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Attitudes

What is an attitude?

Attitudes

What is an attitude?Many definitions including:

a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue (Bem, 1970, Oskamp, 1977, Petty and Cacioppo, 1981)

Attitudes vs. Beliefs

Why study attitudes?

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EIGHT APPROACHES TO ATTITUDE FORMATION AND CHANGE

(Petty and Cacioppo)

From earliest and simplest to most recent

1. CONDITIONING AND MODELLING APPROACHS2. THE MESSAGE LEARNING APPROACHS 3. JUDGEMENTAL APPROACHES4. MOTIVATIONAL APPROACHES5. ATTRIBUTIONAL APPROACHES6. COMBINATORY APPROACHES7. SELF-PERSUASION APPROACHES8. ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL (ELM)

ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL (ELM)Two routes to attitude change: central and peripheral

Rucker and Petty (2006)

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CONDITIONING AND MODELLING

• classical conditioning (e.g. antibuse)

• operant conditioning (e.g. behaviour modification)

• modelling (e.g. parents, conformity to group)

THE MESSAGE LEARNING APPROACH(a.k.a. “skills learning approach” or “Yale approach”)

THE MESSAGE LEARNING APPROACH

Who?

Says what?

How?

To whom?

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Communicator factors (e.g. trust)Ipsos-Reid poll 2002

Message factors (e.g. framing the message)

e.g. #1

Framing in terms of Positive or Negative consequences:

Positive frame: “If a cancerous growth is detected,

19 of 20 growths are the less deadly nonmelanomacancer.”

Negative frame: “If a cancerous growth is detected,

1 of 20 growths are the more deadly melanoma cancer.”

NOTE: Same behaviour but different consequences.

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Message factors (e.g. framing the message)

e.g. #2

Framing in terms of same consequences for performing or not performing the behaviour:

Positive frame: “If you have a skin cancer examination, a cancerous growth can be detected before it becomes life threatening.”

Negative frame: “If you do not have a skin cancer examination, a cancerous growth cannot be detected before it becomes life threatening.”

Framing and the Target Behaviour Promoted

Detection Behaviours

e.g. Self examinations (breast, testis, skin)

� Negatively framed messages more effective

Prevention Behaviours

e.g. using sunscreen, exercise, eat properly

� Positively framed messages or combination of positive and negative

Consider how one would best handle these different situations. What might one do differently in each situation?

??

Audience with a poorly articulated attitude or schema

??

Audience with well articulated attitude

or schema

Speaker’s position Not contrary to the audience

Speaker’s position

contrary to the audience

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Transtheoretical Model:A Spiral Model of the Stages (Prochaska et al., 1992)

Weinstein, 1998

JUDGEMENTAL APPROACHES

judgements are relative to anchors such as past experience, own view of self, own attitude

e.g. Sherif’s latitude of acceptance (near own attitude), zones of rejection, ego involvement

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Sherif’s Latitudes: The Perspectives Approach

� If near own point of view (within latitude of acceptance) leads to “assimilation”

� If far from own point of view (either latitude of rejection) leads to “contrast”

� Latitude of non-commitment (not always presented as part of this model) suggests there is some space between acceptance and rejection in which we cannot predict what will happen.

� If there is “ego involvement” (e.g. one has already put time and energy into the issue, publicly supported the issue) then there is narrower latitude of acceptance.

� One also sees issue in terms of self perceptions (e.g. Do you see yourself as a liberal or conservative)

Hedonic Adaptation:

� Occurs when the mental scale that people use to judge the pleasantness-unpleasantness of their experiences shifts so that their neutral point or baseline for comparison changes.

� Helps protect mental and physical health during setbacks such as debilitating diseases.

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COMBINATORY APPROACHES

How we combine beliefs to form attitude.

Beliefs:

Primitive/core vs. authority vs. peripheral

• relationship between more central vs. more peripheral beliefs

SELF-PERSUASION APPROACHES

• the arguments you generate yourself change your attitudes

• the more you think or argue a point of view the more polarized your beliefs become

MOTIVATIONAL APPROACHES

• based on feeling or view that world is an orderly place so that virtue will be rewarded and evil will be punished.

e.g. cognitive dissonance

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COGNITIVE DISSONANCE(FESTINGER)

RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER, BELIEFS MAY BE:

IRRELEVANT

CONSONANT

DISSONANT

WE ABHOR DISSONANCE! !

BOLSTERING

IN A FREE CHOICE SITUATION:

IF CHOSEN >>>>> “X” IS OVERVALUED

IF REJECTED >>>>> “X” IS DEVALUED

INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION and BOLSTERING

� Get people to do behaviours with minimum external reward

� Foot-in-the-door-technique

� Role playing

� Etc.

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ATTRIBUTIONAL APPROACHES

(last week’s lecture)

• Like cognitive dissonance but discard feelings of dissonance.

• based on need to find order

• seek out causes of what we experience

• actor-observer bias, fundamental attribution error, etc.