Attitudes and Attitude Change CHAPTER 7 Attitudes and Attitude ...

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Chapter 7 central route if they are motivated and have the ability to pay attention to the facts. Motivation is higher when the communication is personally relevant. People’s motivation to pay attention to a speech depends on their personality. Some people enjoy thinking things through more than others do; they are said to be high in the need for cognition. People high in need for cognition are more likely to pay close attention to relevant arguments, whereas people low in need for cognition are more likely to rely on peripheral cues. It is more difficult to pay attention to a communication if we are tired, distracted, or if the issue is too complex and hard to evaluate. People who base their attitudes on a careful analysis of the arguments will be more likely to maintain this attitude over time, more likely to behave consistently with this attitude, and more resistant to counterpersuasion than people who base their attitudes on peripheral cues. To get people to consider carefully constructed arguments you have to get their attention. One way to get people’s attention is to scare them. A fear-arousing communication is a persuasive message that attempts to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fears. The effectiveness of fear-arousing communication depends on whether the fear influences people’s ability to pay attention to and process the arguments in a message. If a moderate amount of fear is created and people believe that listening to the message will teach them how to reduce this fear, they will be motivated to analyze the message carefully and will likely change their attitudes via the central route. Another way in which emotions can cause attitude change is by acting as a signal for how we feel about something. According to the heuristic-systematic model of persuasion, when people take the peripheral route to persuasion, they often use heuristics. Our emotions and moods can themselves act as heuristics to determine our attitudes. The only problem is that sometimes it is difficult to tell where our feelings come from. We may misattribute feelings created by one source to another source. The success of various attitude change techniques depends on the type of attitude we are trying to change. Several studies have shown that if an attitude is cognitively based, try to change it with rational arguments; if it is affectively based, try to change it with emotional appeals. Advertisements are more effective when they emphasize the attitudes of the culture they are trying to influence. Anything you can do to increase people's confidence in their thoughts about your message will make it more effective, as long as your arguments are strong and convincing. The next section of the chapter discusses resisting persuasive messages. Attitude inoculation refers to making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their positions. Being alert to product placement can also aid in resisting persuasive messages. Products are often shown in television shows and movies. They seem to be simply part of the show but they are really placed in these programs as advertisements. One reason that product placement may be so successful is that people do not realize that someone is trying to influence their attitudes and behavior. Warning people about an upcoming attempt to change their attitudes makes them less susceptible to that attempt. Attitude inoculation has been used to help adolescents to resist pressure from peers to smoke. It is important not to use too heavy a hand when trying to immunize people against assaults on their attitudes. There is harm to administering strong prohibitions—the stronger they are, the more likely they will boomerang, causing an increase in interest in the prohibited activity. According to reactance theory, people do not like to feel that their freedom to do or think whatever they want is being threatened. When they feel that their freedom is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, and people can reduce this reactance by performing the threatened behavior. The next section of the chapter addresses the question “When will attitudes predict behavior?” The relationship between attitudes and behavior is not simple. Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are highly accessible to people. Attitude accessibility refers to the strength of 167 Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, inc. All rights reserved.
168 Copyright © 2010 by Pearson Education, inc. All rights reserved. Attitudes and Attitude Change the association between an object and an evaluation of it, which is typically measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about an issue or object. The best-known theory of how attitudes predict deliberate behaviors is the theory of planned behavior. According to this theory, when people have time to contemplate how they are going to behave, the best predictor of their behavior is their intention, which is determined by three things: their attitudes toward the specific behavior, their subjective norms, and their perceived behavioral control. The final section of the chapter discusses the power of advertising. Most people think that advertising works on everyone but themselves. People are influenced by advertisements more than they think. If advertisers are trying to change an affectively based attitude, then it is best to fight emotions with emotions. If people’s attitudes are more cognitively based, we need to ask an additional question: How personally relevant is the issue? If you are dealing with a cognitively based attitude that is not of direct personal relevance, you might succeed in changing their attitudes via the peripheral route, but this type of attitude change tends not to be long-lasting. The trick here is to make your product personally relevant. Many advertisements also try to make people’s attitudes more affectively based by associating the product with important emotions and values. Subliminal messages are words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but may nevertheless influence people’s judgments, attitudes, and behaviors. Subliminal messages can be auditory as well. There is no evidence that the types of subliminal messages encountered in everyday life have any influence on people’s behavior. There is evidence for subliminal effects in carefully controlled laboratory studies. To get subliminal effects, researchers have to make sure that the illumination of the room is just right, that people are seated just the right distance from a viewing screen, and that nothing else is occurring to distract them as the subliminal stimuli are flashed. Even in the laboratory, there is no evidence that subliminal messages can get people to act counter to their wishes, values, or personalities. Ads are more powerful when people consciously perceive them. Advertising influences more than just our consumer attitudes. Advertisements transmit cultural stereotypes in their words and images, subtly linking products with desired images. Gender stereotypes are particularly pervasive in advertising imagery. The stereotypes conveyed in advertisements are far from harmless. The media can have powerful effects on people's attitudes, both directly and indirectly. CHAPTER 7 OUTLINE I. The Nature and Origin of Attitudes • Social psychologists define an attitude as an enduring evaluation, positive or negative, of people, objects, or ideas. A. Where Do Attitudes Come From? • Tesser (1993) suggests that some attitudes are linked to our genes. Evidence for this is based on the finding that identical twins raised apart (and not knowing of each other) have more similar attitudes to each other than do fraternal twins. Attitude similarity is probably mediated indirectly by similarity of temperament and personality. • Even if there is a genetic component, social experience clearly plays a large role in shaping attitudes. • Although all attitudes have the three components, any given attitude can be based more on one component than another.
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