effects
  of motivation in this study tell the next
  participant that the study was enjoyable and fun.
• Two experimental groups.
• Group A paid 1.00 for doing the briefing.
• Group B paid 20.00 for doing the briefing.
• Then, after they talked to the next participant,
  the participants were asked how they felt about
  the study.

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Festinger Carlsmith (1959) Results
Step 1 Step 2 Payment Step 3 Evaluation of Task enjoyment
All participants do the boring task, and then were asked to tell next participants about task. Group A, Lie Paid 1.00 23.5
All participants do the boring task, and then were asked to tell next participants about task. Group B,Lie Paid 20.00 9.8
All participants do the boring task, and then were asked to tell next participants about task. Group C, No lie No pay 5.9
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Traditional models of decision making Operant
Conditioning
Choices should be driven by future consequences,
not past expenditures

• Operant Conditioning suggest the bigger the
  reinforcer, the more likely someone is to change
  their Attitude.
• Cognitive Dissonance theory/research shows that
  Attitudes are changed more when reinforcer is
  less.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Effort Justification
• Aronson Mills, 1959
• People seek to justify and rationalize any
  suffering or effort they have made

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Effort JustificationInitiation rites Aronson
Mills (1959)

• Three screening conditions
• Control (e.g. chair, table, sad, book)
• Mild (e.g. prostitute, virgin)
• Extreme (obscene words--sorry, I cant put these
  up!)
• All participants then listen to sample tape of
  discussion group
• Discussion is horribly boring! (pre-tested)
• Dependent variable expressed liking for the
  discussion group and desire to join

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Example

• You and a companion plan to go skiing at a
  resort. You each have paid 100 dollars for lift
  tickets and rental. When you arrive, the
  conditions are horribleits cold, icy, and even
  the best lifts are not operating because of the
  wind. In addition, you both feel lousy
  physically and out of sorts psychologically.
• Your companion turns to you and says, Its too
  bad that the money is not refundable, wed have a
  much better time back home, relaxing in front of
  the fire. But I cant afford to waste 100
  dollars.
• You agree. But you also both agree that its
  unlikely that you will have a better time
  struggling with the bad conditions on the slopes,
  compared to being inside.
• What do you do? Stay and ski, or go home?

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Paid 100 dollars for tickets and equipment
(decrease in net assets by 100)
Give up and go home
Decision?
Stay and ski
Staying at home feels aversive, because of the
sense that you have wasted the 100 dollars.
However, the past expenditure is irrelevant to
your decision, because it is a constant in both
cases.
Better day at home (minus 100 dollars)
Lousy day skiing (minus 100 dollars)
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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• While people have desire to be consistent in
  their own private mind, they have stronger desire
  to be viewed consistent by others
• Self-presentation plays a role in cognitive
  dissonance

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Consistency

• Drive for consistency
• Rooted in our biology
• Strengthened by learning and socialization
• Consistency involves both automatic and conscious
  parts of the mind

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Do Attitudes Really Predict Behavior?
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Attacking Attitudes

• Wicker (1969) argued against Allport and
  suggested we abandon the study of Attitudes.
• Review of attitude-behavior studies (approx 50
  studies)
• Average correlation r .30
• of variance in behavior explained 9 (r2)
• Link between attitudes and behavior is weak.
• A B Problem
• Inconsistency between attitude (A) and behavior
  (B)

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When do Attitudes predict behavior?

• Predictions of behavior based on attitudes is
  best when
• Measures of attitude are very specific
• Behaviors are aggregated over time and situations
  (not one situation)
• Attitudes are consciously prominent and influence
  thought regarding the choice (priming)
• Attitudes are easily accessible

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What else influences Behavior
Personality traits Ability Motivation Attitude Hab
it Needs Social pressure Other attitudes
Behavior
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Examples

• Personality
• Self-monitoring (Snyder Swann, 1976)
• Private self-consciousness (Scheier et al., 1978)
• Need for cognition (Cacioppo et al., 1986)

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Self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974)

• Concern for social appropriateness
• Sensitive to self-presentation of others
• Used as guidelines for monitoring own
  self-presentation
• Two components of self-monitoring
• Interest in social information
• Ability to control self-presentation

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Self-monitoring and attitude-behavior
correlations

• High self-monitors have lower attitude-behavior
  correlations
• Their behavior is less reflective of their actual
  attitudes more in line with what they think is
  socially appropriate