Social Psychology 320 Lecture 1 Gabriela Ilie Fall 2006 Department of Psychology University of Toronto

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Social Psychology 320Lecture 1Gabriela Ilie
Fall 2006Department of PsychologyUniversity
of Toronto
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Attitude change video clip
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Outline of todays lecture

• What is an attitude definition
• Measurement of Attitudes
• Research methods and designs
• Implicit vs. explicit attitudes (a brief
  introduction)

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What is an attitude?

• A mental disposition to favor (pleasure-pain) or
  oppose (approach-avoidance) certain objects, such
  as individuals, groups of people or social
  policies.
• Thurstone (1931)
• Attitude is the affect for or against a
  psychological object (p.261)

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Attitude Object

• Anything we have an attitude about
• Individual objects (i.e., ice cream),
• Categories (e.g., ice cream flavors),
• Individuals (e.g., me),
• Groups (e.g., students), or
• Abstract ideas (e.g., psychology).

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Attitude Object
We build up models of how we view the world,
based upon our experiences based upon what is
happening in the world.
/- Attitude
Evaluative Responses
Attitude Gay marriages are good Response I
like gay couples
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Video clip
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Video clip 2
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• Jones (one of your readings this week)
• Video clip
• Both make clear the following point
• Values are never completely isolated from the
  other values of the individual or from those held
  by the prevalent society.

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What is an attitude?

• A hypothetical construct, an abstraction (Green,
  1953).
• Attitudes are not directly observable.
• Attitudes are inferred from observable responses.
  The relevant observations here are evaluative
  responses that are elicited by certain perceived
  (real or imagined) stimuli, or occur in close
  conjunction with the perceived (real or imagined)
  attitude object.
• If there is an established tendency to respond in
  a certain way toward an attitude object, the
  person has formed an attitude toward this object.
  

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• You are far too excited about this whats in it
  for you?
• Look at your life failure after failure. What
  do you think this says about you?
• I cant stand that kind of thinking. Why dont
  they go back to their country!
• You are ugly!
• You have such a beautiful mind!
• You are so happy all the time! How can you be so
  happy???

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How do we know that a person is outgoing or
reclusive?
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• We cannot observe traits and attitudes they are
  not a part of a persons physical
  characteristics, nor do we have direct access to
  a persons thoughts and feelings.
• Obvious ways in which values enter
• Not-so-obvious ways in which values enter
• The subjective aspects of science
• Psychological concepts contain hidden values
• There is no bridge from is to ought (the
  naturalistic fallacy)

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Evaluative Responding

• Attitudes develop on the basis of evaluative
  responding.
• We cannot unequivocally conclude that an
  individual holds an attitude until he/she
  responds evaluatively to an AO (attitude
  object).

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Evaluative Responding

• Bad
• Good No Yes
• No Indifference Negative
• Yes Positive Ambivalence

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1. How do we do define attitudes?2. Once
defined how do we measure them? One difficulty
always is our interpretation of the data bias.
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Hypothesis

• A belief or assertion as to the causal
• relationship between two or more variables

What do Canadians think of gay marriages?
A fundamental assumption in our field Social
problems (such as the one above) can be studied
empirically.Let the data decide
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Where do hypotheses come from?

• Current debates in our culture
• Researchers own experiences
• Public, puzzling events
• E.g. The college shutting in Montréal

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Methodological choices

• The identical social problem can be studied in
  different ways
• Choices reflect fundamental values held by
  scientist

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Operational Definitions

• Examples
• Abstract variable operational definition

Self esteem
Questionnaire
Happiness
Facial muscles
Stereotypes
Reaction time
Note some operational definitions are better
than otherswe shall return to this point.
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Validity and the experimental method

• On the market value of experiments
• Three types of validity
• External
• Internal
• Construct

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1. External

• Are the results generalizable across
• Situations
• People (Sears, 1986)
• REPLICATE, REPLICATE, REPLICATE!
• One replication is worth a thousand t-tests

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2. Internal Validity

• Definition Confidence in making a causal link
  between your IV and the DV.
• Avoidance of confounds
• Random assignment
• Absence of demand effects

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3. Construct Validity

• Two related parts
• Are you measuring what you think youre
  measuring?
• Are you manipulating what you think youre
  manipulating?

