Module 4: Attitudes

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Attitude refers to people’s evaluation of virtually any aspects of our
social world. The study of attitudes is central to the field of social psychology because of
several reasons. First, attitudes influence our thoughts, even if they are not always reflected I
our overt behaviour. In fact growing evidence suggests that attitudes represent a very basic
aspect of social cognition. Second, social psychologists view attitudes as important because
attitudes affect our behaviour. This is especially likely to be true when attitudes are strong,
well established and accessible.
The nature of attitudes
An attitude is a cognition that is formed through experience and
influences our behaviour. The fact that attitudes are formed through experience mean that we
can [potentially change them. The fact that attitudes influence our behaviour means rhat we
use persuasion as a means to achieve our goals.
Component of attitudes
According to Katz (1960) attitudes have three components. They are
1. Affective component refers to the emotions connected with the object whether it is
liked or disliked, pleasant or unpleasant.
2. Behavioural component involves the behavioural readiness associated with the
attitude.
3. Cognitive component consists of the beliefs which the individual has about the object.
Attitude Formation
Almost all social psychologists believe that attitudes are learned. The
processes through which attitudes are acquired are-
Social learning
Many of our views are acquired in situations in which we interact with
others or simply observe their behaviour. Such learning occurs through several processes.
They are,
a.Classical Conditioning- When a stimulus that is capable of evoking-a response—the
unconditioned stimulus—regularly precedes another neutral stimulus, the one that occurs first
can become a signal for the second—the conditioned stimulus. This process known as
classical conditioning has important implications for attitude formation. For e.g., a young
child sees her mother frown and shows other signs of displeasure each time the mother

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encounters a member of a particular ethnic group. At first, the child is neutral towards
members of this group. After these cues are paired repeatedly with the mothers negative
reactions on exposure to members of that group, classical conditioning occurs and the child
comes to react negatively to members of this particular group. Advertisers and other
persuasion agents have considerable expertise in using this principle to create positive
attitudes toward their products.
Attitudes can be influenced by subliminal conditioning—classical
conditioning that occurs in the absence of conscious awareness of the stimuli involved.
Indeed, mere exposure—having seen an object before, but too rapidly to remember having
seen it—can result in attitude formation.
b.Instrumental Conditioning
Another way in which attitudes are acquired is through the process of
instrumental conditioning— a basic form of learning in which responses that lead to positive
outcomes or that permit avoidance of negative outcomes are strengthened. Sometimes the
conditioning process is rather subtle, with the reward being psychological acceptance—by
rewarding children with smiles, approval, or hugs for stating the “right” views.
c. Observational Learning
Observational learning, occurs when individuals acquire attitudes or
behaviours simply by observing others (Bandura, 1997). For example, people acquire
attitudes toward many topics and objects by exposure to advertising—where we see “people
like us” or “people like we want to become” acting positively or negatively toward different
kinds of objects or issues people often adopt the attitudes that they hear others express. Both
children and adults acquire attitudes from exposure to mass media- magazines, films and so
on. Interestingly, we tend to believe that it is other people who will be harmed by viewing
violent or pornographic material, while we believe that we are not affected by doing so, This
is referred to as the third person effect of media exposure-the impact on others attitudes and
behaviours are over estimated, and the impact on the self is under estimated.
d. Social comparison
Social comparison is our tendency to compare ourselves with others in order
to determine whether our view of social reality is correct or not.. That is, to the extent that our
views agree with those of others, we tend to conclude that our ideas and attitudes are
accurate; after all, if others hold the same views, these views must be right. People often
adjust their attitudes so as to hold views closer to those of others who they value and identify
with—their reference groups.

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Attitude functions
Mere exposure to an object-having seen before but not necessarily
remembering done so- can result in attitude formation . Attitudes can be viewed as almost
automatic reactions to the world around us. Having an already formed attitude toward a class
of stimuli serves number of useful functions. They are:
1.Knowledge function
Attitudes serve a knowledge function by aiding our interpretation of new
information and influencing basic approach or avoidance responses. Research findings
indicate that we view new information that offers support for our attitudes as more
convincing and accurate than information that refutes our attitudes. Likewise, we perceive
information that is weak as relatively strong when it is consistent with our existing attitude.
2.Identity function
Attitudes permit us to express our central values and beliefs- that attitudes can
serve an identity or self-expression function. The thoughts people have when they encounter
anew object and form an attitude toward it can depend on peoples own group membership
and how important it is to them.
3.Self-esteem function
Attitudes often serve a self-esteem function. Holding particular attitudes can
help us to maintain or enhance our feelings of self-esteem or self-worth. This function is
consistent with social comparison theory, which states that it can feel good to know ‘we are
right’ because our attitudes are validated by other people. Indeed a variety of emotions can be
experienced as expressing and acting on our attitude. People can take pride in not cheating
when they have an opportunity to do so, to the extent that that their attitudes are based on
moral principles.
4.Ego- defensive function
Attitudes sometimes serve an ego-defensive function, helping people to protect
themselves from unwanted information about themselves. For instance, many people who are
quite bigoted express the view that they are against prejudice and discrimination. By stating
such attitudes, they protect themselves from remembering that they are in fact highly
prejudiced against members of various social groups.
5.Impression motivation
Attitudes can be used to lead others to have a positive view of ourselves.
When motivated to do so, the attitudes we express can shift in order to create the desired
impression on others . Research findings indicate that the extent to which attitudes serve this

