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Like it? Hate it? Now we are talking about feelings. Research with the semantic differential (see below) indicates that evaluation--or positive or negative feelings are the core that distinguish attitudes from beliefs or opinions.

Work on social perception fits in nicely with the cognitive orientation that has dominated work in the social and behavioral sciences for the past 50 years. As you will see, the attempt has been made to study attitudes, or affective orientations toward objects, in much the same way. This approach has, in fact, carried us a long way, but it does leave largely untouched the messier, untidy businesses of love and lust, and jealousy and hate. In fact, even the topic of emotional intelligence has been "cognicized" as it has developed. You may want to consider whether we need to add or amplify cognitive and reinforcement approaches to include emotions, or whether totally new dimensions may be needed.
 

Attitudes are feelings/evaluations about targets. Attitudes vary in:

• Direction (whether they are positive or negative about the target)
• Accessibility (how available they are or how easily referenced)
• Centrality (the salience of the attitude, how important it ranks)
• Extremity (how strong the degree of positive or negative feeling is)
• Complexity (the multidimensionality of the attitude)
• How organized the attitude is and
• How connected they are to other attitudes, opinions, or values

Values concern broad goals (e.g., freedom) and can represent primitive [basic] beliefs. Attitudes are more specific (supporting voting rights).

World views are clusters of organized, interrelated, possibly hierarchical attitudes. "Liberal" or "conservative" self-definitions are examples of world views and allow us to predict many specific attitudes.

For example, consider two individuals with attitudes about capital punishment ("the death penalty"):

1. The first individual believes in "an eye for an eye." Murderers deserve the death penalty. National traitors or spies do too. His or her feelings about the death penalty are positive, strong, easily accessed, and she or he links these to readings in The Bible. Person #1 brings up the death penalty whenever issues in crime are mentioned so it is clearly very salient for her or him.
2. The second individual is more conflicted. Their attitudes about the death penalty are less central, less extreme ("mildly positive"), and occupy several dimensions: religious attitudes; attitudes about social inequality; attempts to incorporate recent research on eyewitness identification and DNA testing; and motivations for the crime. Their attitudes are linked to political attitudes, religious readings, and the courses they took in criminology. Although they will talk about the death penalty on occasion with friends or good acquaintances, most of the time the second individual doesn't bring up the topic or respond to possible cues, such as crime.

Attitudes can serve functions for the individual. Four functional areas delineated by Daniel Katz several decades ago, but still quite useful include:

• attitudes provide meaning (knowledge) for life. Political or religious ideologies often serve this function.

• self-expression. The attitudes we express (1) help define who we are and (2) may make us feel good because we have asserted our identity. For example, gender role theorists believe this is important in young children to reinforce their gender identity (little kids are typically far more sex-typed than adults). Self-expression of attitudes can be non-verbal too: think bumper sticker, cap, or T-shirt slogan.

• instrumental function. People hold and/or express attitudes because they think these will bring them rewards or help them to avoid punishment. For example, when people flatter their bosses or instructors (and believe it) or keep silent if they think an attitude is unpopular, we are seeing the instrumental function. Again, expression can be nonverbal [think politician kissing baby].

• the ego defensive function refers to holding attitudes that protect our self-esteem or that justify actions that make us feel guilty. This function has psychiatric overtones. For example, we may hold ambiguous feelings toward a spouse or a parent, but our values tell us we should love this person without reservation. Someone holding such a conflict might glorify a parent or overembellish their attitudes about a husband or wife.  Perhaps the most historical famous example of research on the ego defensive function was the study of The "Authoritarian Personality." In the very late stages of World War Two, social psychologists tried to explain the mind set of individuals who were prejudiced and of those who more readily accepted totalitarian political regimes in terms of family dynamics and ambivalent feelings toward those in authority roles. Its measure, the F-scale, tried to explain prejudice as an ego defensive function. Although the ego-defensive conceptual basis behind it is now rarely invoked, it is STILL an excellent predictive measure of people holding prejudiced attitudes (more recently, for example, of attitudes toward people with AIDS, or the HIV-positive.)

