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In
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, attitude is a psychological construct that is a mental and
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
al entity that inheres or characterizes a person, their attitude to approach to something, or their personal view on it. Attitude involves their mindset, outlook and feelings. Attitudes are complex and are an acquired state through life experience. Attitude is an individual's
predisposed state of mind regarding a
value
Value or values may refer to:
Ethics and social
* Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them
** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...
and it is precipitated through a responsive expression towards oneself, a person, place, thing, or event (the
attitude object
An attitude object is the concept around which an attitude is formed and can change over time. This attitude represents an evaluative integration of both cognition and affect in relation to the attitude object. An example of an attitude object is ...
) which in turn influences the individual's thought and action.
Most simply understood attitudes in psychology are the feelings individuals have about themselves and the world. Prominent psychologist
Gordon Allport
Gordon Willard Allport (November 11, 1897 – October 9, 1967) was an American psychologist. Allport was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality, and is often referred to as one of the founding figures of personali ...
described this latent psychological construct as "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
."
[Allport, Gordon. (1935). "Attitudes," in A Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. C. Murchison. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 789–844.] Attitudes can be formed from a person's past and present.
Key topics in the study of attitudes include attitude strength,
attitude change Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maint ...
,
consumer behavior, and attitude-behavior relationships.
Definitions
Attitude
In
social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
, an attitude is an evaluation of an object, ranging from extremely negative to extremely positive. An attitude can belong to both or either a conscious and unconscious
mental state
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definiti ...
. Most contemporary perspectives on attitudes permit that people can also be conflicted or
ambivalent toward an object by simultaneously holding both
positive
Positive is a property of positivity and may refer to:
Mathematics and science
* Positive formula, a logical formula not containing negation
* Positive number, a number that is greater than 0
* Plus sign, the sign "+" used to indicate a posi ...
and negative attitudes toward the same object. This has led to some discussion of whether an individual can hold multiple attitudes toward the same object. Additionally, attitude can be defined as a set of emotions or beliefs towards a person, place or event. Attitude can have many different variations of characteristics each one unique in different ways. Researchers suggest that some attitudes are inherited via genetic transmission from our parents.Attitude can also be referred to evaluations in terms of a preference for or against an object. This is commonly in terms such as like, dislike, prefer or hate. When individuals express their attitudes such as "I like to go hiking," or "I hate bugs," individuals are expressing the relationship between the object and oneself and this can be identified as either positive or negative. Attitudes are an important part of how we perceive our behaviors and unique characteristics. Likewise, attitudes can have a profound effect on a person's behavior.
An attitude can be a positive or negative evaluation of people, objects, events, activities, and ideas. Several researchers
agree that attitude can be described as a settled and unchanging way of thinking, feeling, or observing people, places, events, or objects. It can be about something which is concrete or abstract. However, there is a debate about precise definitions. "In psychotherapy and counseling, the client’s feeling of rejection or disapproval of the therapist or counselor." When an individual chooses to respond positively to a situation, they tend to assess situations in a more positive manner and they recognize that they cannot change the past. However, decisions made in the future can impact what happens next. These individuals tend to pay attention to the good in situations rather than the bad. As for an individual with a negative attitude they are more likely to respond to a situation negatively and they tend to look back on a problem. They become so engulfed on the problem they cannot move forward from it. These individuals tend to have a hard time finding the good in situations or event, ignore the good, and focus on the bad in people and in situations. Eagly and
Chaiken, for example, define an attitude as "a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor." Though it is sometimes common to define an attitude as
affect toward an object, affect (i.e., discrete emotions or overall arousal) is generally understood as an evaluative structure used to form an attitude object. Attitude may influence the attention to attitude objects, the use of categories for encoding information and the interpretation, judgement and recall of attitude-relevant information.
[Vogel, T., Bohner, G., & Wanke, M. (2014). ''Attitudes and attitude change''. Psychology Press.] These influences tend to be more powerful for strong attitudes which are accessible and based on elaborate supportive knowledge structure. The durability and impact of influence depend upon the strength formed from the consistency of heuristics.
