ATTITUDE CHANGE

Overview Attitude-behaviour problem: how do

internal mental activities relate to overt behaviour? (attitude–behaviour relations)

To what degree our are attitudes internally organised?

Why do so many people share similar attitudes on particular issues?

Research strands Early phase 40’s-50’s: interest in attitude

change & empirical research on persuasive communication

60’s-70’s: focus on attitude organization in terms of maintenance of cognitive consistency (e.g., dissonance theory)

80’s-90’s: back to attitude change, more general theories (e.g., ELM, HSM)

Moderator variables:

Under what conditions do what kinds of attitudes of what kinds of individuals predict what kinds of behaviour?

Situational moderators; attitudinal qualities; personal moderators, individual differences; behavioural properties…

Three components Thoughts (information) Feelings (classical conditioning) Actions (instrumental conditioning/

modelling)

Can we change attitudes by changing these components?

Attitudes changed by persuasive mechanisms (central/peripheral)

Attitudes also changed on foot of changing behaviour Counter-attitudinal advocacy Cognitive dissonance/Self-perception theory

Thoughts

Changed by persuasive communications (i.e., new information)

What qualities makes a communication persuasive?

How does persuasion occur? When do people resist persuasive

communications?

Qualities of communication

Three important factors:

1. Source

2. Content

3. Audience

How does persuasion occur? By what psychological mechanisms do attitudes guide behaviour?

Two Dual Process models of persuasion (drawn from memory research - Depth of Processing)

Petty & Cacioppo 1981 Elaboration-Likelihood Model ELM

Chaiken 1980 Heuristic Systematic Model HSM

Deliberative (reasoned action, planned behaviour models) vs. automatic processing modes

2 routes Peripheral, relatively spontaneous

resultant attitude change = temporary, unlikely to predict behaviour, susceptible to further change

Central, relatively deliberate resultant attitude change = relatively permanent,

likely to predict behaviour, resistant to further change

When do people resist? When forewarned, psychological reactance

When innoculated by previous success in counterarguing persuasive communications

When high need for ‘cognitive closure’

When use Defensive strategies (e.g., Denial; Bolstering; Differentiation; Transference)

Feelings

Classically conditioned by repeated association of attitude object with positive or negative events.

Peripheral route

2 ways to change people’s attitude feelings: Put people in a good mood Classically condition the attitude

Do feelings ever change without thought? Conditioning without awareness Mere exposure Match attitude change with attitude basis

Actions

Changed through rewards & modelling

Induced compliance

If negatively aroused by inconsistency Where no strong attitudes, infer

thoughts/feelings from actions

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Festinger 1957 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Festinger/http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/index.htm

We change our attitudes to reduce the aversive arousal we experience when we have two cognitions or thoughts that contradict each other or are dissonant.

To change thoughts, get people to act counterattitudinally

Circumstances when attitudes change because of cognitive disssonance

Postdecisional dissonance Effort justification Insufficient justification (Festinger & Carlsmith 1959)

Insufficient deterrence (Aronson & Carlsmith 1963)

Attitude change occurs only when: There are aversive consequences to the action

Person assumes personal responsibility for causing those consequences

Person who performs action experiences aversive arousal that is attributed to action

Person has no attractive way to reduce arousal other than through attitude change

Do people infer their attitudes from their actions?

Self perception theory Bem 1967

People who do not have strong attitudes sometimes infer their thoughts and feelings from their own actions.

Attitudes change when people have such weak attitudes that counterattitudinal behaviour does not cause negative arousal.  

Schachter & Singer 1962 ‘2 factor’ theory of emotion

 

Attitude change occurs when: The action is one that logically implies a corresponding

attitude

People do not spontaneously remember what their attitude used to be and draw the same conclusion from their action as an uninvolved observer

People experience no physiological arousal that they need to explain

A previously attractive option becomes dictated by external controls

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Some critics suggest actually testing:

Sociological mores not psychological laws Not consistency but norms of conduct in

which inconsistency looks bad Impression management (Goffman 1959)

Reading:

(Ch 6, Hogg & Vaughan) esp. Fazio & Cooper 1984

Chapter 4. Augoustinos, M., Walker, I. & Donaghue, N. (2006) (2nd ed.). Social Cognition. London: Sage.