ATTITUDE
PRESENTER:DR.MANOVATHI.N
CHAIR PERSON:DR.SIVALINGAM
DEFINITION
Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of
objects of thought.
Allport –“mental and neural state of readiness,
organized through experience exerting a
dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to
all objects and situations with which it is related”.
COMPONENTS
Affective - emotional feelings stimulated by an object of
thought
Behavioral -predispositions to act in certain ways toward
an attitude object
Cognitive -beliefs that people hold about the object of
an attitude.
DIMENSIONS
Centrality
Direction
Intensity
Salience
Consistency
FUNCTIONS
Social adjustment
Knowledge
Instrumental
Value-expressive
Ego-defensive
NEUROBIOLOGY
Motivational attitude entail Striatal processing;
Emotional attitude entail Amygdala processes;
Combining both entails processing by hippocampal
circuit.
VARIOUS FACTORS IN ATTITUDE
FORMATION
Motivation
Information Exposure
Group affiliation
-Group belief
_Group values
_Group norms
Personality
.
ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR
Lapiere - weak predictors of behavior
Attitude-behavior inconsistency?
1) attitude strength, accessibility, and ambivalence
variations not accounted.
2) measured in a general, global way that isn’t likely to
predict specific behaviors.
3) Many behaviors occur spontaneously.
4) Behavior depends on situational constraints—
subjective perceptions of how people expect you to behave.
(contd….)
Recent research-attitudes do predict behavior under
certain conditions.
Attitude specificity
Attitude strength
Attitude accessibility
Ambivalent attitude
TRYING TO CHANGE ATTITUDES
Factors in Persuasion
Source- person who sends a communication
Receiver- person to whom the message is sent.
Message - information transmitted by the source.
Channel -medium through which the message is sent.
SOURCE FACTORS
successful when the source has high credibility.
Expertise - more influential when arguments are
ambiguous.
Trustworthiness is more important because people
accept messages from trustworthy sources with little
scrutiny.
Likability -increase the effectiveness of a persuasive
source.
MESSAGE FACTORS
Two-sided arguments tend to be more effective
Concentrate on strong arguments and that weak
arguments actually raise doubts
Validity effect: simply repeating a statement causes it
to be perceived as more valid or true.
Persuasive messages frequently attempt to arouse fear.
Antismoking campaigns emphasize the threat of
cancer.
RECEIVER FACTORS
Some are easier to persuade
No personality traits are susceptible to persuasion
Forewarning more influential than personality
Attitude/belief source is trying to change
Stronger attitude resistant to change
Resistance can promote resistance
THEORIES- FORMATION AND
CHANGE
Learning theory
Cognitive Dissonance theory
Balance theory
Self perception theory
Elaboration likelihood model
Osgood and Tannenbaum’s congruity theory
LEARNING THEORY
Evaluative conditioning- classical conditioning
efforts to transfer the emotion attached to UCS to
new CS.
Operant conditioning
Observational learning
BALANCE THEORY
Relation between a person and two attitude objects.
connected by favorable or unfavorable attitudes
relations may be balanced or unbalanced .
The basic tenet of this theory is that there is a tendency to
maintain or restore balance in one’s attitude structures.
Imbalance will not always be resolved but there is a
tendency towards balance since the unbalanced structures
produce tensions and discomfort
COGNITIVE DISSONSNCE
THEORY
LEON FESTINGER
When an individual’s behavior is inconsistent with their
attitude dissonance occurs.
Change in attitude consistent with the behavior.
Negative drive state characterized by psychological tension or
discomfort causing increased arousal
Individual attempts to reduce by three ways
Changing behavioral cognitive element- stop smoking
Changing environmental cognitive element – will not
read or hear such facts.
Adding new cognitive element - criticize method of
research and inadequacies of report
COUNTERATTITUDINAL ROLEPLAYING:
people express attitudes publicly that are
opposite to their private attitude which creates high
dissonance and attitude change
EFFORT JUSTIFICATION
The Fox and the Grapes
SELF PERCEPTION THEORY
DARYL BEM – 1967
Proposes that people often infer their attitude from
their behavior.
“If I said it, it must be true”
Dissonance theory- to reduce the tension
Bem’s theory- to better understand their behavior
primarily works when subjects do not have well-
defined attitudes regarding the issue .
ELABORATION LIKELIHOO MODEL
Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (1986).
central route - content and logic of persuasive messages.
peripheral route - non message factors, such as the attractiveness credibility
of the source.