Attitudes can guide encoding information, attention and behaviors, even if the individual is pursuing unrelated goals.
Jung's definition
Attitude is one of
Carl Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of ''
Psychological Types''. Jung defines attitude as a "readiness of the
psyche
Psyche (''Psyché'' in French) is the Greek term for "soul" (ψυχή).
Psyche may also refer to:
Psychology
* Psyche (psychology), the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious
* ''Psyche'', an 1846 book about the unconscious by Car ...
to act or react in a certain way".
[Main, R. (2004). ''The rupture of time: Synchronicity and Jung's critique of modern western culture''. Routledge.] Attitudes often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad definition, Jung defines several attitudes. The attitude-types, extroversion, and introversion are elementary to Jung's theory of types. He also described a duality of individual and social attitudes.
Jung "
onceivedreason as an attitude", and defined rational and irrational as another attitude duality.
The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude. The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude. Jung's attitude types are then expanded into four different types of function: Intuiting, Thinking, Sensing, and Feeling.
In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude: "
Abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
is contrasted with concretism. By this I mean a peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction".
Introversion and Extroversion
There are two opposing sides to Carl Jung's definition of attitude. Carl Jung believed that there were eight functions of attitude, and two attitude types: introversion and extroversion. People who belong to the introverted attitude type tend to focus inwardly. Oppositely, people with the extroverted attitude type feel more comfortable focusing outwardly. Other traits and characteristics of introversion may include a tendency towards more inner-reflection and enjoying being alone. Extroverted people have a tendency to draw their energy from other people and interact with the world at a much larger rate than introverts.
Factors
The attitude of a person is determined by
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
factors like ideas, values, beliefs, perception, etc. All these have a complex role in contributing to a person's attitude. Values are ideals, guiding principles in one's life, or overarching goals that people strive to obtain. There are many factors that influence attitude such as social factors, family, personal experience, direction instruction, prejudices, media, religious and educational institutions, physical factors and economic factors and occupations.
Social factors are influenced by individuals and how they are expected to behavior in social settings referring to societal norms. Family has a huge impact on an individual's attitude whether developing a positive or negative attitude this can be difficult to change. when direction instruction is given to an individual this influences attitude for example a dangerous animal is equivalent to being bad and to run away and fruit is equivalent to being good to eat. prejudices are attitudes that are unbiased opinions prejudged without knowing all of the facts, prejudices can be toward objects, people etc. Mass media plays a role in shaping individual's beliefs and opinions with the help of the radio, television, and social media. religious and educational institutions have a strong influence on shaping attitudes understanding and moral concepts are building blocks for these institutions. In terms of physical factors clinical psychologists have identified that all factors of health are important in attitude adjustment. such ailments such as malnutrition, diseases even accidents can seriously interfere with the disturbance of normal development. Lastly, economic status and occupations contribute to attitude formation this influences individual's attitudes towards unions and management, the belief that certain laws are considered good or bad.
[
Beliefs are cognitive states about the world—subjective probabilities that an object has a particular attribute or that an action will lead to a particular outcome.][Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975] Beliefs can be patently and unequivocally false. For example, surveys show that a third of U.S. adults think that vaccines cause autism, despite the preponderance of scientific research to the contrary. It was found that beliefs like these are tenaciously held and are highly resistant to change. Another important factor that affects attitude is symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
, these are rife with powerful symbols and charged with affect which can lead to a selective perception
Selective perception is the tendency not to notice and more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict our prior beliefs. For example, a teacher may have a favorite student because they are biased by in-group favoritism. ...
. Persuasion theories say that in politics, successful persuaders convince its message recipients into a selective perception or attitude polarization
In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendenci ...
for turning against the opposite candidate through a repetitive process that they are in a noncommittal state and it is unacceptable and doesn't have any moral basis for it and for this they only require to chain the persuading message into a realm of plausibility.
