ATTITUDES

“Evaluating and responding to the social

world”

5th Lecture
By
Mujeeb Masood
 Now lets start with the basic
concept that What is the difference
between “Belief” and “Attitude”???
 “Attitudes are the global evaluation of various aspects
of the social world”

 “Beliefs are the pieces of information about the

different aspects of social world”
Example
 Nawaz Shareef is Prime minister of Pakistan

Belief
 I Like Nawaz Shareef as Prime minister

Attitude
 DUAL
ATTITUDE

EXPLICIT IMPLICIT
OR OR
DELIBERATE AUTOMATIC
ATTITUDE ATTITUDE

Explicit attitudes
Consciously accessible attitudes that
are controllable and easy to report
Implicit attitudes
Unconscious associations between
objects and evaluative responses (IAT is a measure for
implicit attitudes)
DOMAINS TO BE COVERED IN THIS
CHAPTER

 Attitude formation

 Persuasion

 Cognitive dissonance
 ATTITUDE FORMATION
We are aware that either we like PTI or
Muslim league N but do you have
knowledge that why you have positive
attitude for one of them and negative for
other??
OR
Do you like “Slice” Mango drink?? Why??
 Most of the attitudes are formed through “Social
Learning”, which means that many of our views
are acquires in situations where we interact with
others or simply observing behavior, such
learning occurs through several processes:
1) Classical conditioning (Direct and indirect)
a) Subliminal conditioning
b) Mere exposure
2) Instrumental conditioning
a) Physical rewards
b) Psychological acceptance or approval
(especially important when we become part of
new social networks)
 Classical Conditioning of Attitudes—The Direct
Route
Initially people may be neutral toward this brand’s label. However after
repeatedly pairing this product’s logo with an “unconditioned stimulus”
of various women who are attractive to the targeted group of young
males, seeing the beer logo may come to elicit positive attitudes on its
own.
The indirect route
 Attitudes are formed both by the rewards we have
experienced in the past and the rewards we are
likely to get in the future. As politicians have to be
very cautiously select the content of speech
appropriate to the present crowd
 3) Observational learning

a) Vicarious learning and role of media

b) Social comparison in attitude formation

c) Reference groups in attitude formation & strength

of identification of person with that group
 WHY AND WHEN DO ATTITUDES
INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR
 Classic study of Lapiere (1934) for the first
time addressed the question that do
attitudes predict behavior & his results
indicated that there is a sizeable gap
between attitude and behavior

 What person says and what person actually

does when confronted with the object of that
attitude may be quite different
Does that means that attitudes don’t predict
behavior??
NO, Not necessarily

Actually social context can influence

relationship of attitude and behavior

Research in Stanford university Miller and

Morrison (2009) & the concept of Pluralistic
ignorance
 STRENGTH OF ATTITUDES

Attitude
Extremity

Certainty Strength of Attitudes are Attitude-

attitude accessible Behavior
Consistency

Personal
experience How Attitude Strength Influences Attitude–Behavior
Consistency
Attitudes that are extreme, certain, and formed on the basis of personal
experience with the attitude object tend to be strong attitudes, which are more
likely to be accessible when a behavioral response is made. Greater attitude–
behavior consistency is found when attitudes are strong rather than weak
HOW DO ATTITUDES GUIDE BEHAVIOR
1) Attitudes arrived at through reasoned thoughts

 “Theory of reasoned action & theory of planned

behavior”
 “Implementation plan”
2) Attitudes and spontaneous behavioral reactions

 Attitude-to-behavior process model

CHANGING ATTITUDES: PERSUASION
Persuasion: Efforts to change others’
attitudes through the use of various kinds
of messages.

Billboards, television commercials,

magazine ads, popup ads on your
computers and even your friends act as a
persuader in your daily life
 Persuasion: A Part of Daily Life
Each day we are bombarded with dozens of messages designed to change our
attitudes or our behavior. Clearly, if they weren’t effective some of the time,
advertisers would not pay the sums that they do for these opportunities to try
and persuade us to buy what they are promoting.
 Persuasion: Communicators, Messages,
and Audiences
 Source of persuasion “Who says”: Persuasion are
effective when sources or communicators are

1) Credible
2) Physically attractive
 Message or content of persuasion “What he says”:

1) Messages that do not appear to be designed to

change our attitudes are often more successful than
those that seem to be designed to achieve this goal
 2) One approach to persuasion that has received considerable
research attention is the effect of “fear appeals”—messages that
are intended to arouse fear in the recipient. For example, Janis and
Feshbach (1953) gave people one of three messages about the
tooth decay that can result from not brushing one’s teeth. They
found that the mild fear-inducing message resulted in the greatest
subsequent tooth brushing, while the most fear-inducing message
resulted in the least increase in brushing. When the message is
sufficiently fear arousing that people genuinely feel threatened,
they are likely to argue against the threat, or else dismiss its
applicability to themselves

3) Positively framed messages are often more effective persuasion

devices than fear appeals.
 RECENT RESEARCH EXPLORES “HOW
PERSUASION OCCURS”
The cognitive processes underlying
persuasion
SYSTEMATIC VERSUS HEURISTIC PROCESSING
 Systematic processing: Processing of information in a persuasive message
that involves careful consideration of message content and ideas.
 Central route to persuasion: Attitude change resulting from systematic
processing of information presented in persuasive messages.

 Heuristic processing: Processing of information in a persuasive message that

involves the use of simple rules of thumb or mental shortcuts.
 Peripheral route to persuasion: Attitude change that occurs in response to
peripheral persuasion cues, which is often based on information concerning
the expertise
The ELM Model: A Cognitive Theory of Persuasion
According to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), persuasion can occur in one of two ways. First,
we can be persuaded by systematically processing the information contained in the persuasive
messages (the central route), or second, by use of heuristics or mental one word shortcuts (the
peripheral route). Systematic processing occurs when the message is important to us and we have
the cognitive resources available to think about it carefully. Heuristic processing is most likely when
the message is not important to us or we do not have the cognitive resources (or time) to engage in
careful thought.
 RESISTING PERSUATSION ATTEMPTS

Resistance to persuasion may be due to following factors

1) Reactance: Protecting our personal freedom

2) Forewarning: Prior Knowledge of persuasive intent
3) Selective avoidance of persuasion attempts
4) Actively defending our attitudes: Counter arguing against
the competition
5) Individual differences in resistance to persuasion
6) Ego depletion can undermine resistance
 Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance

“An internal state that results when individuals notice

inconsistency between two or more attitudes or between their
attitudes and their behavior”
Dissonance and attitude change

Experiment by Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959

“less-leads-to-more effect”
The fact that offering individuals small rewards for engaging in
counter attitudinal behavior often produces more dissonance,
and so more attitude change, than offering them larger rewards
 ALTERNATIVE STRATEGIES FOR
RESOLVING DISSONANACE
Direct methods
 Altering our behavior so it is more consistent with the
attitude
 By acquiring new information that is consistent with the
attitude
 Trivialization
Indirect methods
 Basic discrepancy between the attitude and behavior are
left intact, the unpleasant or negative feelings generated
by dissonance can still be reduced by, for example,
consuming alcohol
 Self-affirmation—restoring positive self- evaluations that
are threatened by the dissonance