PSY220: Attitudes

Attitudes §

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A psychological construct that represents your evaluations (like or dislike) of people, objects, and ideas.

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Elements of Attitudes §

1. Affect (emotions)
2. Cognitions (thoughts)
3. Behaviors

Measurements of attitudes §

• Self-reported measures: evaluate on a set of scale (ex. Likert scale $1-10$) [most common]
• Implicit measures: indirect measure of attitudes that does not involve self-report ex:
  • Response latency test
  • IAT
  • Measure physiology (change in heart rate…)

Origins §

1. Personal experiences
2. Social learning
3. Genetic factor
4. Evolutionary factors

Attitudes =/> Behavior §

• Generally, attitude does predict behavior, its just that it isn’t always the case.

LaPiere Study

• Context: in the 1930s, there were strong attitude against Chinese people in U.S.
• Method:
  • LaPiere asked a Chinese couple to visit restaurants to see if servers were willing to serve. Only $1/251$ restaurant refused, others served just as normal.
  • After that, LaPiere sent letters back to these restaurant to ask whether why would serve, $225/251$ said they wouldn’t, others were unsure, none said they would.
• Result:
  • Conclusion: attitude and behavior sometimes may not align together.
  • Reason: they want to make money

Ontario Bar Study

• Method:
  • Researchers went into a bar and asked whether people would be object to use condom when having sex with the people next to them. $100\%$ said no, they would not object.
  • However, when filling out the survey, only $56\%$ have admitted using condom the last time they had casual sex, and only $26\%$ said they always used condom during their sexual engagements.
• Result:
  • Conclusion: strong attitude did not lead to behavior.
  • Reason: conflicting attitudes

Underlining Reason §

1. Different attitudes can conflict with another.
2. General attitudes don’t predict specific behavior well.
3. There are other powerful determinants of behavior.
4. Introspection influences attitudes.
   • Attitudes toward remantic partners
     • Method: First group: simply fill out their feeling of their relationship; Second group: fill out what they did, then fill out their feeling of the relationship
     • Result: 9 month later, researchers found out that first group were more accurate about their feelings and predictions
5. Many behaviours are automatic

Behavior => Attitudes §

Behavior clashes with attitude => Discomfort => Cognitive Dissonance

• Special cases when behavior can actually predict some attitudes.
• Theory: Cognitive Dissonance Theory ★

Effort Justification §

• Coping with Cognitive Dissonance Theory By Leon Festinger

• Attempts to reduce the dissonance produced by the effort or cost spent to obtain something unpleasant or disappointing

Ex. Had a trip to Europe, but the weather was bad all the time, like raining.

• Then, this person might say that raining is “meaningful” or it was “beautiful”.
• This way, they would feel like that he actually enjoyed the time there.

Effort Justification Study

• Method
  • Participants were told this was a Psychology of Sex Study. They need to go through a screen in order to get in the study.
  • Assigned group (Female Participants read words to male experimenter)
    • Control group: neutral words (chair, book, talk)
    • Mildly Demanding group: little embarrassing words (virgin, prostitude, petting)
    • Very Demanding group: obscene words or passage from a novel describing sexual intercourse
  • After , they were all invited to listen to a very boring lecture about sex of invertebrates.
• Result
  • The control group were least satisfied, the mildly demanding group were a little more satisfied, while the very demanding group rate the lecture were very interesting.
  • This is because the very demanding group took a lot of effort to get into the lecture, therefore, rating it higher would make them to feel better.

Induced Compliance §

• Coping with Cognitive Dissonance Theory By Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith in paradigm Forced compliance theory

• Subtly compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their beliefs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance (and therefore change their original view).

Induced Compliance Study

• Method
  • All participants were asked to do a really boring experiment, after that:
  • Control group were asked to tell other people about the experiment.
  • Group 1 were given \1$ to tell other people that the experiment was fun.
  • Group 2 were given \20$ to tell other people they the experiment was fun.
  • At the end, the researcher give a survey to ask how they felt in truth.
• Result
  • Control group rate the lowest
  • Group 2 (with \20$) rated a little below average.
  • Group 1 (with \1$) rated the highest, they felt the experiment was actually not bad.
  • This illustrated that Group 1 didn’t gain a lot, but they wanted to feel good for their time, therefore, they ended up rating an boring experiment very high.

System Justification §

Really world example of cognitive dissonance

• The theory that people are motivated to see the existing sociopolitical system as desirable , fair, and legitimate.
• Even people with lower status in the legal system would still justify for the inequalities.

Self-Perception Theory §

• Theory that people infer their attitudes from observing their behavior.

Difference in the theories

Cognitive Dissonance	Self-Perception Theory
- Change attitude to fit behavior (dissonance is unpleasant )	- Unpleasant mental state no needed - People didn’t change attitudes, they inferred them from behavior

Reconciling the two theories ★ §

• Cognitive Dissonance - more applicable when behavior doesn’t fit pre-existing attitude and attitude is important to self-concept
• Self-Perception Theory - more applicable when person has no strong prior attitude