Structure
The classic, tripartite view offered by Rosenberg and Hovland is that an attitude contains cognitive, affective, and behavioral
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well ...
components. Empirical research, however, fails to support clear distinctions between thoughts, emotions, and behavioral intentions associated with a particular attitude. A criticism of the tripartite view of attitudes is that it requires cognitive, affective, and behavioral associations of an attitude to be consistent, but this may be implausible. Thus some views of attitude structure see the cognitive and behavioral components as derivative of affect or affect and behavior as derivative of underlying beliefs. "The cognitive component refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes associated with an object". "The affective component refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object". "The behavioral component refers to behaviors or experiences regarding an attitude object". An example of cognitive component would be people's beliefs in things such as "an apple a day keeps the doctor away", "love at first sight", religious beliefs and an attitude towards believing that snakes carry venom and are dangerous. an example of affective component is a newborn baby being laid is on its mother's chest for the first time for skin-to-skin contact or an attitude towards not liking insects. and finally, an example of the behavioral component would be when going hiking I try to avoid bears, if I see one I will start to scream.
Despite debate about the particular structure of attitudes, there is considerable evidence that attitudes reflect more than evaluations of a particular object that vary from positive to negative. Among numerous attitudes, one example is people's money attitudes which may help people understand their affective love of money motive, stewardship behavior, and money cognition. These ABC components of attitudes formulate, define, and contribute to an overall construct of Monetary Intelligence which, in turn, may be related to many theoretical work-related constructs.
Intra-attitudinal and inter-attitudinal structures
There is also considerable interest in intra-attitudinal and inter-attitudinal structure, which is how an attitude is made (expectancy and value) and how different attitudes relate to one another. Intra-attitudinal structures are how underlying attitudes are consistent with one another. This connects different attitudes to one another and to more underlying psychological structures, such as values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live (normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of dif ...
or ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...
. Unlike intra-attitudinal structures, inter-attitudinal structures involve the strength of relations of more than one attitude within a network.
Attitude component model
An influential model of attitude is the multi-component model, where attitudes are evaluations of an object that have affective (relating to moods and feelings), behavioral, and cognitive components (the ABC model). The affective component of attitudes refers to feelings or emotions linked to an attitude object. Affective responses influence attitudes in a number of ways. For example, many people are afraid or scared of spiders. So this negative affective response is likely to cause someone to have a negative attitude towards spiders. The behavioral component of attitudes refers to the way an attitude influences how a person acts or behaves. The cognitive component of attitudes refers to the beliefs, thoughts, and attributes that a person associates with an object. Many times a person's attitude might be based on the negative and positive attributes they associate with an object. As a result of assigning negative or positive attributes to a person, place, or object, individuals may behave negatively or positively towards them.
MODE model
The MODE (motivation and opportunity as determinants of the attitude-behavior relation) model was developed by Fazio. The MODE model, in short is a theory of attitude evaluation that attempts to predict and explain behavioral outcomes of attitudes. When both are present, behavior will be deliberate. When one is absent, impact on behavior will be spontaneous. A person's attitude can be measured explicitly and implicitly. The model suggests whether attitude activation occurs and, therefore, whether selective perception occurs depends on attitude accessibility. More accessible attitudes are more likely to be activated in a behavioral situation and, therefore, are more likely to influence perceptions and behavior
Explicit measures are attitudes at the conscious
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
level, that are deliberately formed and easy to self-report. Implicit measures are attitudes that are at an unconscious
Unconscious may refer to:
Physiology
* Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli
Psychology
* Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...
level, that are involuntarily formed and which a person is typically unaware of. Bot
explicit and implicit attitudes
can shape an individual's behavior. Implicit attitudes, however, are most likely to affect behavior when the demands are steep and an individual feels stressed or distracted.
Function
Another classic view of attitudes is that attitudes serve particular functions for individuals. That is, researchers have tried to understand why individuals hold particular attitudes or why they hold attitudes in general by considering how attitudes affect the individuals who hold them. Daniel Katz, for example, writes that attitudes can serve "instrumental, adjustive or utilitarian," "ego-defensive," "value-expressive," or "knowledge" functions. This functional attitude theory suggests that in order for attitudes to change (e.g., via persuasion
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours.
...
), appeals must be made to the function(s) that a particular attitude serves for the individual. As an example, the ego-defensive function might be used to influence the racially prejudicial attitudes of an individual who sees themselves as open-minded and tolerant. By appealing to that individual's image of themselves as tolerant and open-minded, it may be possible to change their prejudicial attitudes to be more consistent with their self-concept
In the psychology of self, one's self-concept (also called self-construction, self-identity, self-perspective or self-structure) is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question ''"Who am I? ...
. Similarly, a persuasive message that threatens self-image is much more likely to be rejected.
Daniel Katz classified attitudes into four different groups based on their functions.
#Utilitarian: provides general approach or avoidance tendencies
#Knowledge: organizes and interprets new information
#Ego-defensive: protects self-esteem
#Value-expressive: expresses central values or beliefs
Utilitarian
People adopt attitudes that are rewarding and that help them avoid punishment. In other words, any attitude that is adopted in a person's own self-interest is considered to serve a utilitarian
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charac ...
function. For example, a person who has a condo would pay property taxes. If that leads to an attitude that "increases in property taxes are bad", then the attitude is serving a utilitarian function.
Knowledge
Several studies have shown that knowledge increases are associated with heightened attitudes that influence behavior. The framework for knowledge is based on significant values and general principles. Attitudes achieve this goal by making things fit together and make sense. As a result, people can maintain a sense of stability and meaning within their worldview. For example:
#I believe that I am a good person.
#I believe that good things happen to good people.
#Something bad happens to Bob.
# So, I believe Bob must not be a good person.
When a person is relying on a single dimension of knowledge and that dimension isn't directly related to their behavior goal, that person might conclude that the attitude is wrong.
Ego-Defensive
This function involves psychoanalytic principles where people use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from psychological harm. Mechanisms include denial
Denial, in ordinary English usage, has at least three meanings: asserting that any particular statement or allegation is not true (which might be accurate or inaccurate); the refusal of a request; and asserting that a true statement is not true. ...
, repression, projection
Projection, projections or projective may refer to:
Physics
* Projection (physics), the action/process of light, heat, or sound reflecting from a surface to another in a different direction
* The display of images by a projector
Optics, graphic ...
, and rationalization.
The ego-defensive notion correlates with Downward Comparison Theory, which argues that derogating a less fortunate other increases a person's own subjective well-being. A person is more likely to use the ego-defensive function when they suffer a frustration or misfortune.
Value-Expressive
Identity and social approval are established by central values that reveal who we are and what we stand for. Individuals define and interpret situations based on their central values. An example would be attitudes toward a controversial political issue.
Formation
According to Doob in 1947, learning can account for most of the attitudes a person holds. The study of attitude formation is the study of how people form evaluations of persons, places or things. Theories of classical conditioning
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learni ...
, instrumental conditioning and social learning are mainly responsible for formation of attitude. Unlike personality
Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, mos ...
, attitudes are expected to change as a function of experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
. In addition, exposure to the 'attitude' objects may have an effect on how a person forms his or her attitude. This concept was seen as the mere-exposure effect
The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect ...
. Robert Zajonc showed that people were more likely to have a positive attitude on 'attitude objects' when they were exposed to it frequently than if they were not. Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it. Tesser in 1993 argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that they do so indirectly. For example, consistency theories, which imply that beliefs and values must be consistent. As with any type of heritability, to determine if a particular trait has a basis in genetics, twin studies are used. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger
Leon Festinger (8 May 1919 – 11 February 1989) was an American social psychologist who originated the theory of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. The rejection of the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology ...
