ESAP-chapter 9

Attitudes
 Attitudes
• The word ‘attitude’ is derived from the Latin aptus, which
means ‘fit and ready for action’.
• According to Allport, an attitude is:
• a mental and neural state of readiness,
• organised through experience,
• exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the
individual’s response to all objects and situations with
which it is related.
• Today attitude researchers view ‘attitude’ as a construct
that, although not directly observable, precedes behavior
and guides our choices and decisions for action.
 Structure of attitudes
• Attitudes have been conceptualised in various ways. Some theorists consider
attitudes to be uni-dimensional, while others define attitudes in terms of
multi-components, considering them to comprise of three ( or sometimes
two) components.
• Thurstone preferred a one-component attitude model, defining attitude as ‘the
affect for or against a psychological object’. This model of attitudes
emphasises the way people feel about an object (i.e. the evaluative
component).
• For example Petty and Cacioppo (1981) suggest that an attitude refers to a
general enduring positive or negative feeling about a person, object or issue.
• To Thurstone’s affect being for or against a psychological object, Allport added
a second component ’a state of mental readiness’ component, making it a
two-component attitude model
•
 Structure of attitudes
• The three component attitude model describes an attitude as a
relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and
behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects,
groups, events or symbols.
• In other words attitudes are made up of beliefs about the
object of the attitude, evaluative feelings towards the object
and a tendency to behave in a particular way towards it.
• This model also emphasises that attitudes are relatively
permanent, limited to socially significant events or objects and
are generalisable. The ABCs of attitudes refer to the underlying
components: Affect (feelings), Behavior and Cognition (beliefs.
An attitude can be based on one, two or all three components.
 Formation of attitudes
• Attitudes are formed very quickly –and often without
conscious awareness. They are learned as part of the
socialization process, through direct experience or
vicarious through interaction with others or be a
product of cognitive processes.
• Information- One of the most common ways in which
people form attitudes is through the information they
receive from their social environment.
• Children for example often develop their initial attitudes
based on the attitudes their parents and other role
models express.
 Formation of attitudes
• Behavioral approaches-effects of direct experience
• Classical conditioning- Attitudes can also be formed simply
based on an association between an object or person and a
pleasant or unpleasant event.
• This type of learning called classical conditioning, refers to
learning in which a neutral stimulus after being paired
repeatedly with another stimulus leads to the same reaction as
the natural reaction of the other stimulus.
• One way in which attitudes can be classically conditioned are
through the mere exposure effect, meaning the more we are
exposed to something the more we like it (Abrams &
Greenwald,2000).
 Formation of attitudes
• Subliminal persuasion is mere exposure that influences liking
below the level of consciousness. It is a type of persuasion that
occurs when stimuli are presented at a very rapid and unconscious
level.
• In one experiment researchers showed participants positive and
negative photos of a woman so quickly they could only perceive
them subliminally.
• They later showed the participants another photo of the woman
and asked them about their attitudes towards her and how they
would rate her personality.
• People who saw positive photos subliminally rated the woman’s
attitudes and personality more positively than people who saw
negative photos.
 Formation of attitudes
• Operant conditioning-is a type of learning in which people are
rewarded or punished for engaging in a given behavior.
• Behavior that is followed by positive consequences is more
likely to be repeated , whereas behavior that is followed by
negative consequences is not.
• Operant conditioning can also influence attitude formation- and
attitude expression.
• Parents initially have the power to form the children’s attitudes
through operant conditioning, by adolescence, however peers
often reward punish particular attitudes- which is one of the
factors that leads to high levels of conformity in this age group.
• Operant learning influences people’s attitudes and behavior.
 Formation of attitudes
• Observational learning/modeling- operant conditioning involve a
direct or conscious transmission of attitudes, but attitudes can be
formed in amore subtle way through observational learning or
modeling.
• This type of learning occurs when people form attitudes by
watching how others act towards a given object, and in turn
adopt the views themselves.
• Observational learning or modeling is most effective when we
directly observe our parents, siblings or friends engage in a
behavior.
• However it can also work to create attitudes even when we do not
know the person who is expressing that attitude or engaging in the
behavior (Bandura,1986).
