Attitudes

 

Attitudes have two components:

 

1. beliefs: mental association with a concept

2. affect: a feeling component

We can measure the affective component of an identity on three dimensions:

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Evaluation:    good, nice  -  bad, awful

Potency:  big, powerful  -  little, powerless

Activity:  fast, young, noisy  -  slow, old, quiet

These measures of affective meaning will be referred to as EPA profiles.

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"But why E, P and A?.. the most important question today, as in the day of the Neanderthal, about the sign of a thing are:

first, is it good or bad for me? (is it a cute Neanderthal female or a sabertooth tiger?);

second, is it strong or is it weak with respect to me? (is it a sabertooth tiger or a mouse?);

third, is it an active or a passive thing? (is it a sabertooth tiger or merely a pool of quicksand that I can carefully skirt?).

Survival of the species has depend on answers to such questions."(Osgood 1990, p. 247).

 

 

Attitudes and Behavior

Do attitudes influence behavior?

To what extend do they influence behavior?



 Field Experiment of LaPiere (1934)

LaPiere accompanied a Chinese couple traveling through the United States. He kept a list of hotels and restaurants that they visited. Several months later LaPiere mailed a questionnaire to all establishments and asked if they would accept Chinese guests.

 

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LaPiere Study: Attitude => Behavior?

 

Part One

IV1: Behavior of visiting

DV1: Treatment

·      The couple was denied service only once on the whole trip

·      In half of the hotels they received above of the average service.


Part Two
DV2: Inquired Attitude

·     92% said they would not accept Chinese customers.

 Reasoned Action Model (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)

Fishbein & Ajzen saw the limitations of predicting behavior from general attitudes that were used by LaPiere.

 

What is the resulting behavioral intention?

Attitudes had a positive product of evaluation and likelihood.

Norms had a positive product of evaluation and importance of the person that holds this norm.

Multiple attitudes and norms can be considered to be adding up for each behavioral intention.

 

How can we influence decisions?

Example: anti drunk driving campaign. 

 

LIMITATIONS

Why do people want to follow a diet but fail?

Why do people want to quit smoking but fail?

Why do students want to study better, but fail?

=> Past behavior, self‑identity, and self-efficiency can overwrite behavioral intentions and more directly influence behavioral choice.

 

Past Behavior

Ajzen and Madden (1986) found that “College student's attendance was the single best predictor of their future class attendance, no matter what their attitudes or intentions about attending class.”(Wiggins et. al., 246‑247)

 

Self Identity

Behavior is chosen to be consistent with a specific salient identity.  This identity‑ behavior consistency can overwrite behavioral intentions determined by attitudes and other's norms

 

Self efficiency (remember last topic on identity)

Behavioral intentions better predict behavior if people feel that they can control positive outcomes.

=> people with high self-efficiency


 

Attitude consistency Theories

·    Balance Theory (Fritz Heider 1946) is in the Gestalt Perspective   Gestalt Psychology 1910: psychological phenomena can only be understood if they are organized, structured holes (Gestalten).

·   Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory 1957

 

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Balance Theory (Fritz Heider 1946) Gestalt perspective

Three elements are central in attitude change

 

1.    (P) person

2.    (O) other person

3.    (X) the idea or concept (e.g. behavior) both persons are concerned with

 

Positive or negative values between these three elements (POX)

 

 

 

Example in the Textbook:

P: you

O: your best friend

X: support of abortion

 

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger 1957)

We strive to maintain consonance, or consistency, among attitudes. For that reason we sometimes change attitudes to make them consistent with our behavior. It should be understood that we have attitude towards behaviors and identites.


There are two conditions under which we are likely to change our attitudes:


1. Commitment: Attitudes have to be relevant.


2. Internal attribution: We have to have the impression of being self responsible (free choice).

 

Experiment:

Students engaged in a boring task. After the task was completed they were instructed to lie to the new students who entered that the task was interesting.


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IV: In the experimental condition subjects were paid

       $ 1  for their compliance 

       $ 20 for their compliance

 

Later they were asked to evaluate the task.

 

DV: The change of the attitude toward the task

 

Results: Subjects who received only $1 said that the task was fun.

 

Evaluation

 

 

Key postulates of Bem's Self Perception Theory

 

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1. Individuals come to know their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. 

2. To the extend that internal cues are weak, or ambiguous, the individual is in the same position as an outside observer, who must rely upon external cues to infer the inner states.

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