PSYC 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Terror Management Theory, Binge Drinking, Combined Oral Contraceptive Pill
15 Jun 2018
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Attitude:
- A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some
degree of favour or disfavour
- Stored in memory
- Why attitudes are useful
o Knowledge function
▪ Help us to manage and simplify information processing
▪ Attitudes give us evaluations that are stored in our memory and helps to
make decisions
o Utilitarian function
▪ Guide behaviour toward valued goals and away from aversive events
▪ Positive attitude toward success will lead you to work harder
o Value expressive function
▪ Attitudes serve to help us express our values and communicate them to
others they are “part of who we are”
▪ E.g. environmentalist groups
▪ Help us to become closer to social groups
o Social adjustment function
▪ Attitudes help us fit in with our social groups; we are motivated to hold
attitudes that will be approved of by others
▪ E.g. attitudes toward binge drinking
▪ But: pluralistic ignorance
• Don’t have a good read on what other people are thinking—we can
only see their overt behaviours.
• We misread people’s attitudes because of how they’re behaving
and because no one is saying anything
• Individual students are uncomfortable with binge drinking and
think that no one else shares the same opinion because they see lots
of people drinking and does not think about how those people may
also be feeling uncomfortable with drinking
o Ego defensive function
▪ Attitudes can serve to protect our self-esteem or justify actions that make
us feel guilty
▪ E.g. terror management theory sows that after thinking about death, people
hold more negative views toward an outgroup
How attitudes are formed:
- Twin studies show some suggestion that there are genetic links
- Modelling/socialization
o Immediate families’ attitudes have an influence on our attitudes and we adopt
these attitudes to have a smooth relationship with the family
- Classical conditioning
o Using celebrities on advertisements for products works in part because of
classical conditioning
- Operant conditioning
o Stimulus comes first and then the reward
o If a child shows a behaviour that is consistent with the parent’s attitude, they will
smile or give a reward and if a child does something that is not consistent, the
parent will not smile or will scold them
- Mere exposure
o Being exposed to something multiple times will make you more receptive of it
and you will like it overtime
o Only true with things that were neutral or positive
Types of attitude measures
- Direct
o Semantic differential (basically a rating scale)
- Indirect
o Error choice technique
▪ Having people answer a questionnaire that they think is just a knowledge
based test but you use it to make inferences
▪ There are some questions that are real and some that are not and these
questions are used to infer people’s attitudes
- Physiological
The tripartite theory (ABC)
- Affect
o Initial response
o E.g. sushi: yum
- Behaviour
o Behaviour tell us something about the attitude
o E.g. sushi: eatin dis every week
- Cognition
o Beliefs and what we think about the object
o E.g. sushi: sushi is healthy for ya
The attitude behaviour problem
- Belief that behaviours should be consistent with your attitudes
- LaPiere did a study that showed that in a restaurant there was a discrepancy between if a
server would allow people of different races in to dine and they said yes but the
behaviours were different
- Corey did a study asking if students would cheat and they said they wouldn’t and he gave
test but didn’t mark it and allowed the students to mark them, and he found that their
actual grades didn’t match with the grades they gave themselves – showing that they did
cheat
- Wicker examined 42 studies dealing with the attitude behaviour relationship. The average
correlation was about 0.15 and so he suggested that they scrap this theory because it
didn’t do a good job at predicting behaviour
When do attitudes predict behaviour
- Specificity matching
o Action
o Target
o Context
o Time
Davidson and jaccard did a study that asked 244 women about their attitudes toward birth control
pills using different levels of specificity
- Asking the question generally does not predict behaviour but asking the question
specifically predicts behaviour
Ajzen and Fisbein
- Reviewed studies assessing attitude-behaviour consistency with correspondence as a
moderator
- No correspondence: no relationship between attitudes and behaviour
Reasons underlying the “A-B problem”
- Attitudes sometimes conflict with other powerful determinants of behaviour
- Attitudes are sometimes inconsistent
- Introspecting about our attitudes can sometimes interfere
Theory of reasoned action
- Attitude and subjective norms (beliefs about what other people would think about us
engaging in a certain behaviour) → intention → behaviour
Theory of planned behaviour:
Attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control (whether we think that we are able to
control the behaviour) → intention → behaviour
The importance of intentions:
- Intentions represent whether a person believes that he or she will engage in a specific
behaviour
- Attitudes contribute to intentions, but they are not the only predictors. Subjective norms
and Perceived Behavioural Control also predict intentions
Document Summary
A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour. Twin studies show some suggestion that there are genetic links. Modelling/socialization: immediate families" attitudes have an influence on our attitudes and we adopt these attitudes to have a smooth relationship with the family. Classical conditioning: using celebrities on advertisements for products works in part because of classical conditioning. Mere exposure: being exposed to something multiple times will make you more receptive of it and you will like it overtime, only true with things that were neutral or positive. Direct: semantic differential (basically a rating scale) Affect: initial response, e. g. sushi: yum. Behaviour: behaviour tell us something about the attitude, e. g. sushi: eatin dis every week. Cognition: beliefs and what we think about the object, e. g. sushi: sushi is healthy for ya. Belief that behaviours should be consistent with your attitudes.