 Formation of attitudes
• Other social psychologists consider attitude formation
in terms of cognitive development.
• Cognitive consistency- cognitive consistency theories
specify that beliefs are building blocks of attitude
structure,and assume that it is aversive to have
inconsistent beliefs.
• Two thoughts are inconsistent if they contradict each
other. This disharmony is known as dissonance.
Cognitive theorists argue that people are motivated to
change one or more contradictory beliefs so that the
belief system is in harmony.
 Formation of attitudes
• Balance theory- the consistency theory with
the clearest implications for attitude structure
is balance theory.
• According to Heider (1946), people prefer
attitudes that are consistent with each other
over those that are inconsistent.
• A person (P) tries to maintain consistency in
attitude to and in relationships with other
people (O) and elements of the environment
 Formation of attitudes
• A difference between cognitive and behavioral approaches is
the relative weight that each gives to internal events versus
external reinforcement.
• One approach with both a behavioral and perceptual flavor is
Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory.
• The idea that we gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-
attributions: for example we infer our own attitudes from our
own behavior
• Presumably attitudes exist because they are useful-they serve a
purpose. A number of theorists have identified a variety of
important functions that attitudes fulfill in helping people to
deal with the world around them
 Function of attitudes
• Katz (1960) proposed there are various kinds of attitudes, each
serving a different function, such as :
• knowledge;
• instrumentality (means to a end or goal);
• ego-defense (protecting one’s self-esteem);
• value expressiveness (allowing people to display those values
that uniquely identify and define them)
• An attitude saves cognitive energy and processing time, we do
not have to figure out ‘from scratch’ how we should relate to the
object or situation.
• Fazio (1989) considered that the main function of any kind of
attitude is a utilitarian one: that of object appraisal
 Attitude measurement
• The fact that attitudes are covert, unseen clusters of beliefs, feelings,
likes/dislikes and intentions make them difficult to measure. Various
techniques have been developed with the aim of providing reliable and
valid measures of attitudes.
• The usual approach is to use self-report measures involving attitude scales.
• Some forms of attitude measurement can be completely explicit: people
are simply asked to agree or disagree with various statements about beliefs
or attitude object.
• For example, how much do you agree or disagree with the following
statements:
• The teaching I have received this year has been very stimulating
• 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
• Strongly agree strongly disagree
 Attitude measurement
This approach relies on explicit measures of attitudes in that respondents
are asked directly to think about and report an attitude using a scale. The
most popular explicit measures today are Likert’s method of summated
ratings and Osgood’s semantic differential.
Likert scale- scale that evaluates how strongly people agree/disagree with
favorable/unfavorable statements about an attitude object.
Respondents use a five-point response scale to indicate how much they agree
or disagree with each series of statements.
The points use labels such as ‘strongly agree’, agree, undecided, disagree,
strongly disagree, ranging numerically from 5 to 1.
Items which do not correlate are dropped after item analysis and only those
that correlate are retained.
A person’s total score is summed across the statements and the total used
as an index of the person’s attitude
 Attitude measurement
• Osgood’s semantic differential- Osgood avoided using opinion
statements altogether by focusing on the connotative meaning
that people give to a word or concept (the goodness or badness
implied by the word).
• According to Osgood this evaluative dimension corresponds to
our definition of an attitude. We can therefore measure
attitudes by having people rate a particular concept on a set of
evaluative semantic scales.
• For example a concept can be measured by responses on several
evaluative (seven-point) scales (e.g. good/bad, nice/awful,
pleasant/unpleasant, fair/unfair, valuable/worthless)
• An attitude score is averaged across the scales used.
 Problems with self-report measures
• Although commonly used, self-report measures experience
problems. These arise from the fact that whenever people are
asked questions which reveal something about them (the way
they think or feel) there is always the possibility that they will
give socially desirable responses and conceal the truth.
• This is especially true when their attitude is controversial or is
likely to be a minority view, when respondents may not reveal
their real views and hide behind socially desirable responses.
• Respondents may also be tempted to misrepresent their views
in order to fulfill the researcher’s expectations (or what they
think the expectations are).
 Attitude measurement: physiological
measures
• Such problems have led researchers to seek other options for
measuring people’s attitudes.