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Construct validity for measurement of variables

• Abstract variable Concrete measure

?
optimism
questionnaire
?
happiness
Facial muscles
?
stereotypes
Self report RTs

• In this context, CV is defined as the certainty
  with which the abstract variable is being
  accurately measured by the concrete variable.
• Higher certainty higher construct validity

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Construct validity for manipulation of variables

• Similar as before, but here concerned with link
  between abstract variable and its manipulation.

Abstract variable
Concrete manipulation
Randomly assign participants to watch 1 hour of
either Kill Bill or Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
media violence
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Tricks (tools of the trade) used by
experimental social psychologists

• Hard to be completely realistic, but they can try
  to compensate by
• Use of confederates, staging, sometimes
  deception
• Make psychological dynamics as real as possible
  (even though the setting may be artificial)
• Best example Milgram (1963) study!

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• If the experimental method is so great, why
  doesnt everyone use it all the time?

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Other methodologies

• Observational and Archival
• Correlational

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1. Observational methods

• hidden camera or behind the bushes approaches
• Strengths vs. Weaknesses

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Correlational

• Often, through surveys
• advantages
• Main disadvantage Correlation does not equal
  causation
• Note it is not the observation that is being
  challenged, it is the interpretation

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• Interpretation of correlational designs are often
  made more difficult by third variable problems

X
Y
Z
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Some famous goofs in methodology
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• 1936 presidential race
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. Alf Landon

• - Poll by Literary Digest (based on telephone
  surveys) predicts Landon will win
• - Affluent voters tended to be conservative, and
  affluent voters also more likely to have phones
• - Non-representative sample

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History repeats itself in 1948 presidential
electionSame problemtelephone polling
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Are social psychologists influenced by their own
values?
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Automatic Controlled
Two modes of attitude elicitation

• Fastrapid processing of information
• Relatively effortless
• Unintentional
• Difficult to stop
• Slow to change
• Often reflects associative connections
• Doesnt necessarily conform to logical, rational
  thinking

• Relatively slow
• Often guided by logical, propositional thought
• Effortful
• Reason-based

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Why this distinction is important

• On a basic leveltells us something important
  about the architecture of human processing and
  the brain
• Explains several interesting aspects of
  attitudes
• 1. Human beings often think of themselves as
  rational beings largely in control of their own
  actions, but this view is overly flattering
• Automaticity trumps control more often than
  people think
• Sometimes our behavior reflects seemingly
  irrational processes and/or impulses wed rather
  avoid, if we could
• 2. Automaticity plays a large role when the
  available information is scarce and/or ambiguous
• Role of schemas in information processing

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• Frank doesnt consider himself to be biased
  against racial minorities. When he meets an
  African American man on the street, however, he
  finds himself reacting with more anxiety and fear
  than he would if the man were White.
• The CN tower in Toronto has the highest
  observation deck in the world. One small part of
  the deck floor is made out of glass. The glass
  is several feet thick and poses no more danger
  than any other part of the floor. People readily
  know it is perfectly safe, but will still walk
  around it.
• Jean loves chocolate (and is not on a diet). In
  an experiment, she is given a piece of chocolate
  which is shaped to look exactly like dog feces.
  Jean finds it nearly impossible to eat the
  chocolate without gagging.

• Alan goes to a Christmas party and, even though
  he has sworn off chocolate, eats approximately
  1.5 pounds of M Ms.
• A baseball player hits three home runs in July.
  Even though he knows its foolish, he wears the
  same pair of lucky socks he wore that day
  through the end of September.
• Youve been sworn to secrecy not to tell anyone
  about a really juicy gossip about Mary. You see
  Marys best friend at a party, and the next thing
  you know, youve blurted to the friend
  everything you know about the secret.
• Halfway through a professional magicians show,
  the magician appears to show the ability to read
  other peoples minds. You know that ESP is
  completely bogusand still feel that way after
  the show is overbut for a few minutes you cannot
  shake the feeling that youve just witnessed an
  act of ESP.

