Attitudes

Gordon Allport: (1935) 'The concept of attitude is probably the most

distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American social
psychology.'
Attitudes are evaluations people make about objects, ideas, events, or other people. Attitudes can be positive or
negative. Explicit attitudes are conscious beliefs that can guide decisions and behavior. Implicit attitudes are
unconscious beliefs that can still influence decisions and behavior. Attitudes can include up to three components:
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.
Example: Jane believes that smoking is unhealthy, feels disgusted when people smoke around her, and avoids
being in situations where people smoke.
Dimensions of Attitudes
Researchers study three dimensions of attitude: strength, accessibility, and ambivalence.
Attitude strength: Strong attitudes are those that are firmly held and that highly influence behavior. Attitudes
that are important to a person tend to be strong. Attitudes that people have a vested interest in also tend to be
strong. Furthermore, people tend to have stronger attitudes about things, events, ideas, or people they have
considerable knowledge and information about.
Attitude accessibility: The accessibility of an attitude refers to the ease with which it comes to mind. In
general, highly accessible attitudes tend to be stronger.
Attitude ambivalence: Ambivalence of an attitude refers to the ratio of positive and negative evaluations that
make up that attitude. The ambivalence of an attitude increases as the positive and negative evaluations get
more and more equal.


Attitude Change
Researchers have proposed three theories to account for attitude change: learning theory, dissonance theory, and
the elaboration likelihood model.
Learning Theory
Learning theory says that attitudes can be formed and changed through the use of learning principles such as
classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning:
Classical conditioning: The emotional component of attitudes can be formed through classical conditioning.
For example, in a billboard ad, a clothing company pairs a sweater with an attractive model who elicits a
pleasant emotional response. This can make people form a positive attitude about the sweater and the
clothing company.
Operant conditioning: If someone gets a positive response from others when she expresses an attitude, that
attitude will be reinforced and will tend to get stronger. On the other hand, if she gets a negative response from
others, that attitude tends to get weaker.
Observational learning: Seeing others display a particular attitude and watching people be reinforced for
expressing a particular attitude can make someone adopt those attitudes.
Dissonance Theory
Leon Festingers dissonance theory proposes that people change their attitudes when they have attitudes that are
inconsistent with each other. Festinger said that people experience cognitive dissonance when they have related
cognitions that conflict with one another. Cognitive dissonance results in a state of unpleasant tension. People try to
reduce the tension by changing their attitudes.
Example: Sydney is against capital punishment. She participates in a debate competition and is assigned to a team
that has to argue for capital punishment. Subsequently, she is more amenable to the idea of capital punishment.
The phenomenon called justification of effort also results from cognitive dissonance. Justification of effort refers to
the idea that if people work hard to reach a goal, they are likely to value the goal more. They justify working hard by
believing that the goal is valuable.
The Elaboration Likelihood Model
The elaboration likelihood model holds that attitude change is more permanent if the elaborate and thought-provoking
persuasive messages are used to change the attitude. Basically, if someone can provide a thorough, thought-
provoking persuasive message to change an attitude, he is more likely to succeed than if he provides a neutral or
shallow persuasive message.
Example: Ten teenagers who smoke are sent to an all-day seminar on the negative consequences of smoking. Many
of the students subsequently give up the habit.
Attitudes and actions are very closely related, and are often consistent, because they influence each
other in both superficial and deliberate ways. How actions influence attitudes depends on the level of
processing: people can make simple action-to-attitude inferences (usually through self-perception
processes), or can make deeper considerations of the implications of their actions (through cognitive
dissonance processes). Self-perception theory states that actions influence attitudes because
people infer their attitudes by observing their own behavior and the situations in which their behavior
occurs.
The foot-in-the-door technique works when people process information superficially; it gets people to
perform a small act consistent with an intended larger goal. As long as the initial request seems
meaningful and voluntary, this makes people infer that they hold attitudes consistent with that
behavior, and makes them subject to further influences. When people become aware that their freely
chosen actions violate important or relevant attitudes, this inconsistency produces an uncomfortable
state of arousal called cognitive dissonance, which motivates them to change their initial attitudes to
make them consistent with their behavior, or to increase the value they place on a goal, and to
emphasize the positive aspects of the chosen option.
Established attitudes can guide behavior in two ways: superficially, and in a more considered way.
Attitudes can bias people's perceptions of attitude objects, because they focus attention on the
