How (by what process) does associated affective experience influence attitude?

Names and date?

Introduction

What is affect?-representations of value (goodness and badness)-feelings, emotions, moods

What are attitudes?-an enduring evaluation of people, objects or ideas-may be cognitively- or affectively-based

(source: Aronson, et al. Social Psychology, 4th Ed., 2002)

Overview

Some of the processes by which affect influences attitude:

-Projection

-Classical conditioning

-Cognitive priming

-Attribution

Projectionthe process by which a person attributes his or her unacknowledged feelings to others

Feshbach & Singer, 1957The effects of fear arousal and suppression of fear upon social

perception

-hypotheses:

1. fearful participants are more likely to project anxiety and fear onto an anonymous stranger;

2. participants who suppress their emotions will project more than participants who express their emotions

Method

-60 male volunteers from intro psych class

-3 conditions control, fear-expression (FE), fear suppression (FS)

-all participants viewed a film of a young man performing mundane tasks, then filled out a questionnaire on which they judged his personality

• all participants in the fear conditions were shocked via electrodes attached to their ankles

• Instructions:

-Control – none

-FE – Many people are disturbed by the shock. In order to perform most efficiently, the best thing to do is to be aware of and admit your feelings. If you freely express your feelings, your judgments will be more accurate.

-FS – Many people are disturbed by the shock. In order to perform most efficiently, the best thing to do is to keep your mind off your emotional reactions and not think about them. Try to forget about your feelings and concentrate on the task; by doing so, your judgments will be more accurate.

Results

The DVs

– The questionnaire included several measures:• Indirect Fear: an index based on 24 questions rating the

target on how fearful or anxious he would be in situations other than that depicted in the video.

• Direct Fear: an index based on 24 questions rating how fearful or anxious the young man seemed in the situation depicted in the video.

• Indirect Aggression: an index based on 13 items rating how aggressive the young man seemed in general.

More Results

Indirect Fear: The differences between FE, FS and the control are significant (p<.01). However, the difference between FE and FS is not significant.

Direct Fear: The only significant difference is between FS and the control group (p<.05).

Aggression: All differences are significant (p<.01)

Control (n=20) FE (n=20) FS (n=20)

Indirect Fear 55.9 68.9 74.2

Direct Fear 8.5 9.7 11.2

Aggression 30.2 34.4 38.1

Conclusion

The arousal of fear resulted in a tendency to perceive another person as fearful, anxious, and aggressive.

The effects of fear arousal were particularly striking when indirect fear and anxiety were being judged.

How is this relevant to our topic? It suggests that projection mediates the

relationship between affect and attitude. – The affective experience of shock-induced fear

shaped participants’ attitudes towards the target.– Fearful participants judged him to be more fearful

and aggressive than controls. – They generalized this appraisal to situations

outside of the film. This suggests the formation of an attitude about the target.

Accessibility

Does positive mood make make positive information more accessible in memory?– Some research has shown that people in a

positive mood tend to engage in more prosocial behavior. (Isen & Levin, 1972)

If mood plays a roll in what comes to mind, can being in a positive mood make you judge targets as more positive, in effect improving your attitude towards this target?

Isen et al. (1978)

Background– Isen and colleagues wanted to see if mood

did in fact play a role in what type of information is recalled dd

Study 1– Performed in a mall, to see if positive mood

would affect participants’ judgments of items they already owned (automobile and TV).

Hypothesis, Study 1

Isen and colleagues hypothesized that participants in a good mood would rate items they already own as performing better and having a better service record than control participants.

Method, Study 1

Field Experiment in a local mall.– Shoppers in the experimental group were given a

small gift as they walked by (nail clippers to men and note pads to women)

– Shoppers in the control condition were not given a gift Later on, in the mall, participants were asked to

participate in a consumer research survey– They were asked to describe their car and tv (make,

model, year, etc) and rate the performance of the good and the overall service record on a scale of 1 to 7.

Results, Study 1

A 2-way ANOVA (condition x gender) showed only a main effect for condition, p<.006

Receiving a gift did not significantly influence the probability that a particpant agree to answer the questionnaire later. The experimenters worried this could be a confound, because past research had shown that people in better moods engage in more prosocial behavior. That probably did not happen here because this survey wasn’t much of an inconvenience.