Attitudes can--and should be--measured several different ways, and both verbally and nonverbally.

Attitude questions can be "open-ended," that is, the response is like an essay in the individual's own words. Or questionnaire items can be "closed," or similar to multiple-choice exams where the respondent is provided with a pre-existing set of responses and asked to select one response. Researchers tend to like to use lots of closed questions. However, if your survey includes many items that have the same or a very similar response format, please be advised that your results could reflect some type of format response set instead of the content that you envisioned (see below for a section on response format effects).

Long sets of questions, in which you verbally (or in writing) ask questions and record the answers are basically surveys, whether you call them a "standardized test," a "personality inventory," or something else entirely. As such, your test or inventory is subject to all the same problems, by and large, that public opinion surveys face (and maybe more, because public opinion surveys typically take good, representative samples and hence have excellent external validity.)

One common attitude measure is the Likert scale. Respondents are given a statement, typically an affective statement of some kind ("I was shocked by the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in 2001"), then asked to indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with that statement. Researchers love Likert scales because they can be completed very rapidly (an interviewer can do FIVE LIKERT ITEMS PER MINUTE), thus providing large amounts of data in a very short time, and they are very easily and unambiguously coded. In contrast, open-ended responses are difficult, ambiguous, and time-consuming to code, despite the richness and multidimensionality of responses.

However, Likert Scales are particularly subject to acquiescence response set or extremity response set (see below) where respondents agree or disagree in a pattern, instead of responding to individual item content.

In semantic differential scales, you are typically provided with polar opposite pairs of adjectives ("happy-sad" "simple-complex") and asked to describe the attitude object along continua for each pair of adjectives. Researchers have found the evaluative dimension tends to dominate these descriptions (although a "soft-hard" dimension also frequently emerges). Semantic differential scales can be subject to extremity response set.

Projective tests do not ask about the attitude object directly. Instead, you may be given a picture related to the object, an ambiguous picture (an inkblot), or an incomplete sentence. Your task is to tell a story about the picture or complete the sentence. Projective tests are sometimes used if the material is considered preconscious, unconscious, or subconscious, and the subject is thought to arouse some type of internal psychological conflict. The idea is that by using a picture or vague sentence, you will project your feelings into the story or sentence completion where they can be scored for imagery. One example is the Murray Thematic Apperception Test.

Indirect methods observe behavior. For example, if you find a "lost letter," researchers theorize that you are more likely to return it if the group addressed holds attitudes consistent with your own attitudes. Thus, it is supposed to indirectly measure public opinion on controversial topics. For example, you might estimate attitudes toward women by using letters addressed to different  groups (e.g., NOW versus The Moral Majority). Another indirect way would be to study interruption patterns in mixed-sex groups. The problem, of course, is that all of these actions reflect all kinds of tendencies (such as absent-mindedly sticking the letter in your purse or pocket, and meaning to mail it...) besides the attitude you really want to measure, and this can introduce enormous error variance into attitude estimates.
 
 

Do attitudes do a good job of predicting behavior? While many types of attitudes are interesting to study, many researchers believe that the true value of these studies lies in predicting how people will behave. Sort of, "the wish is parent to the deed."

Very early research on attitudes and behavior produced dismal results. One of the most famous early studies was undertaken by sociologist Richard LaPiere, who travelled the United States in the 1930s with a Chinese couple, stopping at many of the small, locally owned motels that were then prevalent. LaPiere and his friends always were able to rent a room. After he returned home, LaPiere wrote these motels. In his letter, he mentioned "by the way, my friends are Chinese." Nearly half the motels never responded. (LaPiere counted a nonresponse as a refusal of the Chinese couple.) The others wrote back regretting that a room was unavailable. LaPiere concluded that different sets of social forces influenced attitudes and behaviors.

Research undertaken through the 1950s tended to agree with LaPiere. Sizable numbers of studies centered around White American attitudes toward Black, Asian, or Hispanic Americans. Restaurants admitted Black customers, prejudiced customers were waited on by Asian or Hispanic American clerks and didn't even seem to realize the ethnicity of counter clerks.

Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, this research became more multidimensional and sophisticated. As a result, we have considerably more knowledge of how attitudes and behavior relate.

For one thing, there are two GIGANTIC areas where attitude questionnaires do an excellent job of predicting behavior: voting and consumer studies. (The 2001 AAPOR t-shirt slogan, in a parody of the 2000 Presidential election--especially in Florida--reads: "polling, now more accurate than the election itself.") As long as representative samples are taken, estimates of national and state votes (or, indeed, any other pending election in which probability samples of at least 1500 are taken) are within a few percentage points. The same is typically true for predicting large consumer purchases such as automobiles.

What did LaPiere and the early attitude-action researchers "do wrong?" What did the political pundits or market researchers "do right?"

Let's look at the LaPiere study first. It is a classic because to our knowledge, Richard LaPiere was the very first person to systematically try to test the attitude-behavior relationship. And I think we always need to keep sight of that. The United States in the 1930s was a very ethnically intolerant nation. A lot of EuroChristian-Americans didn't like Chinese, Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, the Irish, or much of anyone else. ALL these groups were then subject to prejudice in the U.S. (and elsewhere, of course). So LaPiere's research decision to look at motels, and with a Chinese couple, was a good choice.

1. Travel was different then than it is now. No Interstate highways with motel chains clustered at the exits, No hotel chains, such as Holiday Inn. Many motels didn't even have telephones (neither did many residences.) We don't have any control group where Chinese were never mentioned so we don't know how many of the "mom and pop" places simply didn't know how to handle reservations, no matter who the guests were. Most people don't like writing anyway and it would have been more difficult to set up a reservation than it is today.
2. Staying with the motels for now, how do we know that the person who opened the mail or handled reservations was the same person who registered LaPiere and the Chinese couple for the night. We don't know--and they probably were different people, an owner or manager received the reservation request versus a night clerk. We can't talk about attitude-action inconsistency across people, only within a single individual.
3. Nonresponse was taken to be refusal. Well, there's no control group again, so who knows? Further, literacy was not as wide-spread in the 1930s as it is now and these were "mom-and-pop" operations, not chains. Without further knowledge under these conditions, we really don't know what a non-response meant.
4. LaPiere's letter ("I hope you don't mind that my friends are Chinese") set up a problematic situation. Was the owner supposed to mind? Did she or he ever even think about the matter before LaPiere's letter arrived? Maybe it was better to be safe than sorry and just not take a reservation, or even answer the letter.

• often planned

• relatively private decisions

• relatively private behaviors

• about specific attitudes and goals

• easily accessible attitudes (no murky psychodynamics here),

• and we often control situational pressures (e.g., when we vote, where we buy)

The more sophisticated research that began in the late 1960s tells us that attitudes can predict behavior if:

• we measure specific, accessible attitudes
• AND SPECIFIC corresponding behaviors (don't ask about the environment if you mean the Sierra Club)
• if situational norms [constraints] support consistency (norms such as politeness can cause inconsistency)
• when behavior is planned and reasoned (Ajzen and Fishbein)
• when behavior is NOT spontaneous or confrontational
• when behavior is private rather than public [see the theory of reasoned action]
• AND people feel they have a choice or committed themselves to the behavior.

Can "stateways change folkways"? Must we always change attitudes before behavioral change can occur? These aren't just academic questions. Under times of national stress, we may not have the leisure to change attitudes one by one.

Well, one possibility is propaganda. We send out messages that we hope will change attitudes in "our desired direction." Attitude change researchers believe a central sequence of attention, comprehension and acceptance (a more reasoned approach) or a peripheral, unreasoned process [elaboration likelihood model] occurs.

Peripheral processing refers to the expertise, similarity or trustworthiness of persuasive sources rather than actual message content. For example, if you respect and trust Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, then you will probably adapt many of his current statements as your own attitudes. You may also look to your co-workers or local political leaders. Central processing is more what we consider reasoned action. It may depend on your access to information that you believe is relevant.

Both central and peripheral processing can occur in parallel in the same persuasive attempt.

A critical distinction social psychologists make in processes of persuasion is between compliance and conformity. In compliance, only external behavioral change is desired. External rewards and punishments are often used to ensure compliance.

In  conformity, internally motivated attitude change also occurs. Appeals are often made here to reason, logic, self-expression, identification with the source, credibility of the source and so forth. Any attitude acquisition or change that occurs when people feel like they have a choice about whether to accept influence is generally more permanent than when either occurs under compliance. Quite simply, compliance is very costly, to those who create and must enforce it, and for those who accept this influence. Threats and promises influence compliance and can require surveillance.

"Immunization effects" can prevent attitude change. If we give you practice at refuting arguments aimed at changing your attitudes, resistance to later appeals rises. [We will look at "obedience to authority" later.]

Initial research on fear appeals dismissed them as ineffective. People were so turned off and anxious from the message, they never really got to the comprehesion or acceptance part. However, we now know that fear appeals can be effective if they specify easily implemented actions and arouse a moderate amount of fear.

Attitude or attitude-behavior inconsistency can be psychologically and literally physically uncomfortable and motivate change toward consistency. However, discomfort results only when attitudes are accessible and relevant. Change toward consistency occurs more often if you perceive choiceand low environmental pressure, commit to and feel responsible for your behavior. Balance theory (Heider) is oriented internally toward changing beliefs and attitudes. Cognitive dissonance addresses attitude-behavior inconsistency.

YES! Behavior can change attitudes, either because:

• inconsistency creates discomfort (dissonance) or
• because we learn our own attitudes through self-observation (self-perception theory).

You, a male undergraduate, enter the laboratory and spend an hour at a thoroughly boring task. At last! The experiment's over and you can go home. But not so fast. Two-thirds of the time, the experimenter stops you and asks if you can help. "Normally," he says, "there's someone in the waiting room before you go in who tells you what an interesting experiment this is." "But no one was there" you say. "Precisely," says the experimenter, "Our confederate is home sick today and couldn't come. We would like you to help and tell the next subject what an interesting experiment this is. Naturally we will pay you for your time."

One third of the subjects are offered $20, a truly remarkable sum in the early 1950s when this classic study by Festinger and Carlsmith took place--and not so bad for a few minutes work even now.

The second, random, third are offered a whalloping ONE DOLLAR.

The final random third are not told anything about the missing confederate and simply go home after finishing the task.

The first two-thirds of the male subjects greet an extremely attractive young woman whom they assume is the next subject (she is really the true experimental confederate.) They proceed to tell her how interesting the experiment is.

Then, all the real subjects are given a short questionnaire to assess how much THEY really liked the experiment.

Who liked the experiment the most? Or, actually, who disliked the experiment the least?

Take your guess and then click HERE for the answer of what really happened .

How does reward affect counter-attitudinal behavior?

Dissonance says that smaller rewards cause MORE attitude change, especially in commitment conditions.

Over-sufficient justification makes similar predictions for intrinsically [internally] motivated but not for extrinsically motivated behaviors.

Direct reward or reinforcement effects (more reward=more change) can occur when rewards are expected not a surprise, not linked to competence, extrinsically motivated, or the person perceives little choice or commitment.
 

Scholars in public opinion research study many of these same topics. First, they study how people process information, which can relate to stability and change in public opinion. Next, they examine the cognitive underpinning and how people process information on the influence of question format and response. For example, we know that many people respond to the form rather than to the content of a survey research item. Examples of format response set include acquiescence response set or extremity response set.

One branch of public opinion research is familiar to us from the "pollsters" who ascertain the standing of political candidates and how people respond to public issues.  Another is market research, and may focus on consumer behavior. Much of this research has given us considerable insight on attitude-behavior linkages.

Another part of the public opinion research field studies various forms of propaganda and persuasion campaigns. Scholars in these areas often look at the "face" the media present to the public (e.g., the gender or ethnic composition of television programs) and how media influence public attitudes.

Here is the site for AAPOR, the American Association for Public Opinion Research. AAPOR is about 50-50 academics and public opinion professionals.

CLICK HERE to access AAPOR.

RESPONSE SETS

In acquiescence response set, people tend to generally agree or disagree with nearly every sweeping attitude statement put before them in a questionnaire.Well-educated persons have been taught "never say 'always' or 'never,' " so "nay-saying," or disagreement, rises with education, typically regardless of content. We are less clear about which factors nudge people to gravitate toward  extreme responses ("strongly agree" or "strongly disagree") or toward the middle, but we know that it happens too.

The tendency to simply "opt out" and respond "I don't know" is also linked to education. In one recent study, I found that people who had not graduated high school were three times as likely to give "I don't know" responses as people who had graduate school experience. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to say "I don't know." In such cases, you need to reflect on whether a "don't know" response truly represents lack of knowledge or some other factor such as low self-efficacy.

"Standardized tests" which contain long sets of items, all with identical response formats, are especially prone to response sets. This is especially true if all items take a Likert-type format. In addition, "personality inventories" which contain long sets of identically phrased items (e.g., "A lot like me," "Somewhat like me," "A little like me," or "Not at all like me") are also subject to response format effects. Unfortunately, a definite, but unknown, specific amount of "reliability coefficients," such as coefficient alpha, is undoubtedly due to the fact that correlations among the items occur because of response set. Interesting...but probably not what you hoped for. Coefficient alpha is also influenced by the number of items: larger numbers of items in a "test" produce larger coefficient alphas.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Vary the item format that you use. Keep Likert items to a minimum. Try to include reversed items, or the same concept using different formats, in your questionnaire. Pilot test your questionnaire ALOUD. See if you detect respondents consistently falling into response patterns ("yep..." "yep..." "yep..") and "clean up" the problem areas.

Using experimental "split-ballot" techniques, survey researchers also assess whether different forms of a question yield comparable responses and appear to be comparable in meaning. Subsamples of participants from the total survey are selected at random to receive the "same item" with different question wording. We check not only to see whether the univariate frequency distributions are the same, but also whether question wording changes how one concept relates to other variables, such as educational level.
 

By this time, you have probably noticed that even the attitude material has a distinct cognitive thrust. That's true. Attempts to measure entities such as "emotional intelligence" (a sensitivity to social situations, tact, humor, etc.) became more successful in terms of publishing when researchers took a more cognitive approach.

The sociological view is that emotions are socially constructed. We learn, often from the outside in, to link internal physical feelings with socially labelled emotions. I am reminded of research on sexuality in film from about 20 years ago. Researchers showed sexually explicit films to both women and men (in separate rooms). Both showed nearly identical measures of physical arousal. When asked to describe their feelings, the men said they were aroused and the women said they were disgusted! In early theorizing, psychologist Daryl Bem suggested that parents and other older or authority figures take cues for how children feel from their facial expressions, vocal inflections, and bodily postures in the context of the social situation. Then they describe to the children in words how they feel ("you're excited" "you must feel sad").

But attempts to measure what jealousy is, and its effects on behavior, or anger, or joy, are really in their infancy. My guess is that the old cognitive vocabulary is not going to work and we will have to develop a new one.

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Susan Carol Losh September 22 2002