consistent characteristics of an object. This bias process increases the likelihood that people's
behavior will be consistent with their attitude in a direct way: people respond to the object qualities
most salient to them, and behave in attitude-consistent ways. Attitudes can also influence behavior
in more considered ways by prompting intentions, which trigger plans to act in certain ways.
ATTITUDE
a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, exhibited in one's beliefs, feelings, or intended behavior
political attitudes; attitudes about smoking, jogging, and other activities
the A B C's of attitudes
Affect
"Snakes make me anxious."
Behavior
"I scream whenever I see a snake."
Cognition
"I know that snakes control the rodent population."
These 3 components tend to be consistent.
"Smoking makes me nervous." (affect)
"I don't smoke." (behavior)
o (and I try to avoid passive smoke, too)
"Smoking causes cancer." (cognition)
(but as we know, behavior isn't always consistent with what we think and feel)
Psychological Functions of Attitudes
TYPE OF ATTITUDE: Utilitarian
TYPE OF ATTITUDE: Knowledge
TYPE OF ATTITUDE: Ego defense
TYPE OF ATTITUDE: Value expression
DO ATTITUDES DETERMINE BEHAVIOR?
Are We All Hypocrites?
Attitudes do not predict behaviors very well. Neither do other internal characteristics (personality traits).
For example, according to the Roper polling organization, 92% of Americans believe that pollution is a moderate or very serious
threat, yet fewer than half do anything beyond recycling bottles or cans.
LaPiere's classic study of racial discrimination also shows attitude-behavior inconsistency. [Details given in lecture.]
Another example: By a margin of 3 to 1, Americans agree that "people should volunteer some of their time to help other people."
When asked about their volunteer activity in the previous month, little more than 1/3 report any activity at all, and very few report
spending more than an hour a week in volunteering.
The correlation between measured attitudes and behavior is often only about .40 to .50.
Some reasons for the low correlation between attitudes and behavior:
situational constraints on behavior
behaviors are multidetermined
error in measurement of attitude
change in attitude between assessment of attitude and behavior
difference in level of specificity of attitude and behavior measurement
attitudes formed based on other than behavior experience with the attitude are less valid predictors of future behavior
individual differences in attitude-behavior consistency
Behavior is better predicted from external, situational variables.
(which must bring great pleasure to social psychologists!)
When Do Attitudes Predict Behavior?
Minimizing Social Influences on Expressed Attitudes
bogus pipeline
Minimizing Other Influences on Behavior
averaging across situations
Examining Attitudes Specific to the Behavior
measuring specific (rather than general) attitudes
Making Attitudes Potent
Bring attitudes to mind.
Make people self-conscious (e.g., mirrors).
Personal experience leads to more potent attitudes.
When Does Behavior Determine Attitudes?
examples from hypnosis, brain stimulation, and split-brain research
We can pass laws about behavior.
Role Playing
role: actions expected of those who occupy a particular social position
Work roles (supervisor vs. shop steward) influence attitudes (Lieberman's study).
When Saying Becomes Believing
Statements are influenced by the expected audience.
Repeated statements influence beliefs.
The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
foot-in-the-door
low-ball technique
small commitments followed by bigger ones
Evil Acts and Attitudes
Actions influence the actor (e.g., attitude changes to blame the victim).
Good actions also influence the actor (e.g., resisting temptation produces moral attitudes).
Interracial Behavior and Racial Attitudes
Laws change behavior (desegregation), which changes attitudes.
Social Movements
Flag salutes, demonstrations, and other behaviors influence attitudes.
Brainwashing
o Begin with demands for minor behaviors; larger impact follows.
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
self-presentation (impression management)
self-justification (cognitive dissonance)
self-perception
Self-Presentation: Impression Management
self-monitoring
high: change with situations
low: behavior consistent with attitude
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger)
What are "cognitions" in cognitive dissonance theory?
cognitions = attitudes, beliefs, or thoughts about behaviors
Cognitions may be related to other cognitions by being
irrelevant
consonant
dissonant
Inconsistency produces dissonance.
for example, inconsistency between behavior and cognition
cognitive dissonance is experienced as tension, and it motivates change
Dissonance influences behavior.
behavior may (or may not) change
Insufficient Justification
Festinger & Carlsmith study [graph in Myers, 2005, p. 154]
implications for teaching good behaviors
Dissonance After Decisions
Attitudes change to support the decision that was made.
Self-Perception
self-perception theory
Seeing our own behavior leads to inferences about our attitudes (Bem).
Facial expressions influence ratings of our own emotions.
Emotional contagion.
Overjustification and Intrinsic Motivation
Too much reward undermines instrinsic motivation.
Unanticipated rewards don't undermine intrinsic motivation. They may increase it.
Comparing the Theories: Different theories explain the same phenomena.
Dissonance as Arousal
When arousal does not occur (e.g., because of drinking alcohol), there is little or no attitude change.
Self-Perceiving When Not Self-Contradicting
Some research results can be explained by self-perception theory but not dissonance theory (e.g., when attitudes are not well
formed).