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Many of the preceding examples illustrate
trumping of automaticity over control
Control
Automaticity
But this raises a larger (and more complex)
questionhow exactly do these systems talk to
one another? And, what are the conditions under
which control and automaticity work together, as
opposed to in opposition with each other?
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How do we know if someone has a positive attitude
towards gay marriages?
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Indicators of Attitudes

• Behavior (She eats it)
• Affective reaction (She likes eating it)
• Self-Report (She tells us she likes it)
• Peer-Report (Her mom tells us)
• Physiological Measures (heart rate?)

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Birth of Attitude Measurement
Attitudes can be measured!

• Louis Thurstone (1928) attitudes can be measured
  scientifically
• Applied methods of psychophysics to attitudes.

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Behavioral Indicators

• Head movement
• When people listen to messages they agree with,
  they tend to move their heads vertically (nod)
  more than horizontally (shake).

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Behavioral Indicators

• Eye Contact
• Affiliative Conflict Theory - people who like
  each other are more intimate and engage in more
  intimate behaviors like eye contact.
• Therefore If two people like each other, (
  attitude) they will make more eye contact than if
  they do not like each other (- attitude).

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Behavioral Indicators

• Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
• Drop in the resistance of the skin to the passage
  of a weak electric current indicative of emotion
  or physiological arousal (usually measured in the
  palm of the hand).

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Are emotional responses related to attitudes?
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Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)

• Presentation of pleasant words (e.g., love) -gt
  increase individuals GSRs (i.e., greater than to
  neutral).
• Same responses with unpleasant words (e.g.,
  rape).
• But, not with neutral words (e.g., chair) were
  presented to the participants, their GSRs
  remained neutral.

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• What does it mean?

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Wink Wink!

• Does the size of a persons pupils reflect an
  attitude?
• Study on the pupillary responses of pedophiles to
  pictures of nude adult women vs. girls.
• Their responses were compared to the pupillary
  responses of regular criminals.

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Wink Wink

• Results
• Pedophiles eyes dilated more when they viewed
  the pictures of nude girls compared to nude
  women.
• The control group (other criminals) showed the
  opposite reaction.
• But
• Failure to replicate these results.
• Pupil responds to other features of stimuli other
  than positive or negative attitudes (cognitive
  effort ? dilation).

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Facial Electromyographic Recording (EMG)

• Electrical recording of muscle activity in the
  facial region obtained by placing electrodes on
  the face.
• Measurement of the muscles needed to smile
  (zygomatic) and frown (corrugator).

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Indirect Methods
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Indirect Methods

• Self-report measures of attitudes vs. other
  paper-pencil evalutions.
• Self-report refers exclusively to direct tests of
  attitudes when a respondent is aware that his or
  her attitude is assessed.

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Indirect Methods

• Error-choice method -gt attitudes may distort our
  cognitions (Hammond,1948).
• False consensus effect - tendency to
  overestimate the number of people who share your
  beliefs and attitudes (Fabrigar Krosnick,1995).

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Indirect Methods

• Thistlewaite (1950) used content-driven errors in
  syllogistic reasoning to study attitudes
  (syllogism -gt conclusion based on 2 premises).
• Example
• All white people are dumb.
• All dumb people should be sterilized.
• Therefore, all white people should be sterilized.

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Indirect Methods

• People are less critical to accept conclusions
  that are consistent with their attitudes - They
  expect that the reasoning is correct (because
  congruent with their position).

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Indirect Methods

• Example
• If students are intrinsically motivated to learn,
  then testing can be abandoned.
• If students are intrinsically motivated, then
  learning will increase.
• Therefore, learning will increase when testing is
  abandoned.

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Indirect Methods

• People like others who share similar attitudes
  (Hendrick and Seyfried,1974).
• Questionnaires allegedly completed by other
  people, and asked respondents how much they liked
  this individual.

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The Lost Letter Technique

• Milgram dispersed stamped and addressed envelopes
  in public places (i.e., appeared to have been
  lost by someone).
• The letters were addressed to different
  organizations including UNICEF and Nazi groups.
• Rationale Mailing rates (how many letters were
  mailed) is indicative of positive attitude.

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Scales Self-Reports
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Scaling

• Scales focus on a continuum from very negative to
  very positive attitudes. Determine where on the
  continuum the attitudes of individuals fall.
• Core assumption one can measure phenomena by
  assigning numbers /value on the basis of
  rules/guidelines.
• Measures can have up to 20-30 questions on one
  attitude object.

