Attitudes and

Attitude
Changes:
Influencing
Thoughts and
Feelings

By persuading others,
we convince ourselves.
Junius

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

If affectively based attitudes do not

come from examining the facts,
where do they come from? They
can result from:
1. Peoples values, such as religious
and moral beliefs,
2. Sensory reaction, such as liking the
taste of chocolate ,
3. Aesthetic reaction, such as
admiring a painting or the lines
and color of a car,

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.

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.

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.

In operant
conditioning,
behaviors we
Operant
Conditioning
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.

Although affectively based attitudes

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

Behaviorally Based Attitude

An attitude based on observations

of how one behaves toward an
attitude object.
According to Daryl Bems (1972) selfperception 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

How to Achieve LongLasting 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.

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.

Fear-Arousing
Communications

Fear-Arousing
Communications
Persuasive messages that
attempt to change peoples
attitudes by arousing their
fears.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

RESISTING PERSUASIVE
MESSAGES
Being Alert to Product Placement
When
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Without
such
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Without such warnings, people pay little
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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 ads
products.
Effective
worked
quickly, increasing sales
substantially within the
first six months they
were shown.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

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.

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.

 Gender stereotypes are particularly

pervasive in advertising imagery.
Men are depicted as doers, women as
observers.

Advertising, Cultural
Stereotypes, and Social
Behavior
Stereotype Threat
The apprehension experienced by
members of a group that their
behavior might confirm a cultural
stereotype.

Social
Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California,
Santa Cruz

Timothy D.
Wilson
University of Virginia

Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College

slides by Travis Langley

6th edition