The Influence of Attitudes on Behavior
Behavior does not always reflect attitudes. However, attitudes do determine behavior in some situations:
If there are few outside influences, attitude guides behavior.
Example: Wyatt has an attitude that eating junk food is unhealthy. When he is at home, he does not eat chips or
candy. However, when he is at parties, he indulges in these foods.
Behavior is guided by attitudes specific to that behavior.
Example: Megan might have a general attitude of respect toward seniors, but that would not prevent her from being
disrespectful to an elderly woman who cuts her off at a stop sign. However, if Megan has an easygoing attitude about
being cut off at stop signs, she is not likely to swear at someone who cuts her off.
Behavior is guided by attitudes that come to mind easily.
Example: Ron has an attitude of mistrust and annoyance toward telemarketers, so he immediately hangs up the
phone whenever he realizes he has been contacted by one.
The Influence of Behavior on Attitudes
Behavior also affects attitudes. Evidence for this comes from the foot-in-the-door phenomenon and the effect of role
playing.
The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
People tend to be more likely to agree to a difficult request if they have first agreed to an easy one. This is called
the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.
Example: Jill is more likely to let an acquaintance borrow her laptop for a day if he first persuades her to let him
borrow her textbook for a day.
Social Norms and Social Roles
Social norms are a societys rules about appropriate behavior. Norms exist for practically every kind of situation.
Some norms are explicit and are made into laws, such as the norm While driving, you may not run over a pedestrian.
Other norms are implicit and are followed unconsciously, such as You may not wear a bikini to class.
Social roles are patterns of behavior that are considered appropriate for a person in a particular context. For
example, gender roles tell people how a particular society expects men and women to behave. A person who violates
the requirements of a role tends to feel uneasy or to be censured by others. Role requirements can change over time
in a society.


The Attitude-Behavior Relationship I
o For many years it was assumed that attitudes are strong predictors of
behavior
o Research shows that the relationship between attitudes and behavior is
not as strong as once believed
o Several reasons for weak attitude-behavior relationship
Measurement error: Attitude measures may not accurately
measure a person's attitude
The nature of the attitude measured: Attitude researchers used to
measure GENERAL attitudes and then tried to predict a
SPECIFIC behavior.
You get a better relationship when a SPECIFIC attitude and
a SPECIFIC behavior are measured

