Slide1 : Evolutionary Principles of Social Psychology (fvz)
The Methodological Tools of Social Psychology (fvz)
The Biological basis of Social Behaviour (fvz)
The role of Emotions in Social Behaviour (fvz)
Living in the Moral World (fvz)
cancelled
Attitudes I (fvz) today
Attitudes II (fvz)
Development of Social Behaviour I (Dr. Danielle Ropar)
Development of Social Behaviour II (dmr)
Development of Social Behaviour III (dmr)
Putting “I” in the Social World (dmr)
Creating the Concept of “I” (fvz)
Game theory (fvz)
Modifications of behaviour by the Social Environment (fvz)
Revision - fvz
Attribution (Theory) (dmr)
Attribution (Biases) (dmr)
Attribution (Applications) (dmr)
Revision – dmr
[Lecture not given When Social Behaviour goes Wrong (fvz)]
Social Psychology C82SOC : Social Psychology C82SOC Dr Fenja Ziegler Attitudes
Slide3 : An attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour.
(Eagly & Chaiken, pg 269)
The magic concept in social science? : The magic concept in social science? The concept of attitudes is probably the most distinctive and indispensable in contemporary American social psychology. Attitude (internal) → Behaviour (external)
Organisation of attitudes
How can attitudes be changed?
Why study attitudes? : Why study attitudes? Individual level
Influence perception, thinking and behaviour
Interpretation of new information and retrieval of relevant information dependant on individual attitude
Interpersonal level
Information about people’s attitudes is communicated regularly, allowing social behaviour to be more predictable
Can adapt our own behaviour and change others’ by modifying attitudes
Intergroup level
Attitudes towards our own and others’ groups is the basis of both cooperation and conflict
What is an attitude? : What is an attitude? “An attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour.” (Eagly & Chaiken)
Therefore an attitude must have
Mental process of evaluation
Attitude object
Attitude Object : Attitude Object Concrete or abstract
this lecture or the idea of lecture based teaching
People (me), groups (all teaching staff in psychology) or inanimate objects (this lecture theatre)
Attitudes towards certain attitude objects have specific names:
Prejudice; attitude towards social group (especially negative)
Self-esteem; attitude towards yourself
Values; attitudes towards abstract entities (e.g. vegetarianism)
Mental Process of Evaluation : Mental Process of Evaluation Not directly observable
Intervenes between the attitude object and a response
Often considered to be based on experience
Has variable observable manifestations
Experience leading to a particular attitude and its manifestations can be split into three components:
Cognition (beliefs – vegetarianism is less cruel than eating meat)
Affect (emotions and feelings – a positive emotion towards learning that others are vegetarian)
Behaviour (actions and behavioural intentions – being a vegetarian and becoming a supporter of campaigns to encourage people to become vegetarian)
Three-component model of attitude : Three-component model of attitude Attitude Affective Processes Cognitive Processes Behavioural Processes Cognitive Responses Affective Responses Behavioural Responses Rosenberg and Hovland, 1960
Memory for Attitudes : Memory for Attitudes F
E N
J A Controlled Automatic
What’s the purpose of attitudes? : What’s the purpose of attitudes? Knowledge function
Utilitarian function
Social identity function
Self-esteem maintenance function (Shavitt, 1989)
Intra-attitudinal structure : Intra-attitudinal structure Properties of internal structure that an attitude possesses
Students read belief statements and indicated for each one how much they agreed with it and how favourable or unfavourable it was (Judd & Kulik, 1980)
Response times and free recall measured
The more extreme statements were processed faster and recalled better than less extreme statements
Bipolar continuum with information at the poles of the continuum being processed more efficiently than information not fitting the person’s schema
Not all attitudes are represented by a bipolar continuum
Unipolar continuums include music and sports (Pratkanis, 1989) The equal rights amendment should be supported by all who believe that discrimination is wrong. Majority rule would only complicate the lives of most South Africans. Which is of course not true!