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One-Item Scale

• Question that asks how positively or negatively
  one feels about the AO.
• Used in surveys and in experiments because they
• Do a sufficiently good job of measuring certain
  attitudes,
• Avoid redundancy
• Are extremely brief (cost-efficient)

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One-Item Scale
Thermometer scale - how warmly one feels
towards the attitude object.
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Construction of an Attitude Scale

• Creating a set of items (statements about the
  attitude object).
• Determine the location of the items on an
  evaluative dimension.
• Administer the scale to a sample of respondents
  and verify that respondents interpreted the items
  as intended.

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Creation of good items

1. Clarity of Attitude Object (i.e., ice cream vs.
   eating ice cream).
2. Clarity about the Attitude Component (e.g.,
   evaluation, beliefs, affect).
3. Clarity of statement (e.g., avoid double
   negatives, use simple language).
4. Check clarity using Belson (1968) rewriting
   method.

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Thurstones Method of Equal-Appearing Intervals

1. Panel of judges sort possible items into groups
   (positive, negative, neutral) - theorized to be
   equidistant.
2. Items used in the final scale are those with the
   highest level of agreement among the judges.
3. Respondents are then asked to state if they agree
   with each of the statements. Attitude scores
   consist of the average value of the items agreed
   with.

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Bogarduss Social Distance Scale

• Attitudes towards members of social or ethnic
  groups.
• Rationale - ones liking for a group is reflected
  in the social distance deemed acceptable (in
  relationship with members of the group).
• Respondents score closest distance at which
  the relationship is seen as acceptable.

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Continuum of Social Distance

• Would exclude from my country.
• Would accept as visitor only to my country.
• Would accept to citizenship to my country.
• Would accept for employment in my occupation in
  my country.
• Would accept to my street as neighbors.
• Would accept to my club as personal chums.
• Would accept close kinship by marriage.

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Likerts Method of Summated Ratings

• Items based on theoretical understanding of the
  construct (attitude toward the Attitude Object) -
  Does not require pre-sorting/evaluation by a
  panel of judges.
• Respondents indicate the extent to which they
  endorse the statements (e.g., agree / disagree).
• Each response option is assigned a value (e.g.,
  -2 to 2 1 to 7). Individuals score is the sum
  of answers across all items.
• Scale homogeneity items-items and items-global
  score correlations (not necessarily
  correlations).

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Osgoods Semantic Differential

• Measures the connotative meaning of the attitude
  object.
• Bipolar scales
• good ________________________ bad
• Score - average of the ratings.

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Osgoods Semantic Differential

• Three elements of meaning to all concepts
• Evaluation (good/bad),
• Potency (strong/weak)
• Activity (active/passive).
• most relevant to attitudes.

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Osgoods Semantic Differential

• Advantage ability to compare attitudes towards
  different objects because it uses identical
  items.
• Disadvantage Bipolar response format (all or
  nothing).
• Solution?? .
• An interview face to face?

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Problems with verbal report

1. Participants may be unwilling to report their
   real attitudes because they are socially
   unacceptable (i.e., social desirability).
2. We may have some attitudes of which we are
   unaware and over focus on a single
   instance/situation.
3. Participants response styles can affect their
   answers (acquiescence or polarization).

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Problems of Self-Report Measures

• How to control validity (response sets)?
• Social Desirability Scales
• Bogus Pipeline Paradigm
• Anonymous vs. non-anonymous reports.
• The bogus-pipeline procedure is effective in
  obtaining more honest responses.

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Number of Items

• Important to realize that the more items on a
  scale, the more reliable (replicable) the
  measurement.
• Many items reduce the chances that the attitude
  score is due to error or chance.
• On the other hand, multiple items can focus on
  different aspects of the attitude (i.e., lack of
  homogeneity - scale no longer measures one
  concept, but two or more.

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• Even when the scale is homogeneous, the
  instrument can be fastidious, time consuming
  and/or redundant.
• Researchers usually use multiple indicators when
  inferring attitudes i.e., Reduce measurement
  error and increase objectivity.

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• See you next week!