Both routes lead to persuasion
but the durability of attitude change depends on the extent to which people
elaborate on (think about) the contents of persuasive communicati
central route to persuasion leads to more enduring attitude change than the
peripheral route
attitudes changed through central processes predict behavior better
MEASUREMENT
DIRECT
Thurstone scale
Likert scale
Osgood semantic diferential scale
INDIRECT
Galvanic skin response
Pupil size
EMG
Others –Guttmann’s method of cumulative scaling
Borgadus social distance scale
Sociometry
Thurstone’s method of equally
appearing intervals
Easier to apply
Statements arranged in 11 categories
A B C D E F G H I J K
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
A – Statement with high favorability
E- neutral statement
k- highly unfavorable statement
Low value- favorable attitude
High value-unfavorable attitude
LIKERT’S SCALE OF SUMMATED
RATINGS
Comprises a number of statements and subject
indicate his response on a 5 point scale
5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-undecided, 2-disagree, 1-
strongly disagree.
Final score- summing the scores for each statement.
Item analysis
More sensitive than the thurstone scale
Interpretation btwn max and min is difficult.
OSGOOD SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL
SCALE
Measuring the meaning of object to an individual
Seven point scale
Studied affective aspects of use of a word and
behavioral changes
Found 50 percent diff by three factors - evaluation,
potency, activity
Good reliability and validity
Used to study process of impression formation, person
perception and communication among lndividuals
Guttmann’s method of cumulative
scaling
scalogram method
Ranks group of statements in such a way that
affirmative answer to any one of them assumes an
affirmative answer to all other ranking on the scale
Highly reliable and consistent
Very difficult to construct
BORGADUS SOCIAL DISTANCE
SCALE
Scale lists no of relationships to which members of the
group might be admitted.
Respondent is asked the relationship to which he would be
willing to admit the members of each group
Attitude is measured by closeness of the relationship he is
willing to accept
Used in comparing the attitude of people towards
untouchability, caste , regionalism, communalism.
INVOLUNTARY BEHAVIORAL
MEASURES
Galvanic skin response - measures the electrical resistance
of the skin. Resistance decreases when a person is
emotionally aroused. But it has never been possible to
distinguish extremely favorable and unfavorable attitudes.
Pupil size: Expansion of the size of the pupil indicates
exposure to favorable stimuli and Constriction with
unfavorable stimuli.
EMG activity of different facial muscle sites produced a
different positive and negative reactions to persuasive
messages whether it distinguishes exact degree is yet to be
determined.
TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING THE
ACCURACY OF MEASUREMENT
Bogus pipeline:
Subjects are attached to a special machine and told
that by measuring tiny electrical changes in muscles it
can assume their true opinions.
Once this belief is established, subjects then
cooperate
Their reports with respect to various issues measured
are then more truthful.
Unobtrusive measures:
Based on the fact that often human behavior leaves
lasting traces of its occurrence
Which provide valuable information about the
attitude of the persons involved.
Further, such knowledge can be gained without
affecting the individuals in any manner
(EX)voting records reveal current political views
INDIAN STUDIES
EDUCATIONAL FIELD:
- Student’s Attitude towards various school subjects,
activities, vocations etc
-attitude of teacher and teacher trainees
FAMILY PLANNING PROGAMMES
KAP STUDIES – Relation btwn knowledge, attitude,
practice
Results – despite widespread knowledge and favorable
attitude only 5% practice family planning techniques
APPLIED ASPECTS
Cognitive dissonance in education
Cognitive dissonance in therapy
Promoting healthy and prosocial behavior
Dissonance and alcohol
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN
EDUCATION
Creating and resolving dissonance- impact on students
motivation and learning.
( ex) researchers used effort justification paradigm to increase
students’ enthusiasm for educational activities by offering no
external reward for students’ efforts
concluded that students who attribute their work to an
external reward stop working in the absence of reward.
while those who are forced to attribute their work to intrinsic
motivation came to find the task genuinely enjoyable.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE IN
THERAPY
Effectiveness of psychotherapy and psychological intervention
explained thro this theory.
The act of freely choosing a specific therapy, with the effort and
money invested by the client in order to continue to engage in the
chosen therapy, positively influences the effectiveness of therapy.
Demonstrated in a study with overweight children, in which
causing the children to believe that they freely chose the type of
therapy they received resulted in greater weight loss
PROMOTING HEALTHY AND
PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Cognitive dissonance can be used to promote
desirable behavior such as increased condom use.
Also be used to encourage individuals to engage in
prosocial behavior under various contexts such as
campaigning against littering, reducing prejudice to
racial minorities.
DISSONANCE AND ALCOHOL
Used in behavioral modification -preventing alcohol
use
we can ask a person who abuses alcohol to join an anti
alcohol public campaign.
If he is not willing to stop alcohol then say that he can
continue drinking and the participation is just an
event.
It creates dissonance in a person who consumes
alcohol and causes discomfort, reduced by changing
their attitude ultimately resulting in stopping the
alcohol taking behavior
THANK YOU
