Social Psychology

Elliot AronsonUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. WilsonUniversity of Virginia

Robin M. AkertWellesley College

slides by Travis LangleyHenderson State University

6th edition

Chapter 7Attitudes and

Attitude Changes:

Influencing Thoughts and Feelings “By persuading others,

we convince ourselves.” — Junius

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

Advertising can have powerful effects.• Until the early twentieth century, men

bought 99% of cigarettes sold. Then advertisers began targeting female buyers.

• In 1955, there were twice as many male as female smokers in the United States.

• Although the smoking rate has decreased overall, women have almost caught up to men. In 2004 23% of adult men smoked, compared to 19% of adult women.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

• Although the smoking rate has decreased overall, women have almost caught up to men. In 2004 23% of adult men smoked, compared to 19% of adult women.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

• But is advertising responsible? • To what extent can advertising shape

people’s attitudes and behavior? • Exactly what is an attitude, anyway,

and how is it changed?

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

AttitudesEvaluations of people,

objects, and ideas.

People are not neutral observers of the world.

They evaluate what they encounter.They form attitudes.

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

Attitudes are made up of three parts that together form our evaluation of the “attitude object”:

1.An affective component, consisting of your emotional reactions toward the attitude object.

2.A cognitive component, consisting of your thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object.

3.A behavioral component, consisting of your actions or observable behavior toward the attitude object.

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

1. What is your affective reaction when you see a certain car? – Perhaps you have feelings of excitement. – If you are a U.S. autoworker examining a new

foreign-made model, maybe you feel anger and resentment.

2. What is your cognitive reaction? – What beliefs do you hold about the car’s

attributes? – Perhaps you admire its hybrid engine that makes

it one of the most fuel efficient cars you can buy.

3. What is your behavioral reaction? – Do you go to a dealership and test-drive the car

and actually buy one?

Where Do Attitudes Come From?

One provocative answer that some attitudes, at least, are linked to our genes.

• Identical twins share more attitudes than fraternal twins, even when raised in different homes, never knowing each other.

• Some attitudes are an indirect function of our genetic makeup, related to things like our temperament and personality.

Where Do Attitudes Come From?

Even if there is a genetic component, our social experiences clearly play a large role in shaping our attitudes.

Not all attitudes are created equally. Though all attitudes have affective,

cognitive, and behavioral components, any given attitude can be based more on one type of experience than another.

Cognitively Based AttitudeAn attitude based primarily on

people’s beliefs about the properties of an attitude object.

Sometimes our attitudes are based primarily on the relevant facts, such as the objective merits of an automobile.

• How many miles to the gallon does it get?

• Does it have side-impact air bags?

Affectively Based AttitudeAn attitude based more on people’s

feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object.

Sometimes we simply like a car, regardless of how many miles to the gallon it gets.

Occasionally we even feel great about something or someone in spite of having negative beliefs.

If affectively based attitudes do not come from examining the facts, where do they come from? They can result from:

1. People’s values, such as religious and moral beliefs,

2. Sensory reaction, such as liking the taste of chocolate ,

3. Aesthetic reaction, such as admiring a painting or the lines and color of a car,

4. Conditioning.

The phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus.

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning works this way:

A stimulus that elicits an emotional response is accompanied by a neutral stimulus that does not until eventually the neutral stimulus elicits the emotional response by itself.

• Suppose that when you were a child, you experienced feelings of warmth and love when you visited your grandmother.

• Suppose also that her house always smelled faintly of mothballs.

• Eventually, the smell of mothballs alone will trigger the emotions you experienced during your visits, through the process of classical conditioning.

The phenomenon whereby behaviors that people freely choose to perform increase or decrease in frequency, depending on whether they are followed by positive reinforcement or punishment.

Operant Conditioning

Operant ConditioningIn operant conditioning, behaviors we freely perform become more or less frequent, depending on whether they are followed by a reward (positive reinforcement) or punishment.

How does this apply to attitudes? Imagine:• A 4-year-old white girl goes to the

playground and begins to play with an African American girl.

• Her father expresses strong disapproval, telling her, “We don’t play with that kind of child.”

