ATTITUDE
CHANGE
Overview
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Attitude-behaviour problem: how do
internal mental activities relate to overt
behaviour? (attitude–behaviour relations)
To what degree our are attitudes internally
organised?
Why do so many people share similar
attitudes on particular issues?
Research strands
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Early phase 40’s-50’s: interest in attitude
change & empirical research on persuasive
communication
60’s-70’s: focus on attitude organization in
terms of maintenance of cognitive
consistency (e.g., dissonance theory)
80’s-90’s: back to attitude change, more
general theories (e.g., ELM, HSM)
Moderator variables:
Under what conditions do what kinds of
attitudes of what kinds of individuals predict
what kinds of behaviour?
Situational moderators; attitudinal qualities;
personal moderators, individual differences;
behavioural properties…
Three components
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Thoughts (information)
Feelings (classical conditioning)
Actions (instrumental conditioning/
modelling)
Can we change attitudes by changing these
components?
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Attitudes changed by persuasive
mechanisms (central/peripheral)
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Attitudes also changed on foot of changing
behaviour
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Counter-attitudinal advocacy
Cognitive dissonance/Self-perception theory
Thoughts
Changed by persuasive communications
(i.e., new information)
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What qualities makes a communication
persuasive?
How does persuasion occur?
When do people resist persuasive
communications?
Qualities of communication
Three important factors:
1. Source
2. Content
3. Audience
How does persuasion occur?
By what psychological mechanisms do attitudes
guide behaviour?
Two Dual Process models of persuasion (drawn
from memory research - Depth of Processing)
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Petty & Cacioppo 1981 Elaboration-Likelihood
Model ELM
Chaiken 1980 Heuristic Systematic Model HSM
Deliberative (reasoned action, planned behaviour
models) vs. automatic processing modes
2 routes
 Peripheral, relatively spontaneous
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resultant attitude change = temporary, unlikely to
predict behaviour, susceptible to further change
Central, relatively deliberate
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resultant attitude change = relatively permanent,
likely to predict behaviour, resistant to further
change
When do people resist?
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When forewarned, psychological reactance
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When innoculated by previous success
counterarguing persuasive communications
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When high need for ‘cognitive closure’
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When use Defensive strategies
Differentiation; Transference)
in
(e.g., Denial; Bolstering;
Feelings
Classically conditioned by repeated
association of attitude object with positive
or negative events.
Peripheral route
2 ways to change people’s attitude feelings:
 Put people in a good mood
 Classically condition the attitude
Do feelings ever change without thought?
Conditioning without awareness
 Mere exposure
 Match attitude change with attitude basis
Actions
Changed through rewards & modelling
Induced compliance
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If negatively aroused by inconsistency
Where no strong attitudes, infer
thoughts/feelings from actions
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Festinger 1957
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Festinger/
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/index.htm
We change our attitudes to reduce the aversive
arousal we experience when we have two
cognitions or thoughts that contradict each other
or are dissonant.
To change
thoughts, get people to act
counterattitudinally
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Circumstances when attitudes change
because of cognitive disssonance
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Postdecisional dissonance
Effort justification
Insufficient justification (Festinger & Carlsmith 1959)
Insufficient deterrence (Aronson & Carlsmith 1963)
Attitude change occurs only when:
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There are aversive consequences to the action
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Person assumes personal
causing those consequences
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Person who performs action experiences aversive
arousal that is attributed to action
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Person has no attractive way to reduce arousal
other than through attitude change
responsibility
for
Do people infer their attitudes from their
actions?
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Self perception theory Bem 1967
People who do not have strong attitudes
sometimes infer their thoughts and feelings
from their own actions.
Attitudes change when people have such
weak attitudes that counterattitudinal
behaviour does not cause negative
arousal.
Schachter & Singer 1962 ‘2 factor’ theory of
emotion
Attitude change occurs when:
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The action is one that logically implies a corresponding
attitude
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People do not spontaneously remember what their
attitude used to be and draw the same conclusion from
their action as an uninvolved observer
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People experience no physiological arousal that they
need to explain
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A previously attractive option becomes dictated by
external controls
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Some critics suggest actually testing:
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Sociological mores not psychological laws
Not consistency but norms of conduct in
which inconsistency looks bad
Impression management (Goffman 1959)
Reading:
(Ch 6, Hogg & Vaughan) esp. Fazio &
Cooper 1984
Chapter 4. Augoustinos, M., Walker, I. &
Donaghue, N. (2006) (2nd ed.). Social
Cognition. London: Sage.