• These include indirect measures via physiological indices (such as
skin resistance, heart rate and pupil dilation) and observation of
behavior:
• Physiological measures- these have one big advantage over self-
report measures:
• people may not know that their attitudes are being assessed and,
even if they do, they may not be able to alter their response. That
is why a polygraph or ‘lie-detector’ is sometimes used in criminal
investigations.
• However, physiological measures also have their drawbacks since
most are sensitive to variables other than attitudes.
 Attitude measurement
• Skin resistance can change in the presence of novel or
incongruous stimuli that may have nothing to do with
the attitude in question
• Similarly heart-rate is sensitive to task requirements-
problem-solving tasks raise heart-rate, while vigilance
tasks (such as watching a VDU screen) usually lowers it.
• Also these measures provide limited information: they
can indicate intensity of feeling but not direction.
• Two, totally opposed people who feel equally strongly
about an issue cannot be distinguished.
 Attitude measurement: physiological
measures
• One measure that can distinguish between positive and negative attitudes
is facial expression. Cacioppo & Petty (1979) have linked facial muscle
movements to underlying attitudes.
• They reasoned that people who agreed with a speech that they were
listening to would display facial movements different from those who
disagreed with the speech.
• To test this they recorded the movements of specific facial muscles
(associated with smiling or frowning) before an during a speech that
advocated a conservative or liberal view.
• Their results indicated that facial movements provide a useful way of
distinguishing people with favorable attitudes on a topic from those with
unfavorable attitudes.
• Some researchers have examined attitudes by measuring electrical
activity in the brain (Lewin,2000).
 Attitude measurement
• Measures of overt behavior- we may also measure and infer attitudes by
recording what people do. Sometimes what they really do does not accord
with what they say they do.
• Unobtrusive measures- these refer to observational approaches that nether
intrude on the processes being studied nor cause people to behave
unnaturally.
• Counts of empty beer and whiskey bottles in dustbins are examples of
unobtrusive measures of attitudes towards alcohol in the neighbourhood.
• Bodily traces and archival records can furnish evidence of people’s
attitudes.
• Public records and archival information can yield evidence about past and
present community attitudes.
• Changes in sex-role attitudes might be reflected in the roles of male and
female characters in children’s books.
Unobtrusive measures of attitudes
• Non-verbal behaviors, can also be used as an
unobtrusive measure of people’s attitudes.
• For example, who like each other tend to sit closer
together, so physical distance can be measured as
an index of ‘social distance’ and tolerance of
intimacy (Bogardus,1925).
• Interpersonal distance can also measure fear. In
one study, adults told ghost stories to children
seated in a circle (Webb et al.,1969), the size of the
circle grew smaller with each successive story.
 Attitude measurement
• Overall, however, unobtrusive measures are not as
reliable as self-report measures.
• A researcher who wants to be more confident of
valid results would use both types and then
correlate the data.
• One unobtrusive measure of behavior that can
work is the bogus pipeline technique (Jones &
Sigall,1971),
• which is designed to convince participants that
they cannot hide their true attitudes.
 Attitude measurement
• People are connected to a machine said to be a lie-
detector and are told that it measures both the
strength and direction of emotional responses,
• thus revealing their true attitudes and implying
that there is no point in lying.
• Participants usually find this deception convincing
and are less likely to conceal socially unacceptable
attitudes such as racial prejudice (Allen,1975).
 Attitude measurement
• Measuring covert attitudes-
• social psychologists use a variety of implicit measures to
minimise the tendency for people to conceal their underlying
attitudes by responding in socially desirable ways.
• A non-conscious or implicit attitude is defined as an
unidentified memory that forms a connecting link between an
object (for example, a person of a particular gender or ethnic
background, or a consumer product).
• One such measure is the Implicit association test (IAT). This
uses reaction times to access the automatic association
between concepts (e.g. men and women; flowers and insects).
 Covert measures of attitude
• If people react faster to the idea that an object is good than to the
idea that the object is bad, than this means they have a favorable
implicit attitude to the object.
• If the converse is the case, then they have an unfavorable implicit
attitude.
• Greenwald and his colleagues (Greenwald et al.,1998) developed the
IAT using a computer display coupled with responding on a keyboard.