The Attitude-Behavior Relationship II
o Single acts vs. behavioral trends
Research tended to focus on single acts and not behavioral trends
(behavior over time)
Attitudes predict behavioral trends better than any one behavior
making up that trend
o A behavior is often related to more than one attitude. Measure multiple
attitudes and you get a better relationship
o Other factors that increase attitude-behavior consistency
Reflecting on past attitude-related behavior
Making a person more aware of his/her attitudes
Prior experience with attitude object

Increasing the Attitude-Behavior Relationship
The Theory of Planned Behavior
o Fishbein and Ajzen (1980) proposed that the best predictor of behavior is
one's INTENTIONS
o Whether a person behaves in an attitude consistent way or not depends
on the nature of the behavior intention formed
o Behavior intentions are influenced by three factors
Attitude toward the behavior: How does the person feel about
the behavior in question?
Subjective norms: What others are doing
Perceived behavior control: How easy or hard is the behavior
and what will the outcome of the behavior be?
o Accuracy of behavior intentions is supported by Gallup polls taken
before presidential elections
The relationship between attitudes and behaviour

Once we've established people's attitudes, can we then accurately predict how
they'll behave? Rosenberg & HovIand's (1960) three-components model (The
ABC model: affective behavioural cognitive) implies that the behavioural
component will be highly correlated with the cognitive and affective components.

An early study which shows the inconsistency of attitudes and behaviour is that
of LaPiere (1934).

LaPieres study

Beginning in 1930 and for the next two years, LaPiere travelled around
the USA with a Chinese couple (a young student and his wife), expecting to
encounter anti-Oriental attitudes which would make it difficult for them to find
accommodation. But in the course of 10,000 miles of travel, they were
discriminated against only once and there appeared to be no prejudice. They
were given accommodation in 66 hotels, auto-camps and 'Tourist Homes' and
refused at only one. They were also served in 184 restaurants and ca16 and
treated with '... more than ordinary consideration ...'in 72 of them.

However, when each of the 251 establishments visited was sent a letter six
months later asking: 'Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in
your establishment?', 91 per cent of the 128 which responded gave an emphatic
'No'. One establishment gave an unqualified 'Yes' and the rest said 'Undecided:
depends upon circumstances'.

Influences on behaviour

It's generally agreed that attitudes form only one determinant of behaviour. They
represent predispositions to behave in particular ways, but how we actually act in
a particular situation will depend on the immediate consequences of our
behaviour, how we think others will evaluate our actions, and habitual ways of
behaving in those kinds of situations. In addition, there may be
specific situational factors influencing behaviour. For example, in the LaPiere
study, the high quality of his Chinese friends' clothes and luggage and their
politeness, together with the presence of LaPiere himself, may have made it
more difficult to show overt prejudice. Thus, sometimes we experience a conflict
of attitudes, and behaviour may represent a compromise between them.

Compatibility between attitudes and behaviour

The same attitude may be expressed in a variety of ways. For example, having a
positive attitude towards the Labour Party doesn't necessarily mean that you
actually become a member, or that you attend public meetings. But if you don't
vote Labour in a general election, people may question your attitude. In other
words, an attitude should predict behaviour to some extent, even if this is
extremely limited and specific.

Indeed, Azjen & Fishbein (1977) argue that attitudes can predict behaviour,
provided that both are assessed at the same level of generality. There needs to
be a high degree of compatibility (or correspondence) between them. They argue
that much of the earlier research (LaPiere's study included) suffered from either
trying to predict specific behaviours from general attitudes, or vice versa, and this
accounts for the generally low correlations. A study by Davidson and Jaccard
tried to overcome this limitation.

Attitudes can predict behaviour if you ask the right questions (Davidson &
Jaccard, 1979) Davidson and Jaccard analysed correlationsbetween married
women's attitudes towards birth control and their actual use of oral
contraceptives during the two years following the study.

When 'attitude towards birth control' was used as the attitude measure, the
correlation was 0.08. Clearly, the correspondence here was very low. But when
'attitudes towards oral contraceptives' were measured, the correlation rose to
0.32, and when 'attitudes towards using oral contraceptives' were measured, the
correlation rose still further to 0.53. Finally, when 'attitudes towards using oral
contraceptives during the next two years' was used, it rose still further, to 0.57.
Clearly, in the last three cases, correspondence was much higher.