• It won’t take long before the child associates interacting with African Americans with disapproval, thereby adopting her father’s racist attitudes.

Although affectively based attitudes come from many sources, we can group them into one family because they:

(1)Do not result from a rational examination of the issues,

(2)Are not governed by logic (e.g., persuasive arguments about the issues seldom change an affectively based attitude), and

(3)Are often linked to people’s values, so that trying to change them challenges those values.

Behaviorally Based Attitude

An attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object.

According to Daryl Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory, under certain circumstances, people don’t know how they feel until they see how they behave.

We can form our attitudes based on our observations of our own behavior.

Behaviorally Based Attitude

An attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object.

People infer their attitudes from their behavior only under certain conditions.

1. Their initial attitude has to be weak or ambiguous.

2. People infer their attitudes from their behavior only when there are no other plausible explanations for their behavior.

Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

Explicit AttitudesAttitudes that we consciously

endorse and can easily report.

Implicit AttitudesAttitudes that are involuntary,

uncontrollable, and at times unconscious.

Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

Consider Sam, a white, middle-class college student who genuinely believes that all races are equal and abhors any kind of racial bias.

This is Sam’s explicit attitude, in the sense that it is his conscious evaluation of members of other races that governs how he chooses to act.

For instance, consistent with his explicit attitude, Sam recently signed a petition in favor of affirmative action policies at his university.

Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes Sam has grown up in a culture in which

there are many negative stereotypes about minority groups, however, and it is possible that some of these negative ideas have seeped into him in ways of which he is not fully aware.

When Sam is around African Americans, for example, perhaps some negative feelings are triggered automatically and unintentionally. If so, he has a negative implicit attitude toward African Americans.

Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

People can have explicit and implicit attitudes toward virtually anything, not just other races.

For example, students can believe explicitly that they hate math but have a more positive attitude at an implicit level.

HOW DO ATTITUDES CHANGE?• When attitudes change, they often do so in

response to social influence. • Our attitudes toward everything from a

presidential candidate to a brand of laundry detergent can be influenced by what other people do or say.

• This is why attitudes are of such interest to social psychologists—even something as personal and internal as an attitude is a highly social phenomenon, influenced by the imagined or actual behavior of other people.

Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited

As we noted in Chapter 6, people experience dissonance:

• When they do something that threatens their image of themselves as decent, kind, and honest.

• Particularly if there is no way they can explain away this behavior as due to external circumstances.

When you can’t find external justification for your behavior, you will attempt to find internal justification by bringing the two cognitions (your attitude and your behavior) closer together.

Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior: Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited

Suppose you don’t want to rub your new father-in-law the wrong way by arguing with him about politics. You might go along with a mildly positive remark about a politician you actually dislike.

Counterattitudinal advocacy, a process by which people are induced to state publicly an opinion or attitude that runs counter to their own private attitudes, creates dissonance.

When this is accomplished with a minimum of external justification, it results in a change in people’s private attitude in the direction of the public statement.

Communication (e.g., a speech or television ad) advocating a particular side of an issue.

Persuasive Communication

How should you construct a message so that it would really change people’s attitudes?

Persuasive Communications and Attitude Change

Yale Attitude Change ApproachThe study of the conditions under

which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages, focusing on “who said what to whom”—the source of the communication, the nature of the communication, and the nature of the audience.

The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion

Elaboration Likelihood ModelAn explanation of the two ways in which

persuasive communications can cause attitude change:

• Centrally, when people are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication.

• peripherally, when people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics.

The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion

Under certain conditions, people are motivated to pay attention to the facts in a communication, and so they will be most persuaded when these facts are logically compelling.Central Route to PersuasionThe case whereby people elaborate on a

persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments, as occurs when people have both the ability and the motivation to listen carefully to a communication.

The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion

Under other conditions, people are not motivated to pay attention to the facts; instead, they notice only the surface characteristics of the message, such as how long it is and who is delivering it.

Peripheral Route to PersuasionThe case whereby people do not

elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by peripheral cues.

The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments

One thing that determines whether people are motivated to pay attention to a communication is the personal relevance of the topic:

• How important is the topic to a person’s well-being?

