Social Psychology

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Social Psychology
6th edition

• Elliot Aronson
• University of California, Santa Cruz
• Timothy D. Wilson
• University of Virginia
• Robin M. Akert
• Wellesley College
• slides by Travis Langley
• Henderson State University

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Chapter 7

• Attitudes and Attitude Changes
• Influencing Thoughts and Feelings

By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
Junius
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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

• Advertising can have powerful effects.
• Until the early twentieth century, men bought 99
  of cigarettes sold. Then advertisers began
  targeting female buyers.
• In 1955, there were twice as many male as female
  smokers in the United States.
• Although the smoking rate has decreased overall,
  women have almost caught up to men. In 2004 23
  of adult men smoked, compared to 19 of adult
  women.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

• Although the smoking rate has decreased overall,
  women have almost caught up to men. In 2004 23
  of adult men smoked, compared to 19 of adult
  women.

• But is advertising responsible?
• To what extent can advertising shape peoples
  attitudes and behavior?
• Exactly what is an attitude, anyway, and how is
  it changed?

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES
People are not neutral observers of the world.
They evaluate what they encounter. They form
attitudes.

• Attitudes
• Evaluations of people, objects, and ideas.

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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

• Attitudes are made up of three parts that
  together form our evaluation of the attitude
  object
• 1. An affective component, consisting of your
  emotional reactions toward the attitude object.
• 2. A cognitive component, consisting of your
  thoughts and beliefs about the attitude object.
• 3. A behavioral component, consisting of your
  actions or observable behavior toward the
  attitude object.

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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF ATTITUDES

• 1. What is your affective reaction when you see a
  certain car?
• Perhaps you have feelings of excitement.
• If you are a U.S. autoworker examining a new
  foreign-made model, maybe you feel anger and
  resentment.
• 2. What is your cognitive reaction?
• What beliefs do you hold about the cars
  attributes?
• Perhaps you admire its hybrid engine that makes
  it one of the most fuel efficient cars you can
  buy.
• 3. What is your behavioral reaction?
• Do you go to a dealership and test-drive the car
  and actually buy one?

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• One provocative answer that some attitudes, at
  least, are linked to our genes.
• Identical twins share more attitudes than
  fraternal twins, even when raised in different
  homes, never knowing each other.
• Some attitudes are an indirect function of our
  genetic makeup, related to things like our
  temperament and personality.

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Where Do Attitudes Come From?

• Even if there is a genetic component, our social
  experiences clearly play a large role in shaping
  our attitudes.
• Not all attitudes are created equally.
• Though all attitudes have affective, cognitive,
  and behavioral components, any given attitude can
  be based more on one type of experience than
  another.

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• Cognitively Based Attitude
• An attitude based primarily on peoples beliefs
  about the properties of an attitude object.

• Sometimes our attitudes are based primarily on
  the relevant facts, such as the objective merits
  of an automobile.
• How many miles to the gallon does it get?
• Does it have side-impact air bags?

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• Affectively Based Attitude
• An attitude based more on peoples feelings and
  values than on their beliefs about the nature of
  an attitude object.

Sometimes we simply like a car, regardless of how
many miles to the gallon it gets. Occasionally
we even feel great about something or someone in
spite of having negative beliefs.
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• If affectively based attitudes do not come from
  examining the facts, where do they come from?
  They can result from
• Peoples values, such as religious and moral
  beliefs,
• Sensory reaction, such as liking the taste of
  chocolate ,
• Aesthetic reaction, such as admiring a painting
  or the lines and color of a car,
• Conditioning.

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Classical Conditioning

• The phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits
  an emotional response is repeatedly paired with a
  neutral stimulus that does not until the neutral
  stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the
  first stimulus.

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Classical conditioning works this way

• A stimulus that elicits an emotional response is
  accompanied by a neutral stimulus that does not
  until eventually the neutral stimulus elicits the
  emotional response by itself.
• Suppose that when you were a child, you
  experienced feelings of warmth and love when you
  visited your grandmother.
• Suppose also that her house always smelled
  faintly of mothballs.
• Eventually, the smell of mothballs alone will
  trigger the emotions you experienced during your
  visits, through the process of classical
  conditioning.

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Operant Conditioning

• The phenomenon whereby behaviors that people
  freely choose to perform increase or decrease in
  frequency, depending on whether they are followed
  by positive reinforcement or punishment.

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Operant Conditioning

• In operant conditioning, behaviors we freely
  perform become more or less frequent, depending
  on whether they are followed by a reward
  (positive reinforcement) or punishment.
• How does this apply to attitudes?
• Imagine
• A 4-year-old white girl goes to the playground
  and begins to play with an African American girl.
  