, which explains that when the components of an attitude (including belief and behavior) are at odds an individual may adjust one to match the other (for example, adjusting a belief to match a behavior). Other theories include balance theory In the psychology of motivation, balance theory is a theory of attitude change, proposed by Fritz Heider. It conceptualizes the cognitive consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance. The consistency motive is the urge to maintain o ...
, originally proposed by Heider in 1958, and the self-perception theory, originally proposed by Daryl Bem
Daryl J. Bem (born June 10, 1938) is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at Cornell University. He is the originator of the self-perception theory of attitude formation and change. He has also researched psi phenomena, group decision ...
.
Change
Attitudes can be changed through persuasion
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours.
...
and an important domain of research on attitude change focuses on responses to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness of a message include:
* Target characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
- it seems that more intelligent people are less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
are less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and persuasibility is actually curvilinear
In geometry, curvilinear coordinates are a coordinate system for Euclidean space in which the coordinate lines may be curved. These coordinates may be derived from a set of Cartesian coordinates by using a transformation that is invertible, l ...
, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels. The mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
* Source characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction
Interpersonal attraction as a part of social psychology is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and invo ...
or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect and Hovland and Weiss found the effect of telling people that a message came from a credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called sleeper effect
The sleeper effect is a psychological phenomenon that relates to persuasion. It is a delayed increase in the effect of a message that is accompanied by a discounting cue. A discounting cue being some negative connotation or lack of credibility i ...
). Whether there is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message and then told its source.
*Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes. When people are not motivated to process the message, simply the number of arguments presented in a persuasive message will influence attitude change, such that a greater number of arguments will produce greater attitude change.
* Cognitive
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an attitude. In the ''central route'' to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the ''peripheral route'' to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physicians, doctors or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.
Emotion and attitude change
Emotion is a common component in persuasion
Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours.
...
, social influence
Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience (human behavior), obedience, lead ...
, and attitude change Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maint ...
. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive, or thought, process about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and cognitive components. Attitudes are part of the brain's associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long-term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes.
By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined. One may be able to change their attitudes with attitude correctness, which varies with the level of confidence they have in their attitude validity and accuracy. In general, the higher the confidence level, the more the person believes others around them should share the same attitude. As we learn other people share those attitudes and how socially acceptable, they are, the importance of attitude correctness becomes even more apparent. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change. The idea of attitude clarity refers to a feeling of security or uncertainty about a particular attitude, a feeling strengthened by the act of reporting one's particular attitude towards an issue or thing, which will make that attitude more crystallized.
Affective forecasting
Affective forecasting (also known as hedonic forecasting, or the hedonic forecasting mechanism) is the prediction of one's affect (emotional state) in the future. As a process that influences preferences, decisions, and behavior, affective foreca ...
, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to the cognitive processes. How a person feels about an outcome may override purely cognitive rationales.
In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Various models and measurement tools have been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of physiological
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...
cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension. Other methods include concept or network mapping and using primes or word cues in the era.
Components of emotional appeals
Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted, and anger. Fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
is one of the most studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence research.
Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotional appeals include the possibility of reactance which may lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change.
Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of political messages. While evidence is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude change is receivers with low political message involvement.
Important factors that influence the impact of emotional appeals include self-efficacy
In psychology, self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals. The concept was originally proposed by the psychologist Albert Bandura.
Self-efficacy affects every area of human endea ...
, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self efficacy is a person's perception of their agency or ability to deal with a situation. It is an important variable in emotional appeal messages because it dictates a person's ability to deal with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global warming.
Dillard in 1994 suggested that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of a message are important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for different people. Thus, in terms of emotional appeals messages, one size does not fit all.
Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily available is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to change.
Attitude-behavior relationship
The effects of attitudes on behaviors is a growing research enterprise within psychology. Icek Ajzen Icek Ajzen (born 1942) is a social psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and is best known for his work, with Martin Fishbe ...
has led research and helped develop two prominent theoretical approaches within this field: the theory of reasoned action
The theory of reasoned action (TRA or ToRA) aims to explain the relationship between attitudes and behaviors within human action. It is mainly used to predict how individuals will behave based on their pre-existing attitudes and behavioral intent ...
