Attitudes

ATTITUDES

Attitudes

• An attitude is the tendency to think, feel, or act positively or negatively toward objects in your environment.

• How we react to other people

• What causes and people we support

• Which products we buy

• Other daily decisions

• Attitudes have 3 components:

• Cognitive component: A set of beliefs about the attitude object.

• Emotional component: Feelings about the object.

• Behavioural component: The way people act toward the object.

• If the 3 components were always in harmony, we would be able to predict behaviour. But, this is not the case.

Attitudes (Cont’d)

• What determines if behaviour will be consistent with the way we feel and think?

• Several factors increase the likelihood of attitude-behaviour consistency:

• When the person’s thoughts and feelings are in agreement.

• When the behavioural component of the attitude is in line with a subjective norm (a view of how the important people in our lives want us to act).

• When people have perceived control (a belief that they can actually perform the behaviour).

• Direct experience with the object of an attitude.

Forming Attitudes

• People’s attitudes about objects begin to appear in early childhood and continue to emerge throughout life.

• How do attitudes form?

• Formation of attitudes is primarily explained by the principles of learning.

        - In childhood, modeling and other forms of social learning play a major role. Children learn not only the names of objects, but also what they should believe and feel about them.

        - Classical conditioning can shape positive or negative attitudes (i.e. Advertisers pair up enjoyable music with products they are trying to sell).

        - Operant conditioning can also shape positive or negative attitudes (i.e. Parents reward children for stating particular views).

• Genetics may also have an influence on some attitudes.

Changing Attitudes

• Whether a message succeeds in changing attitudes depends mainly on 3 factors:

• The person communicating the message

• The content of the message

• The audience who receives it

• How can we change attitudes?

• According to the elaboration likelihood model, there are 2 routes through which persuasive messages can change people’s attitudes:

• Central route

• Peripheral route

Changing Attitudes
(Cont’d)

1. Central route:

• The content of the message is the most important.

• A person following the central route uses logical steps to analyze the content of the message (i.e. Validity of the claims, whether it leaves out important information, alternative interpretations).

2. Peripheral route: 

• People devote little attention to the content of the message.

• People tend to be affected instead by peripheral, or surrounding, persuasion cues (i.e. Confidence, attractiveness, and other characteristics of the person who delivers the message).

Changing Attitudes (Cont’d)

                Central Route

                Peripheral Route

Changing Attitudes
(Cont’d)

• What determines which route people will follow?

• Personal involvement with the message content is an important factor.

• According to the elaboration likelihood model, the more a person is personally involved in a topic, the more likely he/she will activate the central route.

Changing Attitudes
(Cont’d)

• Persuasive messages are not the only means of changing attitudes.

• Another approach is to get people to act in ways that are inconsistent with their attitudes, in the hope that they will adjust those attitudes to match their behaviour. Often such adjustments do occur. Why?

• Cognitive dissonance theory attempts to explain why.

Changing Attitudes
(Cont’d)

• Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory holds that people want their thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes to be in harmony with one another and with their behaviour.

• When these various elements are inconsistent, or dissonant, people become anxious and motivated to make them more consistent.

        Ex.: People who also think that ‘smoking is dangerous’ but who must also acknowledge that ‘I smoke’ would be motivated to reduce the resulting dissonance.

• Because it is often difficult to change behaviour, people usually reduce cognitive dissonance by changing attitudes that are inconsistent with the behaviour.

        Ex.: Rather than quit smoking, a smoker might decide that smoking is not so dangerous after all. 

Changing Attitudes (Cont’d)

• Also, when people publicly engage in behaviours that are inconsistent with the privately held attitudes, they are likely to change their privately attitudes to be consistent with their behaviour.

• Attitude-behaviour inconsistency is likely to change attitudes when:

• The inconsistency causes some distress or discomfort in a person.

• Changing attitudes will reduce that discomfort.

Changing Attitudes (Cont’d)

• Why does attitude-behaviour inconsistency cause discomfort?

• People’s positive self-concept (i.e. I am honest) is threatened by the fact that they encouraged others to do something that they don’t actually believe in or wouldn’t do themselves.

• When their behaviour is inconsistent with their self-concept, most people feel dishonest, so they change their attitudes to reduce or eliminate this unpleasant feeling.

• In other words, if people can persuade themselves that they really believe in what they have said or done, the inconsistency disappears, their positive self-concept is restored, and they can feel good about themselves again.

Forming & Changing Attitudes
– In review -

Types of Influence                Description

Modeling and conditioning                Attitudes are usually formed                                         through observation of how                                         others behave and speak about                                         an attitude object, as well as                                         through classical and operant                                         conditioning.

Elaboration likelihood model        People change attitudes through                                         either a central or peripheral                                         route, depending on factors such                                         as personal involvement.

Cognitive dissonance                Holding inconsistent cognitions                                         can motivate attitude change.

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