2. Behavioural approaches
Belief that one’s attitudes
are the products of direct
experience with attitude
objects.
Explanations include:
Mere exposure, classical
conditioning, operant
conditioning, social
learning theory and self-
perception theory.
12. Out of these people,
which five of the
following do you like
most? Which would
you trust most? Which
do think would be your
friends?
13. Mere Exposure
The idea that repeated exposure to an object results in a
strengthened response.
Mere exposure has most impact when we lack information about
an issue.
15. Classical Conditioning
Evaluative conditioning – a
stimulus will probably
become more liked or less
liked when consistently
paired with a +ve or –ve
stimuli.
Spreading attitude effect…
18. Operant Conditioning
Behaviour that is followed by positive consequences
is reinforced and is more likely to be repeated,
whereas behaviour that is followed by negative
consequences is not.
When parents reward or punish their children, they
are shaping their attitudes on many issues,
including religion or political beliefs and practices.
Adults’ attitudes can also be shaped by verbal
reinforcers.
19. Social Learning theory
The view that attitude formation is a social learning
process that does not depend on direct reinforcers.
Based on modelling. Sources include: parents and
media.
Bandura.
Children see, Children do
20. Self-Perception Theory
Bem (1972) – idea that we gain knowledge of
ourselves only by making self-attributions.
That is, examining your own behaviour and asking
‘Why did I do that?’.
E.g. if you often go for long walks, you may
conclude that ‘I must like them, as I’m always doing
that’.
Bem’s theory suggests that people act, and form
attitudes, without much deliberate thinking.
23. Explicit
Explicit: people simply asked to agree or disagree
with various statements about their beliefs.
Assumed in 1930s that explicit measures would get
at people’s real beliefs and opinions Gallup Polls,
attitude questionnaires on host of social issues.
Sophisticated scales created...
24. Attitude Scales
– Likert scale
Likert (1932) asked respondents to use a five-point
response scale to indicate how much they strongly
agree (5) – strongly disagree (1) with each of a series
of statements.
Score = total sum across the statements
25. Guttman Scale
Guttman (1944) used a set of statements ordered
along a continuum ranging from least extreme to
most extreme.
Items are cumulative; acceptance of one item
implies acceptance of the others that are less
extreme.
EgI would accept aliens (1) into my country (2) into my
neighbourhood (3) into my house
26. Osgood
Osgood (1957) avoided opinion statements and
focused on the connotative meaning of
words/concepts.
E.g. Nuclear power is ‘good/bad’, ‘nice/awful’,
‘pleasant/unpleasant’, ‘fair/unfair’,
‘valuable/worthless’
27. Thurstone Scale
Thurstone (1928) collected more than 100 statements
of opinion ranging from extremely favourable to
extremely hostile.
Participants classified statements into eleven
categories on a favourable-unfavourable continuum.
Responses narrowed items down to twenty-two
items (two for each of the eleven points)
A person’s attitude score is calculated by averaging
the scale values of the items endorsed.
28. Scales
Scale Description
Thurstone 100 statements 22 statements across eleven
categories on a favourable-unfavourable
continuum. Score = avg total scale values.
Likert Five-point scale (strongly disagree [5] strongly
agree[1]). Score = sum of total score.
Guttman Set of statements long a continuum from least
extreme to most extreme. Acceptance of one item
implies acceptance of other items that are less
extreme.
Osgood’s semantic
differential
Focused on connotative meaning people give to a
word/concept. The concept can be measured by
several evaluative scales (good/bad, nice/awful,
pleasant/unpleasant, fair/unfair,
valuable/worthless)
29. Physiological measures
Advantage over self-report measures: people may not
realise their attitudes are being assessed or alter their
responses.
Disadvantages: most are sensitive to variables other than
attitudes and provide little information (indicates
intensity, but not direction).
Facial expressions: Facial muscle movements linked to
underlying attitudes.
Social neuroscience: measuring brain activity. Levin
(2000) investigated racial attitudes by measuring event-
related brain potentials that indicate electrical activity
when we respond to different stimuli.
30. Levin
White participants viewed a series of white and
black faces, and ERP component indicated that
white faces received more attention
Suggesting participants processed their racial
ingroup more deeply and the racial outgroup more
superficially.
31. Measures of overt/covert
behaviour
Overt
- Unobtrusive measures: dustbins, prints on display
cases, book/DVD withdrawals, etc.
Covert
- bias in language, priming, Implicit association test
32. Write 3 statements about the characteristics of a good
friend
Write 3 statements about the characteristics of a person
you dislike (use the name Scar instead of real name)
33. Linguistic intergroup bias: Maass and colleagues
found:
Type of description Term used Example
+veingroup Abstract/vague Kiki is honest
–veoutgroup Abstract/vague Lois is evil
-veingroup Concrete Kiki swears a lot
+veoutgroup Concrete Lois is good at art
52. PRIMING…
Kawakami, ,Young and Dovidio (2002): Primed vs
Control (non-primed) group.
1) Primed group was shown a random series of photos of
two different age sets (older and university-age) for 250
milliseconds. Each followed by the word ‘old?’ and
participants responded yes/no on keyboard.
2) Both groups shown a list of strings of words and non-
words and asked to respond Y/N if the word string was
a real word or not. Real words were either age-
stereotypic or not age-stereotypic. (serious, distrustful,
elderly, pensioner vs. practical, jealous, teacher, florist)
53. Results
Primed group (but not the control group) were a
little quicker in responding to age-stereotypic
words.
Primed group took longer overall to respond than
the control group.
Possible reason: the concept elderly activated a
behavioural representation in the memory of people
who are mentally and physically slower than the
young. The participants may have unwittingly
slowed down when they responded.
55. In Sum…
Attitudes can be formed from mere exposure, classical
conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning theory
and/or self-perception theory.
Attitudes can be measured through explicit means (agree or
disagree with various statements about their beliefs) as well as
implicitly (scales, connotative meanings)
Scales include Thurstone, Likert, Guttman and Osgood’s
semantic differential.
Attitudes can be measured using physiological techniques
(facial muscle movements, brain activity)
Measurements of covert attitudes include language bias,
priming and IAT
Editor's Notes
Bias in language – people more likely to talk in abstract terms than concrete terms about undesirable characteristics of an outgroup and vice versa for desirable characteristicsPriming (activating schemas that influence how we process new information) – pressing button whether an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was ‘good’ or ‘bad’. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and vice versa.IAT – Participants press different keys on a keyboard or button box to match concepts (e.g. Australian, easy-going). Where an attitude exists, reaction is faster.
Maass and colleagues found that people are more likely to talk in abstract terms (Bob is impulsive) than concrete terms (Bob visits a friend) about undesirable characteristics of an outgroup, and vice versa for desirable characteristics.Linguistic intergroup bias!
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Tell students that next slide will have a word. Put up left hand if the word is considered ‘good’ and right if it’s considered ‘bad’
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
Press a button to indicate where an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was good or bad. White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image and black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image.
