Psychology and Sociology - 1

Psychology and Sociology – Attitude change, persuasion and negotiation

Definitions
 Attitude is a general feeling or evaluation – positive or negative – about
some person, object or issue (personal opinion)
 Characteristic is an enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and
behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups,
events or symbols.

Concepts
Attitude
 Function: Attitudes give an orientation towards objects (afraid of snakes)
 Characteristics:
o permanent (not a feeling), e.g. you like fish and chips even if you
had one bad experience in a restaurant.
o Socially significant objects
o Generalizable, e.g. eating two different crepes in France and
London and you like both  you like all crepes
Can attitude predict behaviour
 Yes (old): If you like Game of Thrones, you will watch the new season
o The link between attitude and behaviour is influenced by
 Attitude strength
 Attitude accessibility
 Balance theory
o People create consistency: When you barely know David and you
have a negative attitude towards Nigel, then you will create
negative attitude towards David, too!
o People like consistency: When you have a positive relationship
towards David and Nigel, but they don’t like each other, the
theory predicts that you will create a negative bias/relationship
with either one of the two.
 Attitude strength
o Strong attitudes more accurately predict behaviour compared to
weak attitudes.
o People with weak/strong attitudes, there attitude change
according to their behaviour (did they donate?)
 A donation increases attitude (weak attitudes)
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 No donation decreases attitude (strong attitudes)

 Attitude accessibility
o Replying fast leads to higher certainty – the attitude is easily
accessible
o “The red line shows that if the information was not very accessible
in phase 1, the correlation between attitude and voting behaviour
was lower than with a high accessibility”

 Group Norm
o How does the influence of a group change the relationship
between attitude and behaviour?
o Attitude and behaviour is only changed when the group norm is
high, and individual has high identification within the group
o Therefore, your behaviour is influenced by subjective norms
 Perceived behavioural control
o Influence of perceived behavioural control on the prediction of
behaviour.
o People who think it is difficult for them to keep up control, have a
stronger intention of getting drunk and are more likely to do so.
 Final graph to understand the link between attitude and behaviour
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Formation of attitude
 Test the effect of repeated exposure on attitude
o Seeing something more often or interacting more often, the
attitude becomes more positive.
 Sources of learning/ Test the effect of mass media on attitude
o The more we are exposed to an object, the more we are
influenced and our attitude changes
 Third Person effect
o Thinking that other people are more influenced than we are,
because we think we are too smart to be influenced
 How do people form attitudes
o Behavioural approaches: Attitudes are enhanced by mere
exposure/contact
o Sources of learning: Parents, Friends, School, Media
o Third Person Effect
Attitude Change (communicator, message, audience)
 All three effects are not independent but are interrelated
 Effect of communicator
o If the communicator is more attractive, the agreement is higher.
o Female targets are generally higher in agreement than males.
 Effect of message
o Strong/Weak arguments, quantity high/low and relevance
high/low
o Strong arguments are always perceived the same way
o If relevance is low, the participant is more likely to agree with a
weak argument because he/she is not motivated to understand
the argument fully.
 Effect of audience
o Effect of attitude importance on persuasion
o People with a strong attitude will have a more positive attitude
that is more difficult to change
 Compliance technique
o Foot-in-the-door
 A asks B small favour  B agrees  A asks B for large favour
 When people have agreed to a small request, they are more
willing to agree to a second more larger request.
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 Unconscious: B’s mindset to be nice when agrees, more

likely to be nice again.
o Door-in-the-face
 A asks B for large favour  B refuses  A asks B a smaller
favour
 Diff. variables: Emphasis on concession (smaller favour),
increase credibility
 Compliance with only a small request is very low
 Compliance increases with
 1. Only small offer
 2. Big offer – small offer
 3. (1) + emphasis on concession
 4. (1) + credibility
 5. (1) + emphasis on concession + credibility
o Low Ball
 A gets B to commit to attractive choice  A tells B the
choice is not possible  A offers B a less attractive choice
 Male accept more often than female