• They aimed to reveal underlying negative inter-ethnic attitudes, for
example by comparing the response latencies of American Japanese
with American Koreans.
• The Japanese responded more quickly when a Japanese name was
paired with a pleasant word, and the Koreans did the same when a
Korean name was paired with a pleasant word.
 Attitude measurement
• The idea underlying this technique is that when people
are exposed to associations similar to those they already
hold, the information will be processed faster,
generating a faster reaction time.
• Studies which use people’s reaction times (by means of
the IAT and related techniques) to infer the implicit
associations they hold suggest that implicit attitudes can
affect both people’s cognition (e.g. stereotypes) and their
behavior (e.g. impulsive consumer decisions.
• However despite its popularity some social psychologists
have questioned its validity.
 Can attitudes predict behavior?
Can attitudes predict beavior?
• Empirical evidence-The classic study that started the debate
between attitudes and behavior was conducted by LaPierre (1934).
• He was interested in the difference between prejudiced attitudes
towards Chinese in general and discriminatory behaviors
towards a Chinese couple, in particular.
• In the early 1930’s prejudice against Asians was quite strong in the
United States.
• LaPierre and his friends embarked on a 10,000 miles tour of the
United States, accompanied by two young Chinese friends. They
visited 66 hotels, caravan parks and tourist homes and were
served in 184 restaurants.
 Can attitudes predict behavior?
• Six months after the trip, LaPierre sent a questionnaire to
all the places they had visited, asking ‘Will you accept
members of the Chinese race as guests in your
establishment?’
• Of the 81 restaurants and 47 hotels that replied , 92%
said they would not accept them, only 1% said they
would accept them, and the remainder checked
‘uncertain, depends on the circumstances’.
• These written replies directly contradicted the way they
had actually behaved. This study opened the question of
attitude-behavior consistency.
 Attitudes and behavior
• Many studies found a low level of agreement
between questionnaire measures of attitudes and
measures of overt behavior.
• Wicker (1969) concluded that the average
correlation between attitudes and behavior was
0.15 and the correlation was, at best 0.3.
• This suggests that attitudes have limited
predictive value, but this may be perhaps because
the right questions are not being asked in the
correct way.
 Factors affecting attitude-behavior
consistency
• There are a number of reasons why expressed attitudes and behavior
may not match. For example, attitude-behavior consistency can vary
according to whether:
• An attitude is more rather than less accessible (they are thought
about frequently, come to mind easily)
• Attitudes are likely to be stronger when they are formed through
direct experience
• An attitude is expressed publicly, say in a group or privately, such as
when responding to a questionnaire
• An individual identifies strongly or weakly with a group for which
the attitude is normative
• Strongly held attitudes are the most influential in determining
behavior
 Factors affecting attitude-behavior
• Another important issue relates to the specificity of the attitude and
behavior in question.
• Failure to obtain a match between attitudes and behavior may also
reflect poor measurement of either attitudes, or behavior, or both
• Time is also important. The longer the time interval between
measurements of attitude and behavior, the more likely the
attitude is to change.
• Not all classes of social behavior can be predicted accurately from
verbally expressed attitudes.
• Some research has explored why attitude-behavior correspondence
is often weak, and what factors may strengthen this correspondence.
 Models of attitude-behavior link
• According to Fishbein (1967, 1971), the basic ingredient
of an attitude is affect, a position that reflects
Thurston’s early definition of an attitude.
• However an attitude measure based entirely on a
unidimensional, bipolar evaluative scale (such as
good/bad) does not predict reliably how a person will
behave.
• Better prediction depends on accounting for the
interactions between attitudes, beliefs and behavioral
intentions, and the connections of all of these with
subsequent actions.
 Models of attitude-behavior link
• Ajzen and Fishbein believed that success in predicting the way we
behave is determined by asking whether we would perform a given
act or series of acts.
• The key lies in asking questions that are quite specific rather than
ones that deal with generalities.
• They argued that much previous attitude research has suffered from
either trying to predict specific behaviors from general attitudes or
vice versa.
• What we need is information about an individual’s attitude
towards a particular behavior, if we are to have any chance of
obtaining consistency between attitudes and behavior.