The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments

The more personally relevant an issue is, the more willing people are to pay attention to the arguments in a speech, and therefore the more likely people are to take the central route to persuasion.

The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments

People high in the need for cognition are more likely to form their attitudes by paying close attention to relevant arguments (i.e., via the central route), whereas people low in the need for cognition are more likely to rely on peripheral cues, such as how attractive or credible a speaker is.

Need for CognitionA personality variable reflecting the

extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities.

The Ability to Pay Attentionto the Arguments

When people are unable to pay close attention to the arguments, they are swayed more by peripheral cues.

• Status of communicator• Liking or trusting communicatorTherefore someone with a weak

argument can create distractions (e.g., loud music) to make people more susceptible to peripheral influence.

How to Achieve Long-Lasting Attitude Change

Compared to people who base their attitudes on peripheral cues, people who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments will be:

• More likely to maintain this attitude over time,

• More likely to behave consistently with this attitude,

• More resistant to counterpersuasion.

Emotion and Attitude Change

• Before people will consider your carefully constructed arguments, you have to get their attention.

• One way is to grab people’s attention by playing to their emotions.

Source of images: Microsoft Office Online.

Fear-Arousing Communications

Fear-Arousing CommunicationsPersuasive messages that attempt

to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fears.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Fear-Arousing Communications

Do fear-arousing communications work?

• If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them how to reduce this fear, they will be motivated to analyze the message carefully and will likely change their attitudes via the central route.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

A group of smokers who watched a graphic film depicting lung cancer and then read pamphlets with specific instructions about how to quit smoking reduced their smoking significantly more than people who were shown only the film or only the pamphlet.

Fear-Arousing Communications

Fear-arousing appeals will also fail if they are so strong that they overwhelm people.

If people are scared to death, they will become defensive, deny the importance of the threat, and be unable to think rationally about the issue.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Emotions as a HeuristicHeuristic–Systematic Model of

PersuasionAn explanation of the two ways in which

persuasive communications can cause attitude change: either systematically processing the merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts (heuristics) – (e.g., thinking, “Experts are always right”)

Emotions as a HeuristicInterestingly, our emotions and moods

can themselves act as heuristics to determine our attitudes.

When trying to decide attitude about something, we often rely on the “How do I feel about it?”-heuristic.

If we feel good, we must have a positive attitude; if we feel bad, it’s thumbs down.

Emotions as a Heuristic• The problem with the “How do I feel about it?”

heuristic is that we can make mistakes about what is causing our mood, misattributing feelings created by one source to another.

• If so, people might make a bad decision.• Once you get a new couch home,

you might discover that it no longer makes you feel all that great.

• Advertisers and retailers want to create good feelings while they present their product (e.g., by playing appealing music or showing pleasant images), hoping that people will attribute at least some of those feelings to the product they are trying to sell.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Emotion and Different Types of Attitudes

Several studies have shown that it is best to fight fire with fire:

• If an attitude is cognitively based, try to change it with rational arguments.

• If it is affectively based, try to change it with emotional appeals.

Emotion and Different Types of Attitudes

• Some ads stress the objective merits of a product, such as an ad for an air conditioner or a vacuum cleaner that discusses its price, efficiency, and reliability.

• Other ads stress emotions and values, such as ones for perfume or designer jeans that try to associate their brands with sex, beauty, and youthfulness, rather than saying anything about the objective qualities of the product.

• Which kind of ad is most effective?

Culture and Different Types of Attitudes

• Perhaps people in Western cultures base their attitudes more on concerns about individuality and self-improvement, whereas people in Asian cultures base their attitudes more on concerns about their standing in their social group, such as their families.

• If so, advertisements that stress individuality and self-improvement might work better in Western cultures, and advertisements that stress one’s social group might work better in Asian cultures.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Attitude InoculationMaking people immune to attempts

to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Being Alert to Product Placement • When an advertisement comes on during

a TV show, people often decide to press the mute button on the remote control or to get up and get a snack.

• To counteract this tendency to tune out, advertisers look for ways of displaying their wares during the show itself.

