The Nature of Attitudes

1. The Nature of Attitudes Psychology of Attitudes (PSY320)

2. Outline • Definitions • What are attitudes? • Attitudes origin and formation • Where do they come from? • How do attitudes developed? • Function and Roles • What’s the point?

3. Introduction • Attitude is a hypothetical construct. • Attitudes are not directly observable. • Attitudes are inferred from observable responses. The relevant observations here are evaluative responses that are elicited by certain stimuli, or occur in close conjunction with the attitude object. • If there is an established tendency to respond in a certain way toward an attitude object, the person has formed an attitude toward this object.

4. Stimuli +/- Attitude Evaluative Responses “Ice cream is good” “I like ice cream” “I eat ice cream”

5. Attitude Object Anything we have an attitude about: • Individual objects (i.e., ice cream), • Categories (e.g., ice cream flavors), • Individuals (e.g., me), • Groups (e.g., students), or • Abstract ideas (e.g., psychology).

6. Attitude Object +/- Attitude Evaluative Responses “Ice cream is good” “I like ice cream” “I eat ice cream”

7. Evaluative Responding • Attitudes develop on the basis of evaluative responding. • We cannot unequivocally conclude that an individual holds an attitude until he/she responds “evaluatively” to an AO.

8. Evaluative Responding Bad GoodNoYes No Indifference Negative Yes Positive Ambivalence

9. Definitions of Attitudes

10. The Tripartite Model of Attitudes • These components are related, but they are not always consistent. • These categories are often not homogeneous. • Do attitudes have must all 3 components to be considered a true evaluative tendency (i.e. part of the definition of “pure” attitudes)? • Conclusion: It is better to consider each component separately and study the processes that link the components with each other.

11. Gordon Allport (1935) Attitude is a mental or neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related.

12. Petty & Cacioppo (1981) Attitudeis a general and enduring positiveornegativefeeling about some person, object, or issue.

13. Eagley and Chaiken (1992) Attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor […] summary evaluations of attitude objects.

14. Judd, Ryan, & Parke, (1991) Attitudes can be viewed as evaluations of various objects that are stored in memory. Example of memory storage: 100 x 100 = 100 14 x 19 = 266

15. Petty (1995) Attitudesrefer to very general evaluations that people hold of themselves, other people, objects, and issues.

16. Perloff (1993) Attitude as "a learned, enduring, and affective evaluation of an object (a person, entity, or idea) that exerts a directive impact on social behavior.“

17. The three Components of Attitude • Cognitive – beliefs about what is or is not true with respect to the AO. • Affective – feelings / emotions toward the AO. • Behavioral – tendencies to do certain things with respect to the AO.

18. Tri-component model

19. Perloff (2003) Attitude is a “learned, global evaluation of an object (person, place, or issue) that influences thought and action.”

20. Attitudes vs. Other Related Constructs

21. Attitudes vs. Other Constructs • Differentiating attitudes from: • Habits • Values • Beliefs • Opinions

22. Attitudes and Habits • Both influence behavior • Habits are routine behaviors that are performed without evaluation of the behaviors’ consequences or the behavior itself • Attitudes are persistent evaluations

23. Attitudes and Values • Both are evaluations • Although, saying that somebody values freedom is similar as saying that somebody has a positive attitude of freedom • Values are ideal, desirable goals - more global/general than attitudes • Values can encompass several attitudes – i.e., one can have several attitudes towards certain values

24. Attitudes and Beliefs • Beliefs are propositions about the attributes of objects (e.g., Ice cream is a source of protein) • Beliefs are primarily cognitive – they do not have the affective content of attitudes (although they may trigger affective reactions) • Difficult to distinguish attitudes from beliefs when a belief ascribes a positive or negative attribute to an object

25. Attitudes vs. Opinions • Opinions colloquially express an attitude (“We have different opinions on the use of rewards with our child”). • “Opinion” is more commonly used in market research and surveys (Public Opinion Polls), whereas “Attitude” is more commonly used by psychologists. • Opinion more related to cognitive evaluation.

