Social Psychology - Chapter 7

How do attitudes form and develop? - Chapter 7

Attitudes

An attitude is a mental representation that summarizes the evaluation of an attitude object. An attitude object can be any aspect of the social world, such as the self, but also others, a thing, an action, an event or even an idea. Everyone actually has attitudes about pretty much everything. Attitudes are very persistent and therefore difficult to change. Attitude change is the process whereby attitudes are formed and changed by the association of positive or negative information with the attitude object. Attitudes can be formed, strengthened or changed through communication. This is called persuasion. There is a difference between implicit and explicit attitudes. With explicit attitudes one is aware of the attitude and one can also indicate it to others. Implicit attitudes can not be measured directly: people are not aware of the attitude or people hide the attitude. Explicit attitudes can be measured through self-reporting and observation. Implicit attitudes can be measured on the basis of, for example, the reaction time, the Implicit Association Test and / or muscle activity.

Forming attitudes serves two functions:

Attitudes are useful for controlling and understanding the environment. Attitudes serve a so-called knowledge function: an attitude contributes to understanding and controlling the environment by organizing, summarizing and simplifying experience with an attitude object. In the same context attitudes serve an instrumental function: attitudes indicate a direction that helps us to achieve our goals and keeps us away from things that cause or hinder us.

Attitudes are useful in expressing oneself and ensuring the establishment of connectedness. The social identity function of attitudes is the way in which an attitude contributes to connectedness by expressing important functions and identities of the self and the group. In addition, attitudes also contribute to the connectedness by means of the impression management function: through the smooth running of interactions and relationships.

Cultural differences

In attitudes too, a distinction can be made between the interdependent culture and the independent culture. In the independent culture the emphasis is on the existence of the individual and the differences between individuals. In the interdependent culture attitudes reinforce the existence of the group and the associated group feeling.

Attitude formation

In the context of forming attitudes, associations mean everything. Attitudes come from different types of information. It concerns cognitive, affective and behavioral information.

Cognitive information is about the knowledge that is available about the attitude object.

The affective information says something about the feeling that there is about the attitude object.

Behavioral information concerns information about interactions with the attitude object. This can include both past interactions and interactions that may occur in the future.

Not all information weighs equally heavy in forming an attitude. In general, affective information is stronger than cognitive information due to the presence of intense emotions. The formation of attitudes takes place through the following principles:

Accessible information (coming up quickly) or information that is salient (striking) weighs heavier than less accessible and / or less salient information.

Important information weighs heavier. For example, negative information weighs more heavily than positive information, possibly because of the potentially unpleasant consequences. Negative information not only weighs heavier, but is also noticed more quickly, and is harder to ignore.

People combine the important, salient and accessible positive and negative cognitive, affective and behavioral information about attitude objects to form attitudes that differ in direction (positive or negative) and intensity.

A strong attitude is an attitude that contains an extremely positive or extremely negative evaluation. Compared to weak(er) attitudes, strong attitudes are:

• Very persistent (and resistant) and therefore more difficult to change

• They influence information processing and behavior more

• They are strongly connected to the attitude functions (control and connectedness)

• They are faster automatically activated

Obviously (and unfortunately) all sources of information do not always count in such a way that they form one strong attitude. An ambivalent attitude is the result of conflicting positive and negative information.

Superficial processing

Systematic processing is the process in which a lot of attention and effort is evaluated. This is not the case with superficial processing. Interferences are made here on the basis of accessibility and salience. So-called "persuasion heuristics" are cues that make it very easily and with very little effort to find an attitude object or not, without thinking about it. These form the basis of superficial evaluations. The use of persuasion heurists is also sometimes described as taking the peripheral route of "persuasion". Five heuristics are discussed: associations, familiarity, the attraction heuristic, the expertise heuristic and the "length of the message" heuristic.

