Understanding Attitudes: Formation and Components
An attitude is a psychological tendency to evaluate something favorably or unfavorably. Attitudes have three main components that work together:
- Cognitive component: Your beliefs and thoughts about something
- Affective component: Your emotional responses
- Behavioral component: Your actual actions or intentions
Real-World Example
Imagine a positive attitude toward exercise. Your cognitive component includes beliefs that exercise improves health. Your affective component is feeling energized during workouts. Your behavioral component is actually going to the gym.
How Attitudes Form
People develop attitudes through multiple pathways. Direct experience creates strong attitudes quickly. Someone who gets food poisoning at a restaurant develops a negative attitude toward it immediately. Observational learning happens when you watch others' attitudes. Children often adopt their parents' political or religious viewpoints. Classical conditioning pairs objects with emotional responses.
Attitude Strength Matters
Some attitudes resist change while others shift easily. Attitudes that are personally relevant, frequently expressed, and based on direct experience tend to be stronger. These strong attitudes better predict behavior. Weak attitudes formed passively or secondhand are easily modified. This distinction matters when studying persuasion because strong and weak attitudes need different strategies.
The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Two Routes to Persuasion
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), developed by Petty and Cacioppo, is one of the most important persuasion frameworks. It proposes two distinct routes to persuasion, each producing different results.
Central Route Persuasion
The central route involves careful, thoughtful analysis of arguments. When people are motivated and able to think deeply, they scrutinize argument quality, consider evidence, and engage in critical evaluation. This route produces strong, lasting attitude change that predicts behavior and resists counterarguments.
Example: When choosing a college, students typically use the central route. They compare programs, read reviews, and evaluate career outcomes carefully.
Peripheral Route Persuasion
The peripheral route operates when people lack motivation or ability to analyze arguments. They rely on superficial cues instead. These cues include speaker attractiveness, catchy slogans, or the sheer number of arguments regardless of quality. Peripheral route persuasion produces weak, temporary attitude change that is easily reversed.
Example: Television commercials often use the peripheral route. They feature attractive celebrities or upbeat music rather than logical arguments.
What Determines Which Route
The route taken depends on personal and situational factors. Someone with high expertise in a field uses the central route even when distracted. Someone with low expertise uses the peripheral route. Time pressure and distraction push people toward the peripheral route. Understanding ELM explains why some advertising works on certain audiences but not others.
Cognitive Dissonance and Attitude Change
Cognitive dissonance, introduced by Leon Festinger, describes uncomfortable psychological tension. You experience it when holding contradictory beliefs or when behavior conflicts with attitudes. This discomfort motivates people to reduce it through three main strategies.
Three Dissonance Reduction Strategies
People can change their attitude, change their behavior, or add cognitions that justify the inconsistency. The strategy chosen depends on which is easiest or most acceptable.
The Classic Dollar Study
In famous research, participants told lies about a boring task. Those paid one dollar experienced greater dissonance. They couldn't justify the lie with adequate payment, so they changed their attitude, rating the task as more enjoyable. Those paid twenty dollars experienced less dissonance. The payment justified the lie, so they kept their original negative attitude. Smaller rewards sometimes produce stronger attitude change, which seems counterintuitive.
Real-Life Smoking Example
Smokers experience dissonance between knowing smoking causes cancer and continuing to smoke. They might quit smoking (changing behavior). They might decide cancer risk is exaggerated (changing attitude). Or they might convince themselves they'll quit tomorrow (adding justifying cognition).
What Determines Dissonance Strength
The magnitude of dissonance depends on importance and conflict level. Major value contradictions create stronger dissonance than minor inconsistencies. Understanding cognitive dissonance explains why people change attitudes after committing to behaviors and why public statements produce stronger change than private ones.
Persuasion Techniques and Principles of Influence
Robert Cialdini identified six major principles that explain how people are persuaded. These principles operate in combination throughout daily life and marketing.
The Six Principles of Influence
Reciprocity: People feel obligated to repay others in kind. Free samples work in marketing because customers feel compelled to buy. Giving first makes people more likely to help you later.
Commitment and Consistency: People desire to be consistent with previous statements and actions. Once committed to a position, they stay there. This explains why signing petitions leads to larger donations.
Social Proof: People determine what is correct by finding what others think is correct. We look to others' behavior to guide our own, especially in ambiguous situations. Laugh tracks increase perceived humor. Testimonials are effective advertising.
Authority: People obey authority figures and experts, even without real power. People wearing uniforms or displaying credentials receive greater compliance. Doctors in white coats influence health decisions.
Liking: People are more persuaded by those they like. Physical attractiveness, similarity, compliments, and cooperation increase liking. Attractive celebrities in ads boost persuasion.
Scarcity: People value things more when believing they are less available. Limited-time offers and exclusive deals trigger increased persuasion. People fear missing out on scarce items.
Real-World Combination
A restaurant might use social proof by displaying customer reviews, authority through chef credentials, and scarcity with special limited-time menu items. Understanding these principles makes you aware of persuasion attempts directed at you and more effective at persuading others ethically.
Attitude-Behavior Relationship and Moderating Factors
A fundamental question in social psychology asks: Do attitudes predict behavior? The answer is nuanced and depends on several moderating factors.
The Attitude-Behavior Gap
While attitudes moderately predict behavior, the relationship is not automatic or guaranteed. Several factors determine when attitudes will and won't influence actions. Understanding these factors explains why attitude campaigns sometimes fail to change behavior.
Attitude Strength as a Moderator
Strong attitudes formed through direct experience, frequently expressed, and personally relevant are much better predictors of behavior. Someone with a strong environmental attitude is more likely to recycle consistently than someone with a weak environmental attitude. Weak attitudes fail to guide behavior reliably.
Attitude Accessibility Matters
Attitudes that come to mind easily and quickly are more likely to guide behavior. If environmental concerns are mentally accessible to you, you will engage in eco-friendly behaviors more readily. When attