Attitudes and Attitude Change

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Attitudes and Attitude Change
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Attitudes Attitudes are lasting, general
evaluations of people, objects, or issues. They
operate like schemas to organize information and
guide behavior.
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The ABC Model of Attitudes Attitudes have three
components Affect
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Affective reactions can be both positive and
negative for the same attitude object.
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Subtle changes in the facial muscles can be used
to detect positive and negative reactions to
attitude objects.
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The ABC Model of Attitudes Attitudes have three
components Affect Behavior (or behavioral
intent) Cognition
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• Where Do We Get Our Attitudes?
• Classical Conditioning

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• Where Do We Get Our Attitudes?
• Classical Conditioning
• Instrumental Conditioning
• Observational Learning
• Social Comparison
• Direct Experience
• Genetics

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Do Attitudes Predict Behavior? Overall, the
correlation between attitudes and behavior is
surprisingly small, about .30. This means that
attitudes appear to account for less than 10 of
variability in behavior. Why isnt the relation
stronger? A number of things moderate the
strength of the attitude-behavior relation.
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• Aspects of the Situation
• Sometimes, features of the situation prevent us
  from expressing our attitudes
• Situational norms
• Time pressure

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• Aspects of the Attitudes
• Sometimes, features of the attitudes determine
  the strength of the attitude-behavior link
• Origin of the attitude (direct experience)
• Attitude strength (importance, intensity,
  knowledge, accessibility)
• Specificity

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• Aspects of the Individual
• Some people exhibit more attitude-behavior
  consistency
• Self-Monitoring

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Is it true that image is everything? It
certainly is more important for high
self-monitors.
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• Aspects of the Individual
• Some people exhibit more attitude-behavior
  consistency
• Self-Monitoring
• Private Self-Consciousness

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How Do Attitudes Influence Behavior? One
prominent theory is called the Theory of Planned
Behavior
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The Theory of Planned Behavior reminds us that
attitudes compete with other causes in
determining how we will behave. Sometime social
pressures can be more important. Sometimes
situations have barriers that prevent us from
carrying out a behavior consistent with our
attitudes.
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• Persuasion Who says what to whom?
• Communicator expertise and trust

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Highly publicized events can alter perceptions of
trust. What recent events might alter these
results if the same survey were conducted today?
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Negative political advertising often targets the
trustworthiness of opponents.
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The 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns were
memorable for there attacks on Clintons
trustworthiness and integrity. . .
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Sometimes we can forget who said something. This
can produce the sleeper effect, a delayed
impact for a message.
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• Persuasion Who says what to whom?
• Communicator expertise and trust
• Communicator attractiveness

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• Persuasion Who says what to whom?
• Communicator expertise and trust
• Communicator attractiveness
• Communicator ulterior motive
• Speed of speech
• Message repetition

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• Message Repetition The Magic Number 3?
• Research supports the importance of message
  repetition, but with two important
  qualifications
• The initial response to the message or
  product must be neutral or positive
• Too much repetition can be harmful

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Message RepetitionThe Magic Number 3? The
underlying mechanism is that repetition leads to
familiarity and familiarity leads to
liking. Repetition Familiarity
Liking We need not be aware of the repeated
exposure for repetition to have an effect.
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Research on the subliminal effects of repeated
exposure has led to other work on automatic
attitude change. Murphy and Zajonc (1993) showed
participants Chinese ideographs for 2 seconds and
then asked them how much they liked the
appearance of each one. Unbeknownst to the
participants, the ideographs were preceded by
stimuli that were flashed too quickly (4
milliseconds) for participants to notice
consciously.
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Participants liked the ideographs more when they
were preceded by positive subliminal
stimuli.
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So, does subliminal advertising really work? The
issue has been a controversial one since 1950s. A
movie theater in New Jersey claimed to have
secretly flashed Eat popcorn and Drink Coke
on the screen during intermission. It was claimed
that Coke sales increased 18 and popcorn sales
increased 58 over a 6-week period.
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Public reaction was swift. The New Yorker claimed
that minds had been broken and entered
(September 21, 1957, p. 33) and the Nation called
it the most alarming and outrageous discovery
since Mr. Gatling invented his gun (October 5,
1957, p. 206). Subliminal messages on radio and
television were banned by the Federal
Communications Commission.
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The issue has been so commonly discussed that
advertisers even poke fun at themselves . . .
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But, does it work? Only in the laboratory, under
highly controlled conditions. Even then, the
effects are weak and not very specific. That
doesnt keep people from trying . . .
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Bush Campaign Ad 2000
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Gore Response
Bush Response
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• Persuasion Who says what to whom?
• Communicator expertise and trust
• Communicator attractiveness
• Communicator ulterior motive
• Speed of speech
• Message repetition
• One versus two-sided messages
• Distraction

