The way in which a person views and evaluates something or someone, a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively

KEY CONCEPTS affective component of attitude attitude attitude–behaviour relation attitude function attitudinal ambivalence behavioural component of attitude cognitive component of attitude explicit measures of at TFtitude implicit measures of attitude mere exposure effect MODE model multicomponent model of attitude one-dimensional perspective of attitudes self-monitoring self-perception theory socially desirable responding theory of planned behaviour theory of reasoned action two-dimensional perspective of attitudes CHAPTER OUTLINE The study of attitudes is at the core of social psychology. Attitudes refer to our evaluations of peo- ple, groups and other types of objects in our social world. Attitudes are an important area of study because they impact both the way we perceive the world and how we behave. In this chapter, we introduce the attitude concept. We consider how attitudes are formed and organized and discuss theories explaining why we hold attitudes. We also address how social psychologists measure atti- tudes, as well as examining how our attitudes help predict our behaviour. All of us like some things and dislike others. For instance, we both like the Welsh national rugby team and dislike liver. A social psychologist would say that we possess a positive attitude towards the Welsh rugby team and a negative attitude towards liver. Understanding differences in attitudes across people and un- covering the reasons why people like and dislike different things has long interested social psychologists. Indeed, almost 70 years ago, Gordon Allport (1935, p. 798) asserted that the attitude concept is ‘the most distinctive and indispensable concept in . . . social psychology’. That statement remains equally valid today; the study of attitudes remains at the forefront of social psychological research and theory. In this chapter, we introduce a number of important issues regarding the attitude concept. First, we define the term ‘attitude’. We will show that expressing an attitude involves making an evalu- ative judgement about an attitude object. Second, we devote attention to the content of attitudes. We will show that attitudes have affective, cognitive and behavioural components. Third, we con- sider the structure of attitudes. We will show that attitudes can be organized and structured in dif- ferent ways. Fourth, we consider the psychological functions or needs that are served by attitudes. We will show that people hold attitudes for a number of reasons. Fifth, we introduce how attitudes are measured, concentrating on direct and indirect strategies that psychologists have developed to measure attitudes. We will show that attitudes can be measured in many different ways. Finally, we review research that has addressed a key question for attitude researchers: under what cir- cumstances do attitudes predict behaviour? We will show that our attitudes and opinions are quite WHAT IS AN ATTITUDE? How can we best define an attitude? Can we have attitudes about anything? In their influential book The Psychology of Attitudes, Eagly and Chaiken (1993, p. 1) define an attitude as ‘a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor’. Inherent in this definition is the idea that reporting an attitude involves the expression of an evaluative judgement about a stimulus object. In other words, reporting an attitude involves making a decision concerning liking vs. disliking, approving vs. disapproving or favouring vs. disfavouring a particu- lar issue, object or person. An attitude, when conceptualized as an evaluative judgement, can vary in two important ways. First, attitudes can differ in valence, or direction. Some attitudes that a person possesses are positive (like our attitudes towards the Welsh rugby team), others are negative (like our attitudes towards liver), and yet others are neutral (like our attitudes towards eating fried foods). Second, attitudes can differ in strength. For example, while one person might feel very strongly about the Euro, a second person might feel much less strongly about the same topic. You will learn more about different aspects of attitude strength later in this chapter. Until now, we have used different examples when describing our own attitudes. This leads to an important question – can any- thing be the object of an attitude? Basically, any stimulus that can be evaluated along a dimension of favourability can be conceptu- alized as an attitude object. As noted by Eagly and Chaiken (1993), some attitude objects are abstract concepts (e.g., ‘liberalism’), others are concrete (e.g., a computer). Furthermore, one’s own self (e.g., self-esteem) and other individuals (e.g., a particular politi- cian) can serve as attitude objects, as can social policy issues (e.g., capital punishment) and social groups (e.g., people from Canada). SUMMARY Reporting an attitude involves the expression of an evalu- ative judgement about a stimulus object. Attitudes differ in strength and valence, and any stimulus that can be evalu- ated along a dimension of favourability can be conceptual- ized as an attitude object. THE CONTENT OF ATTITUDES Can attitudes be influenced by unconsciously learned emotional responses to an object? How do beliefs shape attitudes? When do people infer (or perceive) their attitudes from their behaviour? So far, we have seen that attitudes can be thought of as an overall evaluation (e.g., like–dislike) of an attitude object. This definitional perspective has generated a number of conceptual models of the attitude concept. Historically, one of the most influential models of attitude has been the multi- component model (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Zanna & Rempel, 1988). According to this perspective (see Figure 6.1), attitudes are summary evaluations of an object that have affective, cognitive and beha- vioural components. A number of researchers have considered how these three components contribute to the formation and expression of attitudes. The affective component of attitudes The affective component of attitudes refers to feelings or emotions associated with an attitude object. Affective re- sponses influence attitudes in a number of ways. A primary way in which feelings affect attitudes is due to affective reactions that are aroused in the individual after exposure to the attitude object. For instance, many people indi- cate that spiders make them feel scared. These negative affective responses are likely to produce a negative attitude towards spiders. Feelings can become associated with attitude objects in several ways. A number of researchers have used classical conditioning paradigms to assess how pairing affective information with an attitude object can produce a positive or negative attitude. For example, Krosnick, Betz, Jussim and Lynn (1992) conducted a study in which participants were presented with a series of pictures