• This approach to prediction also offers a method of measurement,
the expectancy-value (EV) technique.
 Models of attitude-behavior link
• Theory of reasoned action- This model comprised three
broad processes of beliefs, intention and action and
included the following components:
• Subjective norm-a product of what the individual perceives
the others believe. Significant others provide direct or
indirect information about ‘what is the proper thing to do’.
• Attitudes towards the behavior-a product of the
individual’s beliefs about the target behavior and of how
these beliefs are evaluated.
• Behavioral intention-an internal declaration to act
• Behavior-
 Theory of reasoned action
• Usually an action will be performed if (1) the person’s attitude is
favorable and (2) the social norm is also favorable.
• For example, a person who has a positive attitude towards eating
healthy foods-because they believe it will contribute to their
overall health and well-being-
• and whose family and friends approve of people who eat healthy
foods will be more likely to eat healthy foods
• than someone who has a negative attitude towards healthy
eating and whose family/friends think eating healthy is just a
waste of time.
• This model has been applied extensively to the analysis of
individual consumer behavior, health related behavior.
 Models of attitude-behavior link
• Theory of planned behavior- The theory of reasoned
action(TRA) emphasises not only the rationality of human
behavior but also the belief that the behavior is under the
person’s conscious control: for example, “ I know I can stop
smoking if I really want to”. However some actions are less
under people’s control than others.
• Though the theory of reasoned action has been shown to have
considerable predictive value, it takes no account of how
much doing that behavior is under an individual’s control.
• Consequently the basic model was extended by Ajzen (1989)
to include perceived behavioral control-as a third predictor of
behavioral intention.
 Theory of planned behvaior
• Perceived behavioral control is the extent to which the person
believes it is easy or difficult to perform an act.
• The process of coming to such a decision includes consideration of
past experiences, as well as present obstacles that the person may
envisage.
• Ajzen and madden (1986) found that students want to achieve A-
grades in their courses: A-grades are highly valued by the students
(attitude),
• and they are the grades that their family and friends want them to
achieve (subjective norm).
• However, prediction of getting an A will be unreliable unless the
student’s perceptions of their own abilities are taken into account.
 Theory of planned behavior
• Ajzen has argued that perceived behavioral control can act
either the behavioral intention or directly on the behavior
itself.
• He referred to this modified model as the theory of planned
behavior (TPB). The two theories are not in conflict.
• In one study, Beck and Ajzen (1991) started with students’
self-reports of the extent to which they had been dishonest
in the past.
• The behavior sampled included exam cheating, shop-lifting
and telling lies to avoid completing written assignments,
actions that were quite often reported.
 Theory of planned behavior
• They found that measuring the perception of control that
students thought they had over these actions improved the
accuracy of prediction of future actions, and to some extent, the
actual performance of the act.
• Research has provided considerable support for the theory of
planned behavior in a variety of contexts including attitudes to
health, specifically safe sex-behavior (Terry et al.,1993) driver
behavior ( Parker et al., 1995)smoking, and alcohol consumption.
• The theory of planned behavior is a particularly strong predictor
of behavior when that behavior is easy to control (e.g. taking
vitamins, voting, having a mammogram; Madden et al 1992) This
theory is less effective, at predicting more spontaneous behavior
(smoking at a party)
 Theory of planned behavior
• Although generally seen as an improvement over the
theory of reasoned action, some researchers have
concluded there is scope for refining the concept of
behavioral control , or otherwise developing the model.
• For example, there is evidence that in the case of anti-
social or controversial behaviors such as driving
offences, an individual’s personal norm-their belief
about what is right or wrong-can also contribute to
behavioral intention (Parker, Manstead and Stradling,
1995).
 Theory of planned behavior
• Also, a comparison of competing models of goal
directed behaviors has illustrated the potential
contribution of past behavior to behavioral intention
and subsequent action (Bagozzi and Kimmel,1995).
• The prototype/willingness model, proposed by gibbons
and colleagues, extends the theory of planned behavior
arguing that people’s willingness to engage in a
particular behavior is affected, not only by social
norms and intentions, but also by prototypes, that is
social images of what people who engage in the
behavior are like.