Attitudes through associations. Evaluative conditioning (Walther, 2002) is the process whereby positive or negative attitudes are formed or changed through associations with other positively or negatively valued objects. In other words, when objects are repeatedly associated with an attitude object, it is the attitude object that quickly elicits the evaluation that is associated with the other object.

Familiarity heuristic. The familiarity heuristic states that there is a preference for that object with repeated exposure, purely and simply because you become familiar with it. This is also called the "mere exposure effect".

The attraction heuristic. The attraction heuristic suggests that people agree more quickly with people who are considered attractive. It also appears that attractive people are generally better at convincing other people than less attractive people.

The expertise heuristic. The expertise heuristic indicates that people are inclined to believe people who are considered competent more quickly than people who are not. Research also shows that people who quickly proclaim a message have a greater degree of credibility.

The "length of the message" -heuristics. The length of information also affects the way it is considered true. This means that generally long messages are considered "more true".

Systematic processing

It is not the case that people who opt for systematic processing are not made aware or influenced by the presence of heuristics. It is true that they also consider other information that makes the superficial information less important. Systematic processing can be divided into four different steps:

• Attention must be paid to the message.

• The message must be so simple that it is understood, in other words: it is correctly communicated to the recipient.

• There is a reaction to the information through elaboration (this can include both positive and negative reactions to the message and be at a cognitive, affective and / or behavioral level). Sometimes people even go beyond "elaborating" on the information about the attitude object - sometimes they also think about what these elaborations mean. This "thinking about thinking" is called metacognition

• The final step is that the message is accepted or rejected (this is more important than the message itself).

If someone uses bad arguments to provoke listeners to action, this usually achieves the opposite effect. This is called the boomerang effect.

When do we use which strategy / type of processing

If we use superficial or systematic processingis influenced by our motivation and capacity. Especially if it is very important to understand something correctly, or if it is personally relevant, one is inclined to systematic processing. If one has the opportunity and time to concentrate, and one is able to process systematically, this will also happen. A well-known, influential and widely used theory about attitude formation and change is the "Elaboration Likelihood Model" (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). This model assumes that attitudinal change occurs through the peripheral route or the central route that requires elaboration, and the extent to which elaboration is carried out depends on motivation and capacity. The presence of alcohol and drugs in a person's body makes information more likely to be superficially processed.

In addition, personality also has an effect on the way in which something is processed. People who generally see a challenge in solving difficult problems and inconsistencies are more inclined to process information systematically than people who have a lower need for cognition.

Emotions and moods can also influence the way of processing. Having a good mood often means that there is no point in systematic processing, as a result of which people are more inclined to apply superficial processing in these moods. The good mood also has an effect on the capacity of processing. One has a lot of difficulty with the concentration and will therefore be more inclined to process superficially. As soon as positive information contributes to the cheerful mood, or the positive mood is a result of the task at hand, people will more often switch to systematic processing.

The degree to which someone experiences fear also influences the motivation and capacity of processing. In case of extreme fear, the capacity is reduced and systematic processing occurs less. With a moderate level of anxiety, there is often more motivation to systematically process.

Ignoring, reinterpretation, and resistance of attitude-inconsistent information

People try to protect formed attitudes by ignoring, reinterpreting or resisting information that is inconsistent with attitudes. Attitude-supporting information is therefore often seen as extra convincing.

People become immune to other people's convictions as soon as they have been informed about this beforehand or if they have previously heard the same arguments that did not (completely) turn out to be correct.

One can try to prevent persuasion through different methods. Contrast is a process in which deviant information from the attitude is interpreted as unequal to the attitude. Assimilation is the opposite process, in which almost equal information to the attitude is actually seen as the same. Resisting persuasion requires motivation and capacities. People often overestimate their ability to actually resist them.

Subliminal persuasion is the persuasion in which one is influenced by stimuli in an unconscious way. The influence of this is quite large, but there are some limitations. Not all stimuli seem to work, and it is sometimes difficult to expose people to such a form of influence. It is important to realize that conscious processing is always stronger than subliminal influencing.