[Social Psychology Course Note] Ch 7

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Attitudes and Attitude Change: Influencing Thoughts and Feelings

What are the different kinds of attitudes and on what are they based ?

  • Attitudes
    • Evaluations of people, objects, and ideas

The nature and origin of attitudes

  • People are not neutral observers of the world
    • They evaluate what they encounter
    • They form attitudes
  • Attitudes are made up of three components
    • Affective 情感的
      • Emotional reaction
    • Behavioral
    • Cognitive

Where do attitudes come from ?

  • Genetic origins ?
    • Identical twins share more attitudes that fraternal twins
    • Indirect function of our genes
      • Temperament, personality
  • Social experience

Cognitively based attitude 以認知為基礎的態度

Affectively based attitude 以情感為基礎的態度

  • Affectively based attitudes don’t come from examining facts
    • Where do they come from ?
      • Values 價值觀
      • Sensory reaction 感官反應
      • Aesthetic reaction 美感反應

Behaviorally based attitude 以行為為基礎的態度

  • An attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object

Self-perception theory 自我知覺論

  • Sometimes people do not know how they feel until they see how they behave
    • Can form our attitudes based on our observations of our own behavior
  • People infer their attitude from their behavior only under certain conditions
    • When initial attitude is weak or ambiguous
    • When no other plausible explanation for behavior

Explicit versus implicit attitudes

  • Explicit attitudes
    • Attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily report
  • Implicit attitudes
    • Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious 非自願、不可控制、有時沒意識到的

Under what conditions do attitudes predict behavior ?

Predicting spontaneous behaviors

  • Attitudes will predict spontaneous behavior only when they are highly accessible to people
  • Attitude accessibility 態度可接近性
    • The strength of the association between an attitude object and a person’s evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object

Predicting deliberative behavior 預測深思行為

  • Theory of planned behavior 規劃行為論
    • People’s intentions are the best predictors of their deliberate behaviors
  • Specific attitudes
    • Only specific attitudes can be expected to predict that behavior
  • Subjective norms 主觀規範
    • We also need to measure people’s subjective norms - their beliefs about how people they care about will view the behavior in question
  • Perceived behavioral control 知覺到的行為控制力
    • Intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior

How do internal and external factors lead to attitude change ?

Attitude changes and social influence

  • When attitudes change, it is often due to social influence
    • This is why social psychologists are interested
    • Attitudes are social phenomena

Changing attitudes by changing behavior

  • People experience dissonance
    • When their image is threatened
    • When they cannot explain behavior with external justifications
      • Leads to finding internal justification for behavior
      • Brings your attitude and your behavior closer together (equals attitude change)

Persuasive communications and attitude change

  • Communication advocating a particular side of an issue
  • How should you construct a message so that it would really change people’s attitudes ?
  • Yale attitude change approach
    • “Who said what to whom”
      • Who: the source of the communication
      • What: the nature of the communication
      • Whom: the nature of the audience

The central an peripheral routes to persuasion 中心與周邊說服路徑

  • Elaboration likelihood model 推敲可能性模型
    • Central route
      • When people are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the arguments in the communication
      • Persuasion
        • Elaborate on a persuasive communication
          • Listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments
          • Occurs when people have both the ability and the motivation to listen carefully
    • Peripheral route
      • When people do not pay attention to the arguments but are instead swayed by surface characteristics
      • Persuasion
        • People do not elaborate on the arguments
        • People can be swayed by peripheral cues, such as by who delivers a persuasive message rather than by the strength of the message itself. An example is when consumers buy certain products because a celebrity tweets about them (代言)

The motivation to pay attention to the arguments

  • Personal relevance of the topic
  • People high in the need for cognition
    • Form attitudes through central route
  • People low in the need for cognition
    • Rely in peripheral cues

The ability to pay attention to the arguments

  • When people are unable to pay close attention to the arguments, they are swayed more by peripheral cues
    • Status of communicators
    • Liking or trusting communicators
  • Someone with a weak argument can still be persuasive if they distract their audience