 Prototype willingness model
• An important feature of this model is that it describes the role of
people’s willingness to engage in a particular behavior in a given
situation.
• If, for example a person sees students who drink and drive as
stupid and careless, he/she would be less likely to engage in this
behavior because the person’s prototype of people who engage in
this behavior is negative.
• On the other hand if the person sees people who drink and drive
as daring and independent, the person may be more likely to
engage in this behavior because their prototype is positive.
• The prototype/willingness model is a good predictor of many
health-risk behaviors including smoking and excercise (Blanton et
al., 2001)
 Criticisms and alternatives
• Despite their predictive value in a range of situations, Eagly and
Chaiken (1993) criticised the theories of planned behavior and
reasoned action for not clarifying the nature of intention or
specifying the precise relation between intentions and behaviour.
• Gollwitzer addressed the issue of how behavioural intentions are
translated into action by developing the concept of implementation
intentions and demonstrating their importance in determining
whether an individual will perform a desired behaviour (Gollwitzer,
1999; Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006) in their Rubicon model as an
alternative to the expectancy value models.
• In the context of attitude and behavior, "crossing the Rubicon" refers to the
psychological moment when someone makes a firm, irreversible decision to
pursue a particular course of action, effectively moving from a deliberative
mindset to a committed, action-oriented one, signifying a point of no return
where they are fully dedicated to achieving their goal; essentially, it's the
transition from considering options to actively taking steps to execute a decision
 Criticisms and alternatives
Model of action phases

•Changing Behavior Using the Model of Action Phases- The model of

action phases makes a distinction between motivational (goal setting) and
volitional (goal implementation) phases of goal pursuit.
•The model implies that changing the behavior of individuals who are in a
pre-decisional action phase (i.e., have not crossed the “Rubicon” yet with
respect to turning their many wishes into binding goals) needs a different
approach than changing the behavior of people who are in a post-
decisional phase (i.e., have crossed the Rubicon and need to implement
their goals).
•The model is, therefore, also known as the “Rubicon” model. . What exactly
needs to be targeted to achieve behavior change in pre-decisional versus post-
decisional individuals is addressed in the mindset theory of action phases, which
explicates the Rubicon model in terms of the relevant psychological processes
 Rubicon Model
•It is argued that solving the tasks people face while still being pre-
decisional requires different modes of thought (i.e., mindsets
conceived of as a distinct assembly of activated cognitive
procedures) than solving the tasks people face in post-decisional
phases.
•These distinct features of pre-decisional (deliberative) versus post-
decisional (implemental) mindsets as specified in the model need
to be considered when trying to instigate behavior change.
• Furthermore, research on the implemental mindset has led to the
discovery of a powerful self-regulation strategy promoting goal
striving: the formation of implementation intentions.
 Rubicon model
• In a wide-ranging review of intention-behaviour
relations and the nature of intention, Sheeran
(2002) considers the issue of the extent of the
discrepancy between intentions and behaviour and
discusses the psychological variables that might
be able to bridge the intention-behaviour gap.
• The research examined the extent to which four
groups of variables –behavior type, intention type,
properties of intention, and cognitive and
personality variables- moderate intention-behavior
relations. It concluded that intentions remain
the key psychological predictor of behavior
 Criticisms and alternatives
MODE model
• The Expectancy –value models assume that attitudes are
rational and that associated behaviour is intentional,
reasoned and planned, but this assumption may not be
justified.
• Fazio (1990) criticised the theory of reasoned action for
being limited to behaviour in situations where people are
highly motivated and capable of thinking deliberately
about the attitude and relevant behaviour.
• He proposed the MODE model (Motivation and
Opportunity to think about an attitude Determine
the Effects of the attitudes on behaviour), in which he
argued that whenever motivation and opportunity are
missing, highly accessible attitudes can be activated
spontaneously and so may automatically guide behaviour
 The reflexive-impulsive model
• A number of studies by Fazio and colleagues provide support for the MODE model
(see Schuette and Fazio, 1995).
• The reflective-impulsive model (RIM), proposed by Strack and Deutsch
(2004), develops the dual process approach further, suggesting that behaviour is
controlled by two interacting systems: a reflective system that relies on a
reasoned consideration of available information and an impulsive system that
uses more automatic associative links.
• The reflexive system generates behavioral decisions that are based on knowledge
about facts and values whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through
associative links and motivational orientations. The model describes how the 2
systems interact at various stages of processing and how the outputs may
determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion.
• Does behavior determine attitudes?
• Some people maintain that rather than attitudes determining behaviour, the
reverse is true – behaviour determines attitudes. This view derives from a range
of sources, for example, several tactics (e.g. foot-in-the-door and lowballing)
result in people agreeing to do things they would not have anticipated doing –
that is, our attitudes towards complying with others’ requests appear to be
affected by our actions
 Does behavior determine attitudes?
• For example research on the’ foot-in-the-door’ phenomenon reveals that
committing a small act later makes people more willing to do a larger one. The
‘lowballing’ a technique designed to gain compliance by making a very
attractive initial offer to induce a person to accept the offer then making the
terms less favourable.
• Also the actions prescribed by social roles mold the attitudes of the role
players. Actions also affect our moral attitudes, that which we have done, we
tend to justify as right.
• Three competing theories explain why our actions affect our attitude
reports- Self=presentation theory assumes that people, especially those
who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create good impressions, will adapt
their attitude to appear consistent with their actions
• Dissonance theory explains attitude change by assuming that we feel
tension after acting contrary to our attitudes , to reduce that arousal we
internally justify our behavior. The less external justification we have for our
undesirable actions, the more the dissonance and thus more the attitude
change
• Self-perception theory assumes that when our attitudes are weak, we
simply observe our behavior , then infer our attitudes.
 Culture and attitudes
• Certain attitudes differ across cultures; attitudes may also
differ across groups within a particular society.
• For example, attitudes to women, and their role in society,
may vary from one culture to another and in any one
culture, the attitudes to women held by women may be
different from those held by men.
• Attitudes may also change over time- for example, in many
societies the attitude towards women working outside the
home is very different now than 20-50 years ago.
• Some attitudes appear to be more fundamental or of a
higher order than others.
 Culture and attitudes
• Bond (2004) refers to these fundamental attitudes, as social
axioms, they serve to organise or structure more specific
attitudes and appear to show variation across cultures.
• Two related and overlapping concepts are: values- guiding
principles which set standards for evaluating our own and other’s
behavior-and
• ideology- an integrated and widely shared set of beliefs, whose
primary function is to explain and often legitimize, a given state of
affairs.
• These value systems and ideologies, like social axioms, frame
and guide specific attitudes and while generally similar within
social groups and cultures, they differ across groups and
cultures.
 Social representations
• Social representations-
• An appreciation that attitudes are grounded in the settings
in which they develop has resulted in an increasing interest
in the nature of shared beliefs held by groups or a
society/culture as a whole.
• Introduced by Moscovici (1961) and based on earlier work
by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1912/1995) on
‘collective representations,
• social representations refer to the way that people
elaborate simplified and shared understandings of their
world through social interaction.
 Social representations
• Simply put, social representations refer to the
shared understandings of the world, or ideas and
explanations people use to think about and
interpret their world
• Moscovici has maintained that people’s beliefs are
socially constructed; they are shaped by what other
people believe and say and they are shared with
other members of one’s community.
• In this sense, attitudes tend to reflect the society or
groups in which people live their lives.
 Social representations
• According to Moscovici, social representations not only
influence how we interpret events but also allows us to
incorporate new phenomena into our existing portfolio
of concepts, categories and meanings.
• For example , there is evidence that social representations
of health and illness affect our expectations and those of
the medical profession and thereby influence the kind of
treatment that is received.
• An example of a social representation would be that of
‘global terrorism’ which has developed since 9/11 through
media coverage and personal discussion.
 Social representations
• How do social representations relate to attitudes?
• Individual attitudes are grounded in these wider, group-based
representational structures, which tend to reflect the
society/groups to which people belong. Social
representations may influence the evaluative aspects of
relevant attitudes.
• Equally attitudes may affect relevant representations. For
example, your attitudes to computer use, games consoles and
mobile phones are likely to affect your representation of
information technology and, conversely, your representations
of technology will affect your attitudes to different
technological devices.