• Her father expresses strong disapproval, telling
  her, We dont play with that kind of child.
• It wont take long before the child associates
  interacting with African Americans with
  disapproval, thereby adopting her fathers racist
  attitudes.

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• Although affectively based attitudes come from
  many sources, we can group them into one family
  because they
• Do not result from a rational examination of the
  issues,
• Are not governed by logic (e.g., persuasive
  arguments about the issues seldom change an
  affectively based attitude), and
• Are often linked to peoples values, so that
  trying to change them challenges those values.

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• Behaviorally Based Attitude
• An attitude based on observations of how one
  behaves toward an attitude object.

According to Daryl Bems (1972) self-perception
theory, under certain circumstances, people dont
know how they feel until they see how they
behave. We can form our attitudes based on our
observations of our own behavior.
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• Behaviorally Based Attitude
• An attitude based on observations of how one
  behaves toward an attitude object.

• People infer their attitudes from their behavior
  only under certain conditions.
• Their initial attitude has to be weak or
  ambiguous.
• People infer their attitudes from their behavior
  only when there are no other plausible
  explanations for their behavior.

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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.
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Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

• Consider Sam, a white, middle-class college
  student who genuinely believes that all races are
  equal and abhors any kind of racial bias.
• This is Sams explicit attitude, in the sense
  that it is his conscious evaluation of members of
  other races that governs how he chooses to act.
• For instance, consistent with his explicit
  attitude, Sam recently signed a petition in favor
  of affirmative action policies at his university.

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Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

• Sam has grown up in a culture in which there are
  many negative stereotypes about minority groups,
  however, and it is possible that some of these
  negative ideas have seeped into him in ways of
  which he is not fully aware.
• When Sam is around African Americans, for
  example, perhaps some negative feelings are
  triggered automatically and unintentionally. If
  so, he has a negative implicit attitude toward
  African Americans.

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Explicit versus Implicit Attitudes

• People can have explicit and implicit attitudes
  toward virtually anything, not just other races.
• For example, students can believe explicitly that
  they hate math but have a more positive attitude
  at an implicit level.

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HOW DO ATTITUDES CHANGE?

• When attitudes change, they often do so in
  response to social influence.
• Our attitudes toward everything from a
  presidential candidate to a brand of laundry
  detergent can be influenced by what other people
  do or say.
• This is why attitudes are of such interest to
  social psychologistseven something as personal
  and internal as an attitude is a highly social
  phenomenon, influenced by the imagined or actual
  behavior of other people.

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Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior
Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited

• As we noted in Chapter 6, people experience
  dissonance
• When they do something that threatens their image
  of themselves as decent, kind, and honest.
• Particularly if there is no way they can explain
  away this behavior as due to external
  circumstances.
• When you cant find external justification for
  your behavior, you will attempt to find internal
  justification by bringing the two cognitions
  (your attitude and your behavior) closer
  together.

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Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior
Cognitive Dissonance Theory Revisited

• Suppose you dont want to rub your new
  father-in-law the wrong way by arguing with him
  about politics. You might go along with a mildly
  positive remark about a politician you actually
  dislike.
• Counterattitudinal advocacy, a process by which
  people are induced to state publicly an opinion
  or attitude that runs counter to their own
  private attitudes, creates dissonance.
• When this is accomplished with a minimum of
  external justification, it results in a change in
  peoples private attitude in the direction of the
  public statement.

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Persuasive Communication

• Communication (e.g., a speech or television ad)
  advocating a particular side of an issue.

How should you construct a message so that it
would really change peoples attitudes?
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Persuasive Communications and Attitude Change

• Yale Attitude Change Approach
• The study of the conditions under which people
  are most likely to change their attitudes in
  response to persuasive messages, focusing on who
  said what to whomthe source of the
  communication, the nature of the communication,
  and the nature of the audience.

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The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion 

• Elaboration Likelihood Model
• An explanation of the two ways in which
  persuasive communications can cause attitude
  change
• Centrally, when people are motivated and have the
  ability to pay attention to the arguments in the
  communication.
• peripherally, when people do not pay attention to
  the arguments but are instead swayed by surface
  characteristics.

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The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion 

• Under certain conditions, people are motivated to
  pay attention to the facts in a communication,
  and so they will be most persuaded when these
  facts are logically compelling.

Central Route to Persuasion The case whereby
people elaborate on a persuasive communication,
listening carefully to and thinking about the
arguments, as occurs when people have both the
ability and the motivation to listen carefully to
a communication.
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The Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion 

• Under other conditions, people are not motivated
  to pay attention to the facts instead, they
  notice only the surface characteristics of the
  message, such as how long it is and who is
  delivering it.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion The case whereby
people do not elaborate on the arguments in a
persuasive communication but are instead swayed
by peripheral cues.
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The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments 

• One thing that determines whether people are
  motivated to pay attention to a communication is
  the personal relevance of the topic
• How important is the topic to a persons
  well-being?