How do you get from attitude object to attitude? : How do you get from attitude object to attitude? Fishbein (1967a,b) described attitudes as the sum of “expectancy x value” products
Attitudinal ambivalence
Evaluate the same attitude object both favourably and unfavourably at the same time (Kaplan, 1972)
How are attitudes towards different objects linked to each other? : How are attitudes towards different objects linked to each other? attitudes towards novel situations are derived from an underlying central value that person holds (Kinder & Sears 1985)
Heider (1946) Balance theory:
Assumes people strive for consistency amongst their cognitions
Explains relationship between attitudinal similarity and interpersonal liking
Inter-Attitudinal Structure : Inter-Attitudinal Structure Patty (P)
Eric (0)
mountain holiday (X) (Heider, 1946) Principle of minimum effort
What if X is not a mountain but a person?
Degree of like or dislike?
More than three?
Persuasion : Persuasion An attitude change as a result of information processing, often in response to messages about the attitude object
Theories of persuasion can be categorised by the amount of cognitive effort involved in the change process:
Persuasion processes requiring little cognitive effort
Requiring effortful processing:
Attitude conditioning : Attitude conditioning Assumption that attitudes are learned dispositions
Explains attitude changes as a result of conditioning
Berkowitz and Knurek (1969)
created favourable and unfavourable attitudes to the names Ed and George by repeatedly presenting the names with paired positive and negative adjectives
Then each participant talked with two people introduced as Ed and George
PPs ratings reflected the previous conditioning
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Operant Conditioning : Operant Conditioning Learning occurs because of reward or punishment of behaviour
Hildum and Brown (1956) interviewed students about their attitudes to university policies
For some, favourable responses were reinforced (with the interviewer answering good or mm-hmm)
For others the unfavourable responses were reinforced
Students attitudes afterwards reflected the responses that had been reinforced
Feelings and Subjective Experience : Feelings and Subjective Experience Use affective responses as a shortcut to evaluative judgements (Mood-as-information)
Irrelevant affective responses can influence people’s attitudes
E.g. Schwartz and Clore (1983) showed weather affected moods and people’s evaluations of their lives
Except when the weather was pointed out to them before the assessment it only affected moods and not attitudes
Other persuasion : Other persuasion Message learning approach
Studying message content, source, message, channel and recipient
Mere thought
Thinking about the attitude object in the absence of external information leading to extremization of the attitude
Cognitive response approach
Assumes attitude change is mediated by the favourability of thoughts generated when exposed to persuasive communication
Slide21 : Berkowitz, L., & Knurek, D. A. (1969). Label-mediated hostility generalization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13, 200-206.
Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1998). Attitude structure and function. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The Handbbok of Social Psychology (4 ed., pp. 269-322). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fishbein, M. (1967a). A consideration of beliefs, and their role in attitude measurement. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement (pp. 257-266). New York: Wiley.
Fishbein, M. (1967b). A behavior theory approach to the relations between beliefs about an object and the attitude toward the object. In M. Fishbein (Ed.), Readings in attitude theory and measurement. (pp. 389-400). New York: Wiley.
Heider, F. (1946). Attitudes and Cognitive organization. Journal of Psychology, 21, 107-112. [http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Heider/attitudes.htm]
**Hewstone, M., & Stroebe, W. (Eds.). (2001). Introduction to Social Psychology: A European Perspective. (3 ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Hildum, D. C., & Brown, R. W. (1956). Verbal reinforcement and interviewer bias. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 53, 108-111.
**Hogg, M. A., & Vaughan, G. M. (2002). Social psychology (3rd ed ed.). Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Judd, C. M., & Kulik, J. A. (1980). Schematic Effects of Social-Attitudes on Information-Processing and Recall. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(4), 569-578.
Kinder, D. R., & Sears, D. O. (1985). Public opinion and political action. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (3 ed., Vol. 2, pp. 659-741). New York: Random House.
Pratkanis, A. R. (1989). The cognitive representation of attitudes. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude structure and function (pp. 71-98). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, mis-attribution and judgements of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513-523.
Shavitt, S. (1989). Operationalizing functional theories of attitude. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude Structure and Function (pp. 311-337). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. references
Slide23 : Classical conditioning Operant conditioning “I think Mom’s using the can opener.”
Would you eat a Snickerdoodle? : Would you eat a Snickerdoodle? (Fleming & Petty, 2000)
Polarity of Attitudes : Polarity of Attitudes Neutral Classical Music Horror Films Shopping Carrot Cake Death Penalty Animal Experiments Death Penalty Animal Experiments