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function can strongly affect how social information is processed. Researchers reasoned that
when attitudes serves an impression motivation function, individuals tend to generate
arguments that support their attitudes, and stronger the motivation to impress others, the more
arguments people will generate.
Attitude and Behaviour
Several factors determine the extent to which attitudes and behaviour
correspond, with aspects of the situation influencing the extent to which attitudes determine
behaviour. In addition, features of the attitudes themselves are also important
1.Situational constraints that affect attitude expression-Situational constraints may prevent
us from expressing our attitudes overtly. We often show pluralistic ignorance and
erroneously believe others have attitudes that are different than those we hold, and this can
limit the extent to which we express our attitudes in public.
2.Strength of Attitudes- Whether attitudes will predict sustained and potentially costly
behaviour depends on the strength of the attitudes Strong attitudes are more likely to be
accessible at the time we take action and they are particularly likely to influence behaviour.
The term strength captures the extremity of an attitude (how strong the emotional reaction is),
3.Attitude extremity -Extreme attitudes are ones to which we are committed and have
elaborate arguments to support them. These attitudes often predict behaviour.
3. Attitude Certainty-Research has identified two important components of attitude certainty:
attitude clarity—being clear about what one’s attitude is—and attitude correctness—feeling
one’s attitude is the valid or the proper one to hold.
4. Role of personal experience- Evidence indicates that attitudes formed on the basis of
direct experience with the object about which we hold a particular attitude can exert stronger
effects on behaviour than ones formed indirectly. This is because attitudes formed on the
basis of direct experience are likely to be stronger and be more likely to come to mind when
in the presence of the attitude object .
Researchers have found that there is more than one basic mechanism through
which attitudes can shape behaviour. They are:
1. Attitudes based on reasoned thought
The theory of reasoned action, which was later refined and termed the theory
of planned behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980 starts with the notion that the decision to
engage in a particular behaviour is the result of a rational process. Various
behaviouraloptions are considered, the consequences or outcomes of each are evaluated, and

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a decision is reached to act or not to act. That decision is then reflected in behavioural
intentions, which are often good predictors of whether we will act on our attitudes in a given
situation
The theory of planned behaviour an extension of the theory of reasoned action,
suggests that in addition to attitudes toward a given behaviour and subjective norms about
it, individuals also consider their ability to perform the behaviour.( perceived behavioural
control)
2. Attitudes and spontaneous behavioural reactions
In many situations people have to act quickly and their reactions are more
spontaneous. In such cases, attitudes seem to influence behaviour in a more direct and
automatic manner. According to Fazio’s behaviour-to- process model(1989), some events
activates an attitude and attitude, once activated influences how we perceive the attitude
object. At the same time, our knowledge about what is appropriate in a given situation is also
activated. Together, the attitude and the previously stored information about what is
appropriate or expected shape our definition of the event. This perception, in turn influences
our behaviour.
In short, attitudes affect our behaviour through at least two mechanisms and
these operate under somewhat contrasting conditions. When we have to time to engage in
careful, reasoned thought, we can weigh all the alternatives and decide how we will act. In
other situations, attitudes seem to spontaneously shape our perceptions of various events and
thereby our immediate behavioural actions to them.

Lapiere’s study
In a classic study by LaPiere (1934), to determine whether people with
negative attitudes toward a specific social group would t act in line with their attitudes, he
spent 2 years traveling around the United States with a young Chinese couple. Along the
way, they stopped at 184 restaurants and 66 hotels and motels. In the majority of the cases,
they were treated courteously; in fact, they were refused service only once. After their travels
were completed, La Piere wrote to all the businesses where he and the Chinese couple had
stayed or dined, asking whether they would or would not offer service to Chinese visitors.
The results were startling: 92 per cent of the restaurants and 91 per cent of the hotels that
responded said no to Chinese customers. These results seemed to indicate that there is often a
sizeable gap between attitudes and behaviour—that is, what a person says and what that
person actually does when confronted with the object of that attitude may be quite different.