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The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments 

• The more personally relevant an issue is, the
  more willing people are to pay attention to the
  arguments in a speech, and therefore the more
  likely people are to take the central route to
  persuasion.

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The Motivation to Pay Attention to the Arguments 
Need for Cognition A personality variable
reflecting the extent to which people engage in
and enjoy effortful cognitive activities.

• People high in the need for cognition are more
  likely to form their attitudes by paying close
  attention to relevant arguments (i.e., via the
  central route), whereas people low in the need
  for cognition are more likely to rely on
  peripheral cues, such as how attractive or
  credible a speaker is.

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The Ability to Pay Attentionto the Arguments 

• When people are unable to pay close attention to
  the arguments, they are swayed more by peripheral
  cues.
• Status of communicator
• Liking or trusting communicator
• Therefore someone with a weak argument can create
  distractions (e.g., loud music) to make people
  more susceptible to peripheral influence.

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How to Achieve Long-Lasting Attitude Change

• Compared to people who base their attitudes on
  peripheral cues, people who base their attitudes
  on a careful analysis of the arguments will be
• More likely to maintain this attitude over time,
• More likely to behave consistently with this
  attitude,
• More resistant to counterpersuasion.

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Emotion and Attitude Change

• Before people will consider your carefully
  constructed arguments, you have to get their
  attention.
• One way is to grab peoples attention by playing
  to their emotions.

Source of images Microsoft Office Online.
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Fear-Arousing Communications

• Fear-Arousing Communications
• Persuasive messages that attempt to change
  peoples attitudes by arousing their fears.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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Fear-Arousing Communications

• Do fear-arousing communications work?

• If a moderate amount of fear is created and
  people believe that listening to the message will
  teach them how to reduce this fear, they will be
  motivated to analyze the message carefully and
  will likely change their attitudes via the
  central route.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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A group of smokers who watched a graphic film
depicting lung cancer and then read pamphlets
with specific instructions about how to quit
smoking reduced their smoking significantly more
than people who were shown only the film or only
the pamphlet.
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Fear-Arousing Communications

• Fear-arousing appeals will also fail if they are
  so strong that they overwhelm people.
• If people are scared to death, they will become
  defensive, deny the importance of the threat, and
  be unable to think rationally about the issue.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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Emotions as a Heuristic

• HeuristicSystematic Model of Persuasion
• An explanation of the two ways in which
  persuasive communications can cause attitude
  change either systematically processing the
  merits of the arguments or using mental shortcuts
  (heuristics)
• (e.g., thinking, Experts are always right)

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Emotions as a Heuristic

• Interestingly, our emotions and moods can
  themselves act as heuristics to determine our
  attitudes.
• When trying to decide attitude about something,
  we often rely on the How do I feel about
  it?-heuristic.
• If we feel good, we must have a positive
  attitude if we feel bad, its thumbs down.

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Emotions as a Heuristic

• The problem with the How do I feel about it?
  heuristic is that we can make mistakes about what
  is causing our mood, misattributing feelings
  created by one source to another.
• If so, people might make a bad decision.

• Once you get a new couch home, you might discover
  that it no longer makes you feel all that great.

• Advertisers and retailers want to create good
  feelings while they present their product (e.g.,
  by playing appealing music or showing pleasant
  images), hoping that people will attribute at
  least some of those feelings to the product they
  are trying to sell.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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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, try to
  change it with rational arguments.
• If it is affectively based, try to change it with
  emotional appeals.

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Emotion and Different Types of Attitudes

• Some ads stress the objective merits of a
  product, such as an ad for an air conditioner or
  a vacuum cleaner that discusses its price,
  efficiency, and reliability.
• Other ads stress emotions and values, such as
  ones for perfume or designer jeans that try to
  associate their brands with sex, beauty, and
  youthfulness, rather than saying anything about
  the objective qualities of the product.
• Which kind of ad is most effective?

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Culture and Different Types of Attitudes

• Perhaps people in Western cultures base their
  attitudes more on concerns about individuality
  and self-improvement, whereas people in Asian
  cultures base their attitudes more on concerns
  about their standing in their social group, such
  as their families.
• If so, advertisements that stress individuality
  and self-improvement might work better in Western
  cultures, and advertisements that stress ones
  social group might work better in Asian cultures.