26. Where do they come from?

27. Genetic Influence • Research indicated that twins have similar attitudes – i.e., suggesting a genetic basis for the formation of attitudes (Arvey, et al., 1989). • Some attitudes (e.g., death penalty, religion, sex, music) show heritability coefficients of around .50. (Tesser, 1993) • Universality of certain attitudes - result of phylogeny (McGuire, 1985).

28. Genetic Influence • “Heritable attitudes” would be harder to change, and they are more quickly activated. • But... attitudes don't "sit" on genes; genetic influences must be mediated through complex interactions between biological tendencies and socio-cultural shaping.

29. “An attitude is a learned, global evaluation of an object (person, place, or issue) that influences thought and action.” (Perloff, 2003, p. 39).

30. “Social Learning / socialization refers to the "gradual acquisition of language, attitudes, and other socially approved values through reinforcement, observation, and other learning processes." (Forsyth, 1995)

31. Attitude Formation • Imitation or modeling (conscious adoption, unconscious assimilation; Newcomb, 1943). • Information (e.g., perception, rumor, reading). • Mere exposure • Classical conditioning • Operant conditioning Attitudes are learned from others or via direct experience through:

32. Classical conditioning • Learning-through association between stimuli • The attitude object is associated with unconditional stimulus (e.g., image, pain, physiological stress, odors and sounds) • Little Albert (Watson) • Advertisement (e.g., Beer, cars...).

33. Unconditioned Response US Neutral Stimulus + Neutral Stimulus US

34. Neutral Stimulus Conditioned Response

37. Operant Conditioning • Reinforcement or punishment of attitudes (sometimes it is only the verbal response that is reinforced or punished). • The event following the response (i.e., consequence) reinforces or punishes the response (i.e., attitude). • Phone interviews in which experimenter says "good" or "mm-hmm" in response to expressed opinions. These attitudes became stronger, as tested one week later (Hildum & Brown, 1956).

38. Mere Exposure • Attitudes can be acquired from the mere exposure to an object. Direct repeated experience often results in preference (i.e., compared to objects less often encountered). • The more familiar the object/task, the more we generally like it (Bornstein, 1989; Zajonc, 1968).

39. Direct Experience • Direct experience of issues and events (+ or - experiences). • Attitudes acquired by direct experience are: • held with greater confidence • more specific • more easily recalled • more resistant to change • more consistent with behavior Fazio and Zanna (1978)

40. Imitation/Modeling • Imitation – mere copy of another’s behavior without acquisition of the relationship between behavior and consequences – e.g., young children mimic/parrot their parents’ attitudes. • Modeling (Social Learning Theory) - behaviors / attitudes are acquired through observation and reproduced because of the contingencies – relationship with the consequence (Bandura, 1969).

41. Why do People Hold Attitudes?

42. General Functions of Attitudes Phylogenetic (Adaptive) Explanation • Stresses the adaptive value of avoiding objects that threaten survival, and seek objects that help to maintain resources and secure reproduction.

43. General Functions of Attitudes Efficiency Function • Learned summary of evaluations which guides our behaviors (i.e., so we don’t have to constantly re-assess attitudes objects). • Make decisions faster. • Make decisions in situations with insufficient information.

44. Attitudes define how people perceive and think about their environment and - to a certain extend - how they behave. Environment/ Attitude Objects Attitudes/ Evaluative Responses

45. General Functions of Attitudes But, efficiency has some costs: • Overgeneralization, • Simplification, • Prone to errors, • May lead to bad decisions

46. Functional Approach • Examines the functions (needs/roles) attitudes serve for different individuals in different contexts (Perloff, 2003) • Knowledge • Utilitarian • Social Adjustive • Social Identity • Value-Expressive • Ego-Defensive

47. Function of attitudes • The same attitudes can serve different functions for different people • Different attitudes can serve a same function for different individuals • A single attitude can serve several functions for a same individual. • Examples???

48. Case 1 – Different individuals Case 3 – Same individuals Ego-Defensive (+) Capital Punishment Knowledge Value Expressive

49. Case 2 (+) λλλ Social Adjustive (+) αβκ

50. Why are we interested in attitude functions?