Chapter Sixteen: Social Behavior

D. Attitudes: Making Social Judgements

"Attitudes locate objects of thought on dimensions of judgement."

1. Components of Attitudes
2. Attitudes and Behavior
3. Trying to Change Attitudes: Factors in Persuasion
4. Theories of Attitude Formation and Change

Contents

Components of Attitudes

Attitudes are composed of thinking, feeling, and behaving:

• Cognitive (thinking) component

  Beliefs people hold about the object of the attitude.

• Affective (feeling) component

  Emotional feelings stimulated by the object.

• Behavioral component

  Predispositions to to act in certain ways toward the object.

Summary chart of attitude components. figure 16.9

Attitudes and Behavior

Strangely enough, attitudes aren't connected to behavior very well.

Reason 1: A host of variables influence the connection between attitudes and behavior, including:

• Strength of the attitudes.
• Their accessibility in memory.
• Their relevance to the behavior in question.

Reason 2: The behavioral component of an attitude is only a predisposition which is influenced by situational variables.

Persuasion

The process of persuasion includes four basic elements:

• The Source
• The Message
• Communication Channel (which we are ignoring today)
• The Receiver

Overview of Persuasion Process Figure 16.10

The Source

Persuasion is more likely when the source has high:

• Credibility
• Expertise
• Trustworthiness
• Likability
• Physical attractiveness
• Similarity
• You know, this is someone you should think about marrying!

Message Factors

• Two-sided messages are more effective than one-sided.

• Successful appeals to fear are persuasive if the dire consequences are:
  • Exceedingly unpleasant.
  • Likely to happen if one doesn't heed the advice.
  • Avoidable if the advice is taken.

Receiver Factors

While some individuals are easier to persuade than others, there are situational factors that are more influential.

Factors

• Forewarning
• Discrepancy between initial position and the position advocated

Social judgement theory

Latitude of acceptance

• The larger the discrepancy the greater the attitude change.

Theories of Attitude Formation and Change

How do people acquire attitudes and what produces attitude change? This section covers five perspectives.

Learning Theory

Classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning can be used to explain just about anything.

Classical conditioning:

• The affective component of attitudes
• Likability in advertising model figure 16.12
• to classical conditioning (Chapter 6).

Operant conditioning

• Kicks in when you express your attitude
• positive consequence strengthens your commitment and
• Strong disagreement (punishment) may weaken your commitment.
• to operant conditioning (Chapter 6).

Observational learning

• is the reason others' opinions 'rub off' on us.
• to observational learning (Chapter 6).

Balance Theory

Synopsis: People like balanced states -- imbalance creates tension which motives people to change their attitudes to restore balance.

• Balance

• Example of balance theory (figure 16.13)

Problems with balance theory:

• Can only handle three elements.
• Doesn't allow for degrees of liking.
• Ignores other ways to restore balance.

Dissonance Theory

Synopsis: How is that we come to believe our own lies? Why do we put with stupid initiation rights to get into college organizations? Why do government leaders think "We've lost thousands of lives, this war must be important!" Dissonance theory gives us some clues.

Very Famous Psychology Study:

• Overview of study figure 16.14
• Subjects perform counter-attitudinal behavior.
• People paid the least had the biggest attitude change. Why??

Cognitive dissonance

• When subjects had no justification for their lie, they reduced their resulting dissonance by persuading themselves that they actually had enjoyed the boring task.

The Effort Justification Syndrome applies cognitive dissonance theory to how we interpret everyday events.

Problem: It is difficult to predict when dissonance will occur.

Self-Perception Theory

Synopsis: The attitude shift described here seems very similar to what we just read about cognitive dissonance, but the process is fundamentally different.

Assumption: people infer their attitudes from observing their own behavior.

Similarity with cognitive dissonance:

"If I said it, it must be true."

This similar outcome is actually the result of different processes:

• cognitive dissonance --> struggle to reduce inconsistencies
• self-perception --> normal attribution to understand their behavior.

Comparison chart (figure 16.15)

Self-perception is at work when people do not have well-defined attitudes regarding the issue at hand.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

Synopsis: The durability of attitude change depends upon the extent to which people people think about (elaborate on) the contents of persuasive communications.

Two routes to persuasion:

• Central route - whether the person ponders the content and logic of message.
• Peripheral route - persuasion depends on nonmessage factors.

Central route leads to more enduring attitude change

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