[Ajzen I, Fishbein M. 1980. ''Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behaviour.'' Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] and, its theoretical descendant, the theory of planned behavior
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a psychological theory that links beliefs to behavior. The theory maintains that three core components, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individua ...
. Both theories help explain the link between attitude and behavior as a controlled and deliberative process.
Theory of reasoned action
The theory of reasoned action (TRA) is a model for the prediction of behavioral intention, spanning predictions of attitude and predictions of behavior. The subsequent separation of behavioral intention from behavior allows for explanation of limiting factors on attitudinal influence. The theory of reasoned action was developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen, derived from previous research that started out as the theory of attitude, which led to the study of attitude and behavior. The theory was "born largely out of frustration with traditional attitude–behavior research, much of which found weak correlations between attitude measures and performance of volitional behaviors".
Theory of planned behavior
The theory of planned behavior
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a psychological theory that links beliefs to behavior. The theory maintains that three core components, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, together shape an individua ...
suggests that behaviors are primarily influenced by the attitude and other intentions. The theory of planned behavior was proposed by Icek Ajzen in 1985 through his article "From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior." The theory was developed from the theory of reasoned action, which was proposed by Martin Fishbein together with Icek Ajzen in 1975. The theory of reasoned action was in turn grounded in various theories of attitude such as learning theories, expectancy-value theories, consistency theories, and attribution theory. According to the theory of reasoned action, if people evaluate the suggested behavior as positive (attitude), and if they think their significant others want them to perform the behavior (subjective norm), this results in a higher intention (motivation) and they are more likely to do so. A high correlation of attitudes and subjective norms to behavioral intention, and subsequently to behavior, has been confirmed in many studies. The theory of planned behavior contains the same component as the theory of reasoned action, but adds the component of perceived behavioral control to account for barriers outside one's own control.
Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants (MODE)
Russell H. Fazio proposed an alternative theory called "Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants" or MODE. Fazio believes that because there is deliberative process happening, individuals must be motivated to reflect on their attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Simply put, when an attitude is automatically activated, the individual must be motivated to avoid making an invalid judgement as well as have the opportunity to reflect on their attitude and behavior.
A counter-argument against the high relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior has also been proposed, as the results of some studies show that, because of circumstantial limitations, behavioral intention does not always lead to actual behavior. Namely, since behavioral intention cannot be the exclusive determinant of behavior where an individual's control over the behavior is incomplete, Ajzen introduced the theory of planned behavior by adding a new component, "perceived behavioral control." By this, he extended the theory of reasoned action to cover non-volitional behaviors for predicting behavioral intention and actual behavior.
Measurement
In 1928 Louis Leon Thurstone
Louis Leon Thurstone (29 May 1887 – 29 September 1955) was an American pioneer in the fields of psychometrics and psychophysics. He conceived the approach to measurement known as the law of comparative judgment, and is well known for his cont ...
published an article titled "Attitudes Can Be Measured" in it he proposed an elaborate procedure to assess people's views on social issues. Attitudes can be difficult to measure because measurement is arbitrary, because attitudes are ultimately a hypothetical
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obser ...
construct that cannot be observed directly.
But many measurements
Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events.
In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared t ...
and evidence proofed scales are used to examine attitudes. A Likert scale taps agreement or disagreement with a series of belief statements. The Guttman scale focuses on items that vary in their degree of psychological difficulty. The semantic differential uses bipolar adjectives to measure the meaning associated with attitude objects. Supplementing these are several indirect techniques such as unobtrusive, standard physiological, and neuroscientific measures. Following the explicit-implicit dichotomy, attitudes can be examined through direct and indirect measures.
Whether attitudes are explicit (i.e., deliberately formed) versus implicit (i.e., subconscious) has been a topic of considerable research. Research on implicit attitude
Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience. T ...
s, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, uses sophisticated methods involving people's response times to stimuli to show that implicit attitudes exist (perhaps in tandem with explicit attitudes of the same object). Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.
Explicit
Explicit measures tend to rely on self-reports or easily observed behaviors. These tend to involve bipolar scales (e.g., good-bad, favorable-unfavorable, support-oppose, etc.). Explicit measures can also be used by measuring the straightforward attribution of characteristics to nominate groups. Explicit attitudes that develop in response to recent information, automatic evaluation were thought to reflect mental associations through early socialization experiences. Once formed, these associations are highly robust and resistant to change, as well as stable across both context and time. Hence the impact of contextual influences was assumed to be obfuscate assessment of a person's "true" and enduring evaluative disposition as well as limit the capacity to predict subsequent behavior. Likert scale
A Likert scale ( , commonly mispronounced as ) is a psychometric scale commonly involved in research that employs questionnaires. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such that the term (or more fully the ...
s and other self-reports are also commonly used.
Implicit
Implicit measures are not consciously directed and are assumed to be automatic, which may make implicit measures more valid and reliable than explicit measures (such as self-reports). For example, people can be motivated such that they find it socially desirable to appear to have certain attitudes. An example of this is that people can hold implicit prejudicial
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
attitudes, but express explicit attitudes that report little prejudice. Implicit measures help account for these situations and look at attitudes that a person may not be aware of or want to show. Implicit measures therefore usually rely on an indirect measure of attitude. For example, the Implicit Association Test
The implicit-association test (IAT) is a controversial assessment intended to detect subconscious associations between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. Its best-known application is the assessment of implicit stereotypes hel ...
(IAT) examines the strength between the target concept and an attribute element by considering the latency in which a person can examine two response keys when each has two meanings. With little time to carefully examine what the participant is doing they respond according to internal keys. This priming can show attitudes the person has about a particular object. People are often unwilling to provide responses perceived as socially undesirable and therefore tend to report what they think their attitudes should be rather than what they know them to be. More complicated still, people may not even be consciously aware that they hold biased attitudes. Over the past few decades, scientists have developed new measures to identify these unconscious biases.[Sekaquaptewa, D., Espinoza, P., Thompson, M., Vargas, P., & von Hippel, W. (2003). Stereotypic explanatory bias: Implicit stereotyping as a predictor of discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 75-82]
See also
References
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Further reading
* Breckler, S. J., & Wiggins, E. C. (1992). On defining attitude and attitude theory: Once more with feeling. In A. R. Pratkanis, S. J. Breckler, & A. C. Greenwald (Eds.), Attitude structure and function. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 407–427
* Eagly, A., & Chaiken, S. (1995). Attitude strength, attitude structure and resistance to change. In R. Petty and J. Kosnik (Eds.), Attitude Strength. (pp. 413–432). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
* Fazio, R. H. (1986). How do attitudes guide behavior? In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), The handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (pp 204–243). New York: Guilford Press.
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* Joseph P. Forgas, Joel Cooper, William D. Crano. 2010. The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change. Publisher Routledge. , 9781848729087
* Gerd Bohner. 2002. Attitudes and Attitude Change: Social Psychology. Publisher-Psychology Press. , 9780863777790
* Greg Maio, Geoffrey Haddock. 2010. The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change: Sage Social Psychology Program. Publisher SAGE. , 9781412929752
* Dolores Albarraci, Blair T. Johnson, Mark P. Zanna. 2005. The Handbook of Attitudes. Publisher Routledge. , 9780805844931
* Frank M. Andrews. 1991. Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes. Publisher-Gulf Professional Publishing. , 9780125902441
* John P. Robinson, Phillip R. Shaver.1980. Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes. Publisher Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research. , 9780879441302
*Eagly, Alice H.; Chaiken, Shelly1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. Publishers-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College.
*Icek Ajzen. 2005. Attitudes, Personality, and Behavior. Publisher McGraw-Hill International. , 9780335224005
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