Social Psychology by R. Smith, M. Mackie, and M. Claypool (fourth edition) – Summary chapter 7

An attitude is a mental representation that summarizes an individual’s evaluation of a particular person, group, thing, action or idea. Attitude change is the process by which attitudes form and change by the association of positive or negative information with the attitude object. Persuasion is the deliberate attempt to bring about attitude change by communication.

Attitudes can be inferred by checking how people react to attitude objects. Attitude direction (e.g: negative, positive) and attitude intensity are important. With self-report, the alternatives to the question influence how people portray their attitude. Explicit attitudes are attitudes that people openly express and implicit attitudes are automatic and uncontrollable attitudes. People’s explicit attitudes can differ from their implicit attitudes.

Attitudes have four functions:

1. Knowledge function (mastery)
   Attitudes help us organize, summarize and simply experience.
2. Instrumental function (mastery)
   Attitudes help us guide our approach to positive objects and avoidance of negative objects.
3. Social identity function (connectedness)
   Attitudes help us express important self and group identities.
4. Impression management function (connectedness)
   Attitudes help us smoothing interactions and relationships.

Once an attitude is formed, it is associated with the attitude object. People form an attitude by associating cognitive, affective and behavioural information linked with or related to the object. Cognitive information includes facts, affective information includes emotions and behavioural information includes behaviour. Genetic predispositions influence attitude formation. Important information (anything that matters to a person) is more influential in forming an attitude than unimportant information (1). Negative information is often more salient and weighted heavier than positive information. Information that is easily accessible or salient dominates attitudes judgements (2). The intensity of the attitude depends on how much information is available. A strong attitude is a confidently-held extremely positive or negative attitude that is persistent and resistant and influences information processing and behaviour. An ambivalent attitude is an attitude based on conflicting negative and positive information. Attitudes that are more easily accessible are often more extreme.

Attitudes can change by encountering different associations when people use superficial processing. A persuasion heuristic is a cue that can make people like or dislike an attitude object without thinking about it in any depth. Forming attitudes based on persuasion heuristics are described as taking a peripheral route to persuasion. Evaluative conditioning is the process of forming attitudes or changing attitudes using association with other negative or positive objects. There are several heuristics people use when superficially processing information in order to either adjust or form attitudes:

The familiarity heuristic describes that familiarity serves as a persuasion cue. The mere exposure effect refers to people’s increased liking when they are exposed to something often. The mere exposure effect is stronger if people are unaware of the number of times they see something. Familiar stimuli can be more persuasive. If people hear that something they heard before isn’t true, the part that they’ve heard before will become more familiar.

The attractiveness heuristic describes that attractiveness serves as a persuasion cue. Attractive people are more likeable and thus persuade people more easily than not-attractive people. Attractiveness consists of physical appearance and likeableness.

The expertise heuristic describes that expertise serves as a persuasion cue. People are often persuaded by who says something and not what that person says. Experts are more likely to be believed. Expertise effects are the most pronounced when someone has little knowledge or no strong pre-existing attitude on the topic. In order to be seen as an expert, one has to be seen as competent and trustworthy. Occupation and fast-talking are cues for competence. Expert effects do not occur when people suspect that the expert has other motives (e.g: money), but if the expert argues against his own interests, people find the expert more trustworthy.

The message-length heuristic describes that message-length serves as a persuasion cue. The longer the message, the more valid it appears to be. This does not work if a request is substantial enough to provoke more extensive processing.

Systematic processing involves paying increased attention to the strength and quality of information about the attitude object. This is called the central route to persuasion. There are several steps involved in systematic processing and those steps influence persuasion:

1. Attending to information
   Getting someone’s attention is crucial for persuasion. It is important that someone pays attention to the message.
2. Comprehending information
   When messages are easy to comprehend, people can recognize compelling or weak content and react accordingly. If a message is too difficult to understand, people usually rely on superficial processing.
3. Reacting to information
   If people pay attention to a message and understand it, they will also react to it. They will elaborate, either negatively or positively.
4. Accepting or rejecting the advocated position
   If the argument provokes positive elaborations, there will be an attitude change. If there are positive elaborations, the more arguments, the more attitude change there will be.

The boomerang effect refers to the effect of people moving in a direction opposite to the one intended when someone tries to persuade us with really bad arguments. Attitudes that result from systematic processing are persistent and resistant.

Whether people process superficially or systematically depends on a person’s motivation and their cognitive capacity. The Elaboration Likelihood Model that states that attitude change occurs through either a superficial or a systematic route and that the extent of elaboration depends on motivation and capacity. There are three types of motivation that affect whether we superficially or systematically process things:

1. Mastery motivation
   If people want to be accurate, they will make use of systematic processing. People with a high need for cognition naturally prefer to use systematic processing, regardless of the situation.
2. Connectedness motivation
   If people want to protect their image and want to be liked, they are more likely to use systematic processing, because information can further their goals. Whether they express their new attitude also depends on the social context.
3. Me and mine motivation
   The more a decision or attitude has self-relevance, the more likely a person is to use systematic processing. People can be prevention focussed or promotion focussed. Prevention focussed people are focussed on prevention of loss and promotion focussed people are focussed on gaining.

There are obstacles to systematic processing, even when people want to process systematically:

1. The ability to process
   People sometimes don’t have the mental resources to take in and evaluate all the available information. The complexity of information influences our ability to process the information. Alcohol myopia refers to people’s reduced capacity to systematically process when under the influence of alcohol.
2. The opportunity to concentrate
   It is not possible to systematically process information if it is not possible to concentrate.

As arousal increases from low to moderate levels, consideration of persuasive appeals increase from superficial to the optimal version of systematic processing. If arousal increases even more, then the necessary resources for systematic processing become less available. Emotions have motivational consequences and thus can facilitate or impede persuasive processing. If fear increases motivation without eliminating capacity, it can have an effect in changing their health related habits.

If a heuristic cue and systematic processing suggest the same attitude, the two types of processing can have additive effects. The impact of heuristics can reduce significantly when it is at odds with systematic processing.

There are three ways to protect established attitudes:

1. Ignore information
   People protect their current attitudes by ignoring or evading inconsistent information.
2. Reinterpretation of information
   Information that is inconsistent with the attitude can be reinterpreted to strengthen the attitude.
3. Resisting information
   Attitudes can bias how we process information and this can help us resist attitude change.

People are better at resisting persuasion if they know in advance their attitude is going to be attacked. Practice arguing against a persuasive appeal is the most effective way to resist persuasion. This is called inoculation. The processes we engage in to defend our attitudes can also make them more extreme. Resisting attitude change depends on cognitive capacity and motivation to do so. The influence of subliminal cues can be overcome by conscious processing. Subliminal effects on our attitudes and behaviour seem to occur only when they are consistent with consciously held goals.