According to Ajzen and Fishbein, every single instance of behaviour involves four
specific elements:

a specific action
performed with respect to a given target
in a given context
at a given point in time.

According to the principle of compatibility, measures of attitude and behaviour
are compatible to the extent that the target, action, context and time element are
assessed at identical levels of generality or specificity (Ajzen, 1988).

For example, a person's attitude towards a 'healthy lifestyle' only specifies the
target, leaving the other three unspecified. A behavioural measure that would be
compatible with this global attitude would have to aggregate a wide range of
health behaviour across different contexts and times (Stroebe,
2000). Elaborating the psychological processes underlying the principle of
compatibility, Ajzen (1996) suggested that to:

'... the extent that the beliefs salient at the time of attitude assessment are also
salient when plans are formulated or executed, strong attitude-behaviour
correlations are expected'.

The reliability and consistency of behaviour

Many of the classic studies which failed to find an attitude-behaviour relationship
assessed just single instances of behaviour (Stroebe, 2000). As we noted earlier
when discussing the LaPiere study, behaviour depends on many factors in
addition to the attitude. This makes a single instance of behaviour an unreliable
indicator of an attitude Jonas et al., 1995). Only by sampling many instances of
the behaviour will the influence of specific factors 'cancel out'. This aggregation
principle (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974) has been demonstrated in a number of
studies.

According to Hogg & Vaughan (1995), what has emerged in the 1980s and
1990s is a view that attitudes and overt behaviour aren't related in a simple
one-to-one fashion. In order to predict someone's behaviour, it must be possible
to account for the interaction between attitudes, beliefs and behavioural
intentions, as well as how all of these connect with the later action. One attempt
to formalise these links is the theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen & Fishbein,
1970; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). This is discussed in relation to health behaviour
in Chapter 12.

The strength of attitudes

Most modern theories agree that attitudes are represented in memory, and that
an attitude's accessibility can exert a strong influence on behaviour (Fazio, 1986:
see Chapter 17). By definition, strong attitudes exert more influence over
behaviour, because they can be automatically activated. One factor that seems
to be important is direct experience. For example, Fazio & Zanna (1978) found
that measures of students' attitudes towards psychology experiments were better
predictors of their future participation if they'd already taken part in several
experiments than if they'd only read about them. This can be explained by
the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968), according to which the more contact we
have with something or somebody, the more we like them (see Chapter 28).

So attitudes don't predict behaviour: what's the problem? The so-called
attitude-behaviour problem, that is, the failure to find a reliable relationship
between attitudes and behaviour, threatened to undermine the entire study of
attitudes. As we saw in the Introduction and overview,attitude research was a
cornerstone of social psychology in general, and social cognition in particular, for
much of their history (Stainton Rogerset al., 1995).

But from the perspective of discursive psychology, there's no reason to expect
such a correlation: inconsistency between attitudes and behaviour is what we'd
expect to find. Traditional, mainstream, attitude research is based on the fallacy
of individualism (see Chapter 3), according to which attitudes 'belong' to
individuals. This implies something fairly constant, and which is expressed and
reflected in behaviour. From a discursive perspective, attitudes are versions of
the world that are constructed by people in the course of their interactions with
others.

Discursive psychology is concerned with action, as distinct from cognition. In
saying or writing things, people are performing actions, whose nature can in
revealed through a detailed study of the discourse (e.g. recordings of everyday
conversations, newspaper articles, TV programmes). Social psychologists have
underestimated the centrality of conflict in social life; an analysis
of rhetoric highlights the point that people's versions of events, and their own
mental life, are part of ongoing arguments, debates and dialogues (Billig, 1987,
1992, in Potter,1996).

Compared with traditional attitude research, discursive psychology tries to shift
the focus away from single, isolated, individuals towards interactions between
individuals and groups, a more relational or distributed focus (Potter, 1996).