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To understand why attitudes might not straightforwardly predict behaviour, we need to
recognize that there are various norms that can affect the likelihood of discriminatory
behaviour. So even the most prejudiced people will not always act on their attitudes—when
there are strong situational pressures to do otherwise. Likewise, there are social conditions
under which people who do not think of themselves as prejudiced may find themselves
discriminating against others based on their group membership the social context can directly
affect the attitude–behaviour connection.

Attitude measurement
In order to measure attitudes, scales have been constructed which consists of short statements
dealing with several aspects of some issue or institutions under consideration. Some of them
are:

1.Method of social distance

Bogardus (1924) was the first person to develop a scale to measure attitudes.
Prejudice is often revealed in social distance i.e, the distance at which members of a
prejudiced group hold another group and its members.
In social distance scale, the respondents are asked to indicate the classification
in which they would willingly admit members of a group
1). to close kinship by marriage
2). to my club as personal friend
3). to my street as neighbour
4). to employment in my occupation
5). to citizenship in my country
6). as visitors only to my country
7).would exclude from my country
The above statements represented the varying degrees of social intimacy or
distance.

2.Thurstone’s method of equal appearing intervals

In this method , the first step is to collect about 200-300 statements concerning a
particular issue. The next step is to edit these statements. Statements which are not very
pertinent to the issues under consideration or that are ambiguous should be eliminated. The
next step is to arrange these statements from very favourable to very unfavourable. They

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should be arranged in equally appearing intervals so that a scale resembling a foot rule could
be constructed. In order to do this Thurstone selected several people to serve as judges and
each was asked to sort the papers into 9 to 11 groups. The judges were asked to sort the items
in such a way that the most favourable item should be placed in the first pile, while the most
unfavourable item in the last pile. Then the other statements should be placed between these
two depending on the degree of favourability. Thurstone used as many as 300 judges.
After the division of the statements, the median value of each statement is
determined. Then a small number of statements representing each value position along the
attitude continuum are selected. The final scale consists of 20-25 items.

3.Likert’s method of summated rating

In Likert’s method a number of statements regarding a particular issue is
collected. The subject is asked to indicate the degree or the strength of his attitude towards
each statement on a five-point scale: Strongly agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree and
Strongly disagree. These answers are assigned values ranging from 5 to 1 for positive items
and 1 to 5 for negative items. Thus high scores indicate a favourable attitude. Likert’s scale
indicates the intensity as well as direction of opinion.

4.Osgood’s semantic differential technique

Semantic Differential is a type of a rating scale designed to measure
the connotative meaning of objects, events, and concepts. Each scale is rated on a two point
polar scale. The stimulus words used and the polar adjectives selected depends on the
purpose in hand. Through the use of factor analysis three general factors of meaning were
• Evaluation is concerned with whether a person thinks positively or negatively about the
attitude topic (e.g. dirty – clean, and ugly - beautiful).

• Potency is concerned with how powerful the topic is for the person (e.g. cruel – kind, and
strong - weak).

• Activity is concerned with whether the topic is seen as active or passive (e.g. active –
passive).
Using this information we can see if a person’s feeling (evaluation) towards an
object is consistent with their behaviour.

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PERSUASION
Persuasion refers to efforts to change others’ attitudes through the use of
various kinds of messages. Early research efforts aimed at understanding persuasion involved
the study of the following elements: some source directs some type of message to some
person or group of people (the audience). Persuasion research conducted by Hovland, Janis,
and Kelley (1953) focused on these key elements, asking: “Who says what to whom with
what effect?” This approach yielded a number of important findings, with the following being
the most consistently obtained.
1. Communicators who are credible—who seem to know what they are talking about or who
are expert with respect to the topics or issues they are presenting—are more persuasive than
those who are seen as lacking expertise.
2. Communicators who are physically attractive are more persuasive than communicators
who are not attractive.
3. 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
4. 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.
5. People are sometimes more susceptible to persuasion when they are distracted by an
extraneous event than when they are paying full attention to what is being said. This is the
reason why political candidates often arrange spontaneous demonstrations of large crowds
during their speeches. The distraction generated among audience members may enhance
acceptance of the speaker’s message.
6. When audience holds attitudes contrary to those of a would-be persuader, it is often more
effective for the communicator to adopt a two-sided approach in which both sides of the
argument are presented.
7. People who speak rapidly are often more persuasive than people who speak slowly.
8. People who exhibit greater confidence in what they are saying regardless of its validity are
more often more persuasive than those who appear to be less confident.
9. Young people (between the ages of 18 and 25) are especially likely to be influenced,
whereas older people are more resistant to changing their attitudes
The Cognitive Processes Underlying Persuasion
We process persuasive messages in two distinct ways. The first type of
processing known as systematic processing or the central route to persuasion, involves
careful consideration of message content and the ideas it contains. Such processing requires

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effort, and it absorbs much of our information-processing capacity. The second approach,
known as heuristic processing or the peripheral route to persuasion, involves the use of
mental shortcuts such as the belief that “experts’ statements can be trusted. This kind of
processing requires less effort and allows us to react to persuasive messages in an automatic
manner.
Modern theories of persuasion such as the elaboration-likelihood model
and the heuristic-systematic model states that we engage in the most effortful and systematic
processing when our motivation and capacity to process information relating to the
persuasive message is high. This type of processing occurs if we have a lot of knowledge
about the topic, we have a lot of time to engage in careful thought, or the issue is sufficiently
important to us and we believe it is essential to form an accurate view. In contrast, we engage
in the type of processing that requires less effort (heuristic processing) when we lack the
ability or capacity to process more careful or when our motivation to perform such cognitive
work is low (the issue is unimportant to us or has little potential effect on us). Advertisers,
politicians, salespeople, and others wishing to change our attitudes prefer to push us into the
heuristic mode of processing because, for reasons we describe later, it is often easier to
change our attitudes when we think in this mode than when we engage in more careful and
systematic processing.
Resistance to persuasion
Several factors enhance our ability to resist even highly skilled efforts
at persuasion. Some of them are-
1. Reactance
Reactance refers to negative reactions to threats to one’s personal freedom.
Reactance often increases resistance to persuasion and can even produce negative attitude
change or opposite to what was intended. Research indicates that in such situations, we do
often change our attitudes and behaviour in the opposite direction from what we are being
urged to believe or to do. Indeed, when we are feeling reactance, strong arguments in favour
of attitude change can increase opposition compared to moderate or weak arguments
2. Forewarning
Forewarning refers to the advance knowledge that one is about to
become the target of an attempt at persuasion. Forewarning often increases resistance to the
persuasion that follows. Because forewarning influences several cognitive processes that play
an important role in persuasion. First, forewarning provides us with more opportunity to
formulate counterarguments—those that refute the message—and that can lessen the

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message’s impact. In addition, forewarning provides us with more time to recall relevant
information that may prove useful in refuting the persuasive message.
3. Selective avoidance
Selective avoidance is the tendency to direct attention away from
information that challenges existing attitudes. Such avoidance increases resistance to
persuasion. Television viewing provides a clear illustration of the effects of selective
avoidance. People do not simply sit in front of the television passively absorbing whatever
the media decides to dish out. Instead, they channel-surf, mute the commercials, tape their
favourite programs, or simply cognitively “tune out” when confronted with information
contrary to their views. The opposite effect occurs as well. When we encounter information
that supports our views, we tend to give it our full attention. Such tendencies to ignore
information that contradicts our attitudes, while actively attending to information consistent
with them, constitute two sides of what social psychologists term selective exposure.
4.Actively defending our attitudes
Sometimes, we actively counter argue against views that are contrary to our own.
Doing so makes the opposing views memorable than they would be otherwise, but it reduces
their impact on our attitudes.
4.Inoculation against ‘bad ideas’
William McGuire (1961) suggested that people could be
inoculated against persuasion if they were first presented with views that opposed their own,
along with arguments that refuted these counter attitudinal positions. He reasoned that when
people were presented with counter arguments against the opposing view, they would be
stimulated to generate additional counterarguments of their own.
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological theory proposed by Leon Festinger (1957) that refers
to the mental discomfort or tension a person experiences when they hold two or more
contradictory beliefs, attitudes, or values, or when their behavior conflicts with their beliefs.
When people experience inconsistency (dissonance), they are motivated to reduce it, because
it creates psychological discomfort.
How People Reduce Dissonance:
1. Change beliefs – Adjust one of the conflicting thoughts.
2. Change behavior – Align behavior with beliefs.
3. Add new cognitions – Justify the inconsistency with a new thought.
4. Minimize importance – Downplay the significance of the inconsistency.

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