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Fear Appeals Can people be scared into changing
their attitudes? This idea has been around for
quite a while. This ad appeared in 1936 . . .
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Fear Appeals They are still used today . . .
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In 1964, Johnson and Goldwater waged one of the
most controversial presidential battles in their
the use of fear appeals . . .
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Later political fear appeals were more subtle . .
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Later political fear appeals were more subtle . .
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The 1988 presidential campaign produced some
especially memorable negative ads . . .
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Political fear appeals will often take the same
basic facts and present them differently . . .
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More recent fear appeals return to some older
themes and add new ones to reflect new threats.
The Living Room Candidate
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• Fear Appeals
• Fear appeals can work but they must attend to
  four important problems
• They must not induce too much fear

Attention
Arousal
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• They must increase the targets perceived
  vulnerability
• They must suggest a clear path to prevention
  (response efficacy)
• They must suggest easy enactment of the
  prevention behavior (self-efficacy)

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Two Routes to Persuasion The Elaboration
Likelihood Model (ELM) According to the ELM,
sometimes we respond to persuasion with
deliberate, careful, effortful consideration of
the arguments. At other times, due to limited
cognitive resources, we process the persuasive
arguments quite superficially.
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When we process persuasive message carefully
through the central route, the quality of the
arguments matters. When we process persuasive
messages superficially through the peripheral
route, argument quality is less important. We
instead are influenced by less demanding cues
(e.g., number of arguments, attractiveness of
communicator, speaking style).
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The ELM provides a useful model for explaining
the role played by many other factors that
moderate persuasion.
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Petty, Cacciopo, and Goldman (1981) found that
the impact of argument strength and source
expertise depended on audience involvement
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Bless et al. (1990) found that people put in a
sad mood were more likely to pay attention to
argument strength . . .
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Some people habitually use the central route.
Score the Need for Cognition Scale. 1. Reverse
your scores for items 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 13,
14, 15, and 18 (i.e., subtract your rating
from 6) . 2. Add up all 18 ratings. The higher
your score, the higher your need for cognition,
and the more likely you are to scrutinize the
quality of persuasive arguments.
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• Attitude Functions
• Attitudes serve many purposes and knowledge of
  those purposes can be crucial to the success of a
  persuasive attempt.
• Knowledge function (organize information)
• Self-identity function (values)
• Self-esteem function (image)

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Are Advertisers Aware of Persuasion Principles?
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• Resistance to Persuasion
• Sometimes attempts at persuasion fail
• Reactance
• Forewarning and Counterarguing

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Edwards and Smith (1996) examined participant
responses to a number of arguments about social
issues. Participants were not at all passive when
they read attitude discrepant messages.
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• Resistance to Persuasion
• Sometimes attempts at persuasion fail
• Reactance
• Forewarning and Counterarguing
• Selective Avoidance
• Biased Assimilation

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Cognitive Dissonance One other route to attitude
change can occur when we act in ways that are
counter to an attitude we hold. According to
Festingers cognitive
dissonance theory, when one cognition is
inconsistent with another cognition, the
resulting discomfort motivates us to find a way
to restore cognitive balance or consistency.
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We wont change our attitude unless we have to.
We follow the path of least resistance . . .
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Other conditions are necessary as well . . .
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Responsibility is especially important. For
cognitive dissonance to occur, we must freely
engage in the behavior that is inconsistent with
a pre-existing attitude. If
we are forced to engage in the behavior, there is
no real inconsistency and so no discomfort to
reduce.
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• Some implications of cognitive dissonance
• Insufficient justification

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• Some implications of cognitive dissonance
• Insufficient justification
• Hypocrisy

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Aronson et al. used cognitive dissonance to
reduce water use through a hypocrisy
manipulation. Four groups were created Mindful
participants were asked to complete a survey that
highlighted their poor water use. A sample
question was do you always turn off the water
while soaping up? Commitment participants were
asked to sign a petition that contained the
following statement Take shorter showers. Turn
the water off while soaping up. If I can do it,
so can you! Hypocrisy participants completed the
survey and signed the petition. Control
participants neither completed the survey nor
signed the petition.
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• Some implications of cognitive dissonance
• Insufficient justification
• Hypocrisy
• Post-decision regret and selective exposure
• Therapy effectiveness

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Three Claims Made By Festinger Dissonance is an
arousing, aversive, and necessary condition for
attitude change. Is it?

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• The Memory Paradigm
• Measure attitudes
• Participants take part in a study
  investigating the effects of drugs on memory
• While drugs take effect, participants are
  asked to write a counterattitudinal essay
• Attitudes measured again

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Is Dissonance Arousing?

Zanna and Cooper manipulated choice and side
effect information to test if dissonance is
arousing. Some participants were given a choice
about writing the essay others were told they
had to do it. After being given the drug
(actually a placebo), some participants were told
it would make them feel aroused, others were
told it would make them feel relaxed, and
others were told there would be no side effects.
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Is Dissonance Aversive?

In this study, all participants were given high
choice in writing the essay, but the side effect
information was expanded to test more carefully
the nature of the arousing experience. Is it
really aversive? Some participants were given no
information about side effects. Some were told to
expect no side effects. Others were told the drug
would make them feel tense. Others were told
the drug would make them feel pleasant
excitement.
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Is Arousal Necessary? In a final study,
researchers investigated if arousal was a
necessary part of the dissonance process. In this
study, all participants were told that they were
in the placebo group. In fact, some were given
placebos but others were given a tranquilizer or
amphetamines. Some participants wrote the essay
under high choice conditions and some wrote the
essay under low choice conditions.

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Cognitive dissonance provides a good explanation
for attitude change that follows behaviors that
deviate considerably from a prior attitude. Those
would be expected to cause arousal. But, what
about behaviors that deviate just a little? Those
also produce attitude change but do not cause
arousal. Self-perception theory provides a good
explanation.
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Tomorrows test . . .
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1. One way to avoid the problem of confounding
variables in an experiment is to (a) get
different measures of the dependent
variable (b) hold non-experimental variables
constant across conditions (c)
get different measures of the independent
variable (d) include as many
independent variables as possible
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2. When two variables are found to be
correlated, one could cause the other, or (a) a
third variable could be causing them both (b)
they might not really be related (c) the
independent variable may be
indistinguishable from the dependent
variable (d) they might both be the cause of a
third variable
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3. The reason that microexpressions are useful
in detecting deception among others is that (a)
the opposite of the expression is usually what
the other person is really
feeling (b) the minuscule twitches in the hands
of people who are lying are not
the same as the twitches that
occur during nervousness (c) they reflect true
emotion, and are hard to
suppress (d) they are a form of interchannel
discrepancy
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4. The reason that people are liable to
overemphasize internal influences on the behavior
of others is because they (a) regard their own
actions as internally
motivated (b) regard their own actions as
externally motivated (c) tend
to observe the actions of the other
person, not the circumstances around it (d)
know less about other people, and thus are
more likely to perceive noncommon
effects in their behavior
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5. The representativeness heuristic is used by
people to make decisions about others (a)
based on the ease of recall of salient
characteristics from memory (b) based on
early information which tends to
have a primacy effect (c) based on certain
characteristics that they
possess which are assumed to be
representative of that person (d) based on
their perceived similarity to
members of a particular group
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6. Mike received an A on his social psychology
exam on Monday. He previously received C's on
his other social psychology exams. No one else
received an A on the social psychology exam.
Mike received A's on his physics, economics, and
history exams on Monday. What is the most likely
cause for Mike's performance (a) Mike is smart
(person attribution) (b) Social psychology is
easy (target attribution) (c) Mike is
particularly good at social psychology
(person and target attribution) (d) Mike
had a particularly good day on Monday
(person and situation attribution)
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7. Fast talkers are more effective at persuading
an audience if the audience is initially (a)
attentive (b) hostile (c) non-attentive (d)
all male