How to achieve long-lasting attitude change

  • People who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments will be
    • More likely to maintain the attitude
    • More likely to behave consistently with this attitude
    • More resistant to counter-persuasion

Fear-arousing communications

  • Persuasive messages that attempt to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fear
  • Strong amounts of fear fail if they overwhelm people
    • Become defensive
    • Deny importance of threat
    • Cannot think rationally about issue
  • Do fear-arousing communications work ?
    • Modern amounts of fear work best
    • Provide information on how to reduce fear

Emotions as a heuristic

  • Heuristic-systematic model of persuasion
    • Systematically processing the merits(價值) of the arguments
    • When using peripheral route
      • Use mental shortcuts (heuristics)
      • Use emotions as heuristic to determine attitude
  • Advertisers and retailers want to create good feelings about their product
    • Pair product with appealing music or showing pleasant images
      • Hope people will attribute feelings to the product

Emotion and different types of attitudes

  • Several studies have shown that it is best to “fight fire with fire”
    • If an attitude is cognitively based
      • Change it with rational arguments
    • If an attitude is affectively based
      • Change it with emotional appeals
  • Some ads stress the objective merits of a product
    • $$$, reliability, efficiency
  • Other ads stress emotions and values
    • Sex, beauty, youthfulness

Attitude change and the body

  • Body posture plays a significant role in attitude change

How does advertising work to change people’s attitudes ?

Advertising can change attitudes

  • People more influenced by advertising than they think
  • Split cable market tests
    • Advertisers work with cable companies and stores
    • Show commercial to randomly selected group of people and keep track of purchase
    • Results of over 300 of these reveal ads effective especially for new products
  • Public health campaigns
    • Meta-analysis on ads and substance use among youths encouraging
    • Television and radio better than print ads

How advertising works

  • Many take emotional approach of attitude change
    • Little difference between brands
    • Associate product with excitement, youth, sexual attraction
  • Attitudes that are more cognitively based
    • Personally relevant ?
      • Yes, then use logical, fact-based arguments
      • No, might use peripheral route
      • Peripheral route leads to attitude change that is not long lasting_
      • Goal to make product personally relevant

Subliminal advertising: a form of mind control ?

  • There is no evidence that the types of subliminal messages encountered in everyday life have any influence on people’s behavior
  • Subliminal messages 閾下知覺訊息
    • Words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but may nevertheless influence people’s judgments, attitudes, and behavior

Laboratory evidence for subliminal influence

  • Evidence for subliminal influence in carefully controlled laboratory conditions
  • Subliminal effects require a controlled environment
    • Correct illumination of the room
    • No distraction
    • Right distance from screen
  • Limitations
    • No evidence that subliminal message can get people to act counter to wishes, values, or personalities

Advertising, stereotypes, and culture

  • Advertisements transmit cultural stereotypes in their words and images, subtly linking products with desired images
  • Advertisements can also reinforce and perpetuate stereotypical ways of thinking about social groups
  • Advertising both reflects and shapes the biases present in our society, as demonstrated by the divergent responses to a 2013 Cheerios ad featuring an interracial family

Gender stereotypes and expectations

  • Gender stereotypes are particularly pervasive in advertising imagery
  • Gender roles

Culture and advertising

  • Western cultures
    • Ads stress independence
    • “It’s easy when you have the right shoes”
    • May base attitudes more on individuality and self-improvement
  • Eastern cultures
    • Ads stress interdependence
    • “The shoes for your family”
    • May base attitudes more on standing in social group

What are some strategies for resisting efforts at persuasion ?

Attitude inoculation 態度預防接種

Making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position

Being alert to product placement 置入性行銷

  • Before kids watch TV or go off to the movies, it is good to remind them that they are likely to encounter several attempts to change their attitudes

Resisting peer pressure

When persuasion attempts boomerang: reactance theory

  • Reactance theory 抗拒論
    • People feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavior