(L2) 06.10.2021 Attitudes What are attitudes? Attitude is a mental state of readiness that exerts influence on an individual response to objects and situations to which it is related. (Allport, 1935) - A relatively enduring set of beliefs, feelings, and intentions towards an object, person, event or symbol. (Eagly &Chaiken, 1993) - Structure of interrelated beliefs that reside in long-term memory (LTM) that are activated when objects or situations that are related are encountered. (Tourangeau & Rasinski, 1988) - Experiences that involve an evaluation of someone or something. (Eiser, 1980) How many components? · One component (Feeling): affect (evaluation) for or against an object. (Thurstone, 1931). . Two components (Thought & Feeling): a mental readiness to act, and a guide to evaluative responses. (Allport, 1935). . Three components (Thought, Feeling & Action): affective, behavioural and cognitive components. Affects & Attitudes Subliminal exposure to affect-arousing images (positive vs. negative) prior to seeing pictures of a person. Cognition & Attitudes Stereotypes reflect cognitions (beliefs) about social groups. Negative stereotypes are robust predictors of preludial attitudes. Behaviour & Attitudes · Asked to evaluate new headphones when performing various movements. · Up-down motion (nodding head) vs. side-to-side motion (shaking head) while listening to arguments through headphones. . More likely to agree when participants nodded vs. shook head
What are the functions of attitudes? Knowledge Provide meaningful, orderly, structured reality (e.g., stereotypes) Instrumental Maximize rewards, minimize punishments (e.g., social acceptance) Ego Defence Protect one's self- esteem (e.g., failing a test) Value expressive Express one's identity and core values (e.g., MAGA Caps) " Different objects are associated with different functions (e.g., air conditioners vs. national flags; Shavitt, 1990) How do we measure attitudes? · Direct measures: · Thurstone's scale of equal appearing intervals. · Guttman's scalogram. · Osgood's semantic differential. . Likert's method of summated ratings. Thurstone scale More than 100 statements ranging from extremely favourable to extremely hostile. · Judges order statements into eleven categories denoting degrees of favourability. . Two statements selected from each category with the highest inter-judge agreement. · Administer 22 statements on participants - agree/disagree format. · Average sum of agreed statements Guttman's scalogram Statements arranged in a hierarchy whereby agreement with statements implies approval of prior statements. · Measures a single, unidimensional trait. Osgood's semantic differential Does not measure opinions, but evaluations of an object/person on a set of semantic scales. Likert's scale Statements that respondents indicate their strength of agreement/disagreement using a scale. Strengths:
· Convenient and easy to administer. · Provides standardised easier that can produce scores that can be compared. · Can have a range of positive and negative statements (acquiescence bias). Weaknesses: . Can force people to agree/disagree with ideas that may not correspond with how they see things. · Can provide information on the ordering of people's attitudes on a continuum, but is unable to indicate how close or far apart the different attitudes might be. · Social desirability Psychological measures · Skin resistance, heart rate, and pupil dilation (Rankin & Campbell, 1955; Westie &