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RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

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

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

• Being Alert to Product Placement
• When an advertisement comes on during a TV show,
  people often decide to press the mute button on
  the remote control or to get up and get a snack.
• To counteract this tendency to tune out,
  advertisers look for ways of displaying their
  wares during the show itself.
• With this technique, called product placement,
  companies pay the makers of a TV show or movie to
  incorporate their product into the script.

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RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

• Being Alert to Product Placement
• When an advertisement comes on during a TV show,
  people often decide to press the mute button on
  the remote control or to get up and get a snack.
• To counteract this tendency to tune out,
  advertisers look for ways of displaying their
  wares during the show itself.
• With this technique, called product placement,
  companies pay the makers of a TV show or movie to
  incorporate their product into the script.

• When people are forewarned, they analyze what
  they see and hear more carefully and as a result
  are likely to avoid attitude change.
• Without such warnings, people pay little
  attention to the persuasive attempts and tend to
  accept them at face value.
• So before kids watch TV or sending them off to
  the movies, it is good to remind them that they
  are likely to encounter several attempts to
  change their attitudes.

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RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

• Resisting Peer Pressure
• Peer pressure is linked to values and emotions,
  playing on their fear of rejection and their
  desire for freedom and autonomy.
• In adolescence, peers become an important source
  of social approvalperhaps the most importantand
  can dispense powerful rewards for holding certain
  attitudes or behaving in certain ways, such as
  using drugs or engaging in unprotected sex.
• What is needed is a technique that will make
  young people more resistant to attitude change
  attempts via peer pressure so that they will be
  less likely to engage in dangerous behaviors.

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RESISTING PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

• Resisting Peer Pressure
• One possibility is to extend the logic of the
  attitude inoculation approach to more affectively
  based persuasion techniques, such as peer
  pressure.
• In addition to inoculating people with doses of
  logical arguments that they might hear, we could
  also inoculate them with samples of the kinds of
  emotional appeals they might encounter.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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When Persuasion Attempts Boomerang Reactance
Theory

• Reactance Theory
• The idea that when 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.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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WHEN WILL ATTITUDES PREDICT BEHAVIOR?

• The relationship between attitudes and behavior
  is not simple, as shown in a classic study
  (LaPiere, 1934)
• In the early 1930s, Richard LaPiere embarked on a
  cross-country sightseeing trip with a young
  Chinese couple.
• Prejudice against Asians was common in the United
  States at this time, so at each hotel,
  campground, and restaurant they entered, LaPiere
  worried that his friends would be refused
  service.
• To his surprise, of the 251 establishments he and
  his friends visited, only one refused to serve
  them.
• And yet when surveyed, only one replied that it
  would serve a Chinese visitor. More than 90
  percent said they definitely would not the rest
  were undecided.

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Predicting Spontaneous Behaviors

• Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only
  when they are highly accessible to people.

Attitude Accessibility The strength of the
association between an attitude object and a
persons evaluation of that object, measured by
the speed with which people can report how they
feel about the object.
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Predicting Deliberative Behaviors

• Theory of Planned Behavior
• The idea that the best predictors of a persons
  planned, deliberate behaviors are the persons
  attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective
  norms, and perceived behavioral control.

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Predicting Deliberative Behaviors

• Specific behaviors The theory of planned
  behavior holds that only specific attitudes
  toward the behavior in question can be expected
  to predict that behavior.
• Subjective norms  We also need to measure
  peoples subjective normstheir beliefs about how
  people they care about will view the behavior in
  question.
• Perceived behavioral control Intentions are
  influenced by the ease with which they believe
  they can perform the behavior.

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THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

• It turns out that people are influenced by
  advertisements more than they think.
• The results of over three hundred split cable
  market tests indicate that advertising does work,
  particularly for new products.

Effective ads worked quickly, increasing sales
substantially within the first six months they
were shown.
Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

• Subliminal Messages
• Words or pictures that are not consciously
  perceived but may nevertheless influence peoples
  judgments, attitudes, and behaviors.

Simply stated, there is no evidence that the
types of subliminal messages encountered in
everyday life have any influence on peoples
behavior.
Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes,and Social
Behavior

• 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.

Source of image Microsoft Office Online.
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• Gender stereotypes are particularly pervasive in
  advertising imagery.
• Men are depicted as doers, women as observers.

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Advertising, Cultural Stereotypes, and Social
Behavior

• Stereotype Threat
• The apprehension experienced by members of a
  group that their behavior might confirm a
  cultural stereotype.

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Social Psychology
6th edition

• Elliot Aronson
• University of California, Santa Cruz
• Timothy D. Wilson
• University of Virginia
• Robin M. Akert
• Wellesley College
• slides by Travis Langley
• Henderson State University