• With this technique, called product placement, companies pay the makers of a TV show or movie to incorporate their product into the script.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Being Alert to Product Placement • When an advertisement comes on during

a TV show, people often decide to press the mute button on the remote control or to get up and get a snack.

• To counteract this tendency to tune out, advertisers look for ways of displaying their wares during the show itself.

• With this technique, called product placement, companies pay the makers of a TV show or movie to incorporate their product into the script.

• When people are forewarned, they analyze what they see and hear more carefully and as a result are likely to avoid attitude change.

• Without such warnings, people pay little attention to the persuasive attempts and tend to accept them at face value.

• So before kids watch TV or sending them off to the movies, it is good to remind them that they are likely to encounter several attempts to change their attitudes.

• When people are forewarned, they analyze what they see and hear more carefully and as a result are likely to avoid attitude change.

• Without such warnings, people pay little attention to the persuasive attempts and tend to accept them at face value.

• So before kids watch TV or sending them off to the movies, it is good to remind them that they are likely to encounter several attempts to change their attitudes.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Resisting Peer Pressure• Peer pressure is linked to values and emotions,

playing on their fear of rejection and their desire for freedom and autonomy.

• In adolescence, peers become an important source of social approval—perhaps the most important—and can dispense powerful rewards for holding certain attitudes or behaving in certain ways, such as using drugs or engaging in unprotected sex.

• What is needed is a technique that will make young people more resistant to attitude change attempts via peer pressure so that they will be less likely to engage in dangerous behaviors.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Resisting Peer Pressure• One possibility is to extend the logic of the

attitude inoculation approach to more affectively based persuasion techniques, such as peer pressure.

• In addition to inoculating people with doses of logical arguments that they might hear, we could also inoculate them with samples of the kinds of emotional appeals they might encounter.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

When Persuasion Attempts Boomerang: Reactance Theory

Reactance TheoryThe idea that when people feel

their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavior.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

WHEN WILL ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOR?

The relationship between attitudes and behavior is not simple, as shown in a classic study (LaPiere, 1934):

• In the early 1930s, Richard LaPiere embarked on a cross-country sightseeing trip with a young Chinese couple.

• Prejudice against Asians was common in the United States at this time, so at each hotel, campground, and restaurant they entered, LaPiere worried that his friends would be refused service.

• To his surprise, of the 251 establishments he and his friends visited, only one refused to serve them.

• And yet when surveyed, only one replied that it would serve a Chinese visitor. More than 90 percent said they definitely would not; the rest were undecided.

Predicting Spontaneous Behaviors

Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are highly accessible to people.

Attitude AccessibilityThe strength of the association

between an attitude object and a person’s evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object.

Predicting Deliberative Behaviors

Theory of Planned BehaviorThe idea that the best predictors of a

person’s planned, deliberate behaviors are the person’s attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control.

Predicting Deliberative BehaviorsSpecific behaviors: The theory of planned

behavior holds that only specific attitudes toward the behavior in question can be expected to predict that behavior.

Subjective norms:  We also need to measure people’s subjective norms—their beliefs about how people they care about will view the behavior in question.

Perceived behavioral control: Intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior.

THE POWER OF ADVERTISINGIt turns out that people are influenced by

advertisements more than they think.The results of over three hundred split

cable market tests indicate that advertising does work, particularly for new products.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Effective ads worked quickly, increasing sales substantially within the first six months they were shown.

THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

Subliminal MessagesWords or pictures that are not consciously

perceived but may nevertheless influence people’s judgments, attitudes, and behaviors.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Simply stated, there is no evidence that the types of subliminal messages encountered in everyday life have any influence on people’s behavior.

Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes,and Social Behavior

• Advertisements transmit cultural stereotypes in their words and images, subtly linking products with desired images.

• Advertisements can also reinforce and perpetuate stereotypical ways of thinking about social groups.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

• Gender stereotypes are particularly pervasive in advertising imagery.

• Men are depicted as doers, women as observers.

Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes, and Social Behavior

Stereotype ThreatThe apprehension experienced by

members of a group that their behavior might confirm a cultural stereotype.

Social Psychology

Elliot AronsonUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. WilsonUniversity of Virginia

Robin M. AkertWellesley College

slides by Travis LangleyHenderson State University

6th edition