Measure Received gift Did not receive gift

Mean, overall product rating

6.01 5.13

Discusion and applications, Study 1 The experimenters conclude that people

in good moods make more positive judgments that those not in good moods. It seems these good mood people have a brighter outlook, and are more likely to see the “good in things.”

More discussion, Study 1

So has an attiuted been influenced here?– The results are especially interesting because

participants are rating something they already own, know very well, and probably already have attitudes about

– It seems that participants in a better mood have a more positive attitude towards these items. But will this attitude endure? Maybe, but this study only tested attitude once.

Isen et al. (1978), Study 2

The second study focused on the processes by which good mood makes certain information available.

Participants played a “Star Trek” game (won or loss), then heard a list of positive and neutral words, played the “Star Trek” game again (again won or loss) and then recalled all the words they could.

Hypothesis: People who win at the game, and thus be feeling pretty good, will remember more positive words.

Results, Study 2

Participants who won at the second game recalled significantly more positive words. – Winning at the first game, before hearing

the words, seems to have no effect on recall.

This is more evidence that positive mood at the time of recall leads to better memory of positive material.

Applications, Study 2 This suggests that in the first study, participants given a gift

rated their car and tv higher because more positive information about those items was available

So was an attiutude changed in study 1, or will this effect be ephemeral? Another study might help, if it measured attitude later on. Even if this effect is fleeting, might different affective states make your attitude malleble in different ways?

Herbert Bless, et al. (1990) think so. They found that participants in good moods paid less attention to the content of arguments and more on the superficial aspects of the argument, like the appearance of the speaker. Participants in negative moods paid more attention to the details of the argument. It seems as though it would be harder to convince these negative mood participants.

Conclusions

If you are interested in changing someone’s momentary feeling towards an object, you might try putting them in a good mood first

If you are looking for a long term change, and you don’t have a strong argument: dress well, seem reputable and make sure they are in positive mood.

Marketing and Control

Advertisers make a living trying to influence our attitudes towards various products

I think that they often attempt to use affect to influence our attitudes.

Ward and Barnes (1999): Control and Affect Noticed that a sense of control usually leads to a feeling of

well-being whereas a lack of control is usually a precursor to negative affect.– Furthermore, a sense of control might lead to more

positive affect because it signals to the consumer that this environment will facilitate goal acheivement and not hinder it. (OCC model)

– It also seems that people tend to avoid retail environments where they have little control: long lines, poor selection, etc.

Ward and Barnes wanted to see if a sense of control over a retail environment is related to positive affect and positive attitude towards the environment.

Hypotheses

Hypotheses– Percieved control will relate to feelings of

pleasure in the retail envirnoment– Consumers who feel more in control in a

retail environment will havea more positive attitude towards the environment.

Procedure Weakness of this study:

– Was not a pure experiment in that nothing was manpulated.

In this between-subjects study, particpants were taken to 15 different fast food restaurants where they dined and rated the restaurant and their feelings on several differnent measures– Control: used a dominance scale, how much the participant

felt he or she could control the situation. Participants rated how much they were feeling certain adjectives such as: in control, dominant, autonomous, guided, submissive, cared for, etc.

– Mood: Peterseon and Sauber’s Mood Short Form (MSF)– Attitude towards environment

Results

Control was a signficant multivariate predictor of both mood and attitude (p=.000)

Mood was highly correlated with attitude Limitations

– Clearly we do know which way the effect was for sure. Better attitude towards the restaurant could be causing a better mood and more feeling of control.

– How do these marketing people get away with this?

Conclusions Still it seems as though control, affect, and attitude

are related insofar as retail environment is concerned.

The next step would be to perform an experiment. Perhaps manipulate the level of control a participant has over the fast food restaurant situation. Maybe this is already being done, those little comment cards on the table?

Burger King scored the highest on level of control people felt they had and overall attitude towards the restaurant. (have it your way?)

Forward Thinking

Ward and Barnes showed that affect, control and attitude are related somehow. – It seems that most people would prefer to eat at a place

that makes them feel good. Manipulating the level of control your customers feel seems to be one way to get at this.

Marketing is one field in which this question, how does affect influence attitude, is key. A better understanding of this process will most likely lead to larger profits.

Clearly, this is kind of research has numerous applied benefits.