of an unfamiliar person. Importantly, each picture was preceded by an affect-arousing image that was presented at a subliminal level, that is, at very brief exposure below the threshold necessary for conscious encoding (see Chapter 4, this volume). For some par- ticipants, these images were negative (e.g., a bucket of snakes, a bloody shark), while for other participants these images were pos- itive (e.g., a pair of kittens, a couple getting married). After seeing the pictures of the unfamiliar person, participants were asked to evaluate this individual. As can be seen in Figure 6.2, Krosnick et al. found that participants who were subliminally presented with the positive images liked the individual more compared with particip- ants who were subliminally presented with the negative images. Not only were participants’ attitudes affected by the subliminal presentations, so too were their perceptions of the target person’s personality characteristics and physical attractiveness. In addition to classical conditioning and subliminal priming, another way in which affect guides attitudes comes from research by Zajonc and colleagues (e.g., Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993; Zajonc, 1968). These researchers argue that attitudes are formed on the basis of affective responses that precede conscious thought. To test this hypothesis, stud- ies have examined how the mere exposure of stimuli can influence an attitude. In the mere exposure effect increase in liking for an object as a result of being repeatedly exposed to it. studies, different types of unfamiliar stimuli (e.g., various Chinese characters) are presented to participants a certain number of times. They are then shown again to participants along with other, novel stimuli (e.g., new characters), and participants’ attitudes towards the familiar and unfamiliar characters are measured. A large num- ber of studies have revealed that stimuli that have been presented many times are liked more than stimuli that have not been seen be- fore. For instance, in one study by Zajonc (1968), participants were initially shown 12 different Chinese characters. During this expo- sure phase, each character was shown either 25 times, 10 times, 5 times, twice, once or not at all. Later, participants were asked to indicate how much they liked each character. The results of this study are presented in Figure 6.3. As can be seen, participants’ attitudes towards the characters became more positive the more times the character had been seen at the exposure phase. The mere exposure phenomenon helps explain why we sometimes come to like classical music melodies that we hear repeatedly, even when we are unable to recall the artist who composed the music or any details of our prior experiences hearing it. PIONEER Born in Poland, Robert Zajonc (b. 1923) completed his PhD at the University of Michigan (1955). He remained at the University of Michigan until 1994. Zajonc’s research covered many areas relevant to the psychology of attitudes. His work on the mere exposure effect led to the development of an influential program of study exploring how affective processes influence attitudes and actions. This research led Zajonc to consider the role of uncon- scious processes in determining preferences and behaviour. The cognitive component of attitudes The cognitive component of attitudes refers to beliefs, thoughts and attributes we associate with a particular object. In many cases, a per- son’s attitude might be based primarily upon a consideration of the positive and negative attributes about the attitude object. For example, when one of us recently bought a new car, he de- voted considerable attention to factors such as different vehicles’ safety records, petrol mileage, resale value and repair costs. In this example, attitudes towards the different cars were formed via a conscious consideration of the positive and negative characteristics of each car. Cognitions have an impact on many types of attitudes. Within the study of intergroup attitudes (see Chapters 3 and 14, this volume), stereotypes are usually considered as beliefs about the attributes possessed by a particular social group. Further, many studies have revealed that possessing negative stereotypes about a group of people is associated with having a prejudicial attitude towards the group (e.g., Esses, Haddock & Zanna, 1993; Kawakami, Dion & Dovidio, 1998). Cognitions, in the form of beliefs, are a key part of one ap- proach to attitudes, which argues that attitudes are derived from more elementary cognitions about the attitude object. Specifically, Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) expectancy–value approach describes an attitude towards an object as the sum of ‘expectancy × value’ products. Expectancies are beliefs or subjective probabilities that the object possesses a certain attribute; these beliefs may range from 0 to 1 in strength. Values, or evaluations, are ratings of the at- tributes, normally from −3 to +3. An attitude object will be evalu- ated positively if it is seen as leading to, or associated with, positive things and avoiding negative things. Only salient beliefs count towards the overall attitudes; these are beliefs that a person con- siders most relevant. We can illustrate the model by computing a person’s attitude towards the game of golf. This person might think that golf is (1) a valuable form of exercise, (2) a good way to see friends and (3) frustrating. Each of these beliefs will have both an expectancy and a value. For example, exercise might have a high expectancy (.9) and positive evaluation (+3); seeing friends might be perceived as having a lower expected outcome (.7) that is somewhat positive (+2); while frustration is (thankfully!) somewhat infrequent (.3) but very negative (–3). The individual’s overall attitude towards golf is computed by summing the belief–evaluation products (e.g., 2.7 + 1.4 − .9 = 3.2). The behavioural component of attitudes The behavioural component of attitudes refers to past behaviours with respect to an attitude object. For instance, people might infer that they have a negative attitude to- wards nuclear power plants if they recall having previously signed a petition against hav- ing a nuclear power plant built near their neighbourhood. The idea that people might infer their attitudes on the basis of their previous actions was developed by Bem. According to Bem’s (1972) self-perception theory, individuals do not always have access to their opinions about different objects (see also Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Bem argued that this is espe- cially likely when the person’s attitude is particularly weak or ambiguous. Many studies have shown results consistent with this reasoning. For example, Chaiken and Baldwin (1981) asked par- ticipants to complete a questionnaire containing items that were framed in a way to remind people of either their pro-environment behaviours (e.g., picking up the garbage of others) or their