Attitudes and
Attitude Change
Taylor, Copyright 2006, Prentice Hall
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Key Concepts
 Defining attitudes
 Attitude theories
 Attitudes and behavior
 Persuasion and changing attitudes
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How would you define
attitude?
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Attitudes
 Attitudes are enduring dispositions with
affective, behavioral, and cognitive
components. Attitudes function like
schemas, helping us make sense of many
kinds of social information.
 2 simple examples of how attitudes have
changed
example 1 – Jim Gaffigan
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Attitude
toward
condom
use.
+ sign =
favorable;
-sign =
unfavorable
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 Attitudes based on “ABC” information
 affective component

the person’s emotions and affect
towards the object
 behavioral component

how person tends to act towards the
object
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Cognitive component

consists of thoughts and beliefs the
person has about the object
 These are not always highly related to
each other.
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 Attitudes are often cognitively complex but
evaluatively simple.
 Attitudes make it possible to access related
information and to make decisions quickly.
 Attitudes are one determinant of behavior but
not the only one; conversely behavior also
determines attitudes.
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Activity 1
1. Brainstorm examples of attitudes
A. What affect or emotion is likely to be
associated with the attitude?
B. What behavior is likely to be associated
with the attitude?
C. What cognition or thinking is likely to be
associated with the attitude?
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Theories of Attitudes
Learning Theory: an approach that assumes that a
person’s attitudes are based on principles of:
 association: link in memory between stimuli that are
related
 reinforcement and punishment: person learns to exhibit a
particular response
 Imitation: matching thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
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Theories of Attitudes
 Transfer of affect: changing an attitude by
transferring it to the affect associated with
another object.
 For example, transferring emotions from
a
sexy model to the car the model is standing by.
Theories of Attitudes
 Evaluation of Learning Approach:
 The learning approach views people as passive recipients
of external forces.
 Message learning is critical to this perspective but
memory is uncorrelated with attitude change.
 This model appears to work well when people are
unfamiliar with the material.
Theories of Attitudes
 Cognitive Dissonance Theory is concerned with
discrepancies between people’ s attitudes and
their behaviors.
 Dissonance is an aversive motivational state
that results when our behavior is inconsistent
with our attitudes
 It is greatest when the attitudes and behavior are
important to the self.
 Dissonance creates psychological tension that
people are motivated to reduce.
Experiencing and Analyzing
Cognitive Dissonance
1.
Complete attitude survey
2. Complete behavior survey
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Theories of Attitudes
 Three ways of reducing dissonance
 changing our behavior (often difficult)
 trivializing the dissonance
 changing the attitude.
 Decision making usually arouses dissonance that is
resolved by increasing liking for the chosen
alternative and decreasing liking for the
non-chosen alternative
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Model of the Persuasion Process
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Persuasion
 Several aspects of a communicator affect whether a
person is evaluated favorably.
 Credibility

Expertise

Trustworthiness
 Liking
Persuasion
 We are persuaded by the opinions of our
reference groups, those we like or identify with.
 This occurs both because of the motivational factors
of liking and perceived similarity, and because
messages from in-groups are more likely to be
processed using the central route.
Persuasion
 Source derogation involves deciding the source is
unreliable or negative in some way. It can make all
future as well as current arguments from that source
less powerful.
Persuasion
 The greater the discrepancy between the listener’s
Attitude
Change
position and the message presented, the greater the
potential for change.
Discrepancy
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Persuasion
 When message discrepancy is low, it is assimilated
into the audience’s opinion (perceived as closer than
it really is)
 When message discrepancy is high, it is seen as
even further away (message contrast).
 Discrepancy may be reduced by distorting or
misperceiving the message, or even rejecting it
altogether.
Persuasion
 When people are not motivated or able to think
about message content, peripheral cues become
important in determining attitude change.
 source characteristics
 message length
 number of arguments
Persuasion
 Repetition and familiarity tend to increase liking, but
only up to a point.
 Repetition may help people process strong arguments
more completely but expose the flaws in weak
arguments.
 Repetition may lead to tedium; this can be dealt with
by having ads that provide slight variations on a
theme.
Persuasion
 Attitudes that are high in ego involvement are resistant
to change.
 Kinds of ego involvement include
 Commitment
 Issue Involvement
 Response Involvement
Persuasion
 Aggression Arousal
 Personal frustrations may make a person more
vulnerable to persuasive communications advocating
aggressive actions.
 Fear Arousal
 Fear usually increases the effectiveness of a
persuasive appeal, but if too much fear is aroused,
the effect may be disruptive.
 Fear appeals are more effective if they not only
arouse fear but also provide information about how
to reduce the fear.
Persuasion
 People high in authoritarianism or dogmatism
(closed-mindedness)
 tend to respond to the expertise of the source first
and to argument strength only when the source is
non-expert.
 People who are high in the need for closure
 typically more resistant to persuasion.
Activity 4
 We will need your HW from Unit 3 – due this week.
 In groups discuss your advertisements.
 Using the worksheet: SP3450.U4.WS4 Advertisement
Reaction exchange each other’s advertisements and
complete the questionnaire.
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Attitudes and Behavior
 Strong attitudes are typically
 stable,
 personally relevant,
 held about personally important issues about which
one feels extreme and certain.
 They are often “embedded” or tied to other
beliefs.
 They are often formed through direct
experience and become highly accessible as a
result.
Attitudes and Behavior
 Stable attitudes that are accessible in memory
are most likely to predict behavior
 Maximum attitude-behavior consistency occurs
when attitudes and behaviors are measured at
about the same time.
 Longer time intervals diminish attitude-behavior
correlations because attitudes, people, and situations
change.
Attitudes and Behavior
 Attitudes that are more accessible in memory
influence behavior more strongly.
 Attitudes that are expressed more frequently are more
accessible and tend to become more extreme.
Attitudes and Behavior
 The more relevant an attitude is to a behavior, the
more attitude-behavior consistency there will be.
 In most situations, several attitudes are relevant to
behavior. The attitude that is most salient is most
likely to influence behavior
 especially when the attitude is not a strong one.
The Reasoned Action Model of Factors
that determine a person’s behavior.
The Reasoned Action Model
 The Theory of Planned Behavior adds an additional
variable to the model:
 Perceived behavior control = people’s belief in their
ability to control their outcomes.
 Other factors not included in the model may also
be important:
 external constraints and opportunities,
 fear
 habit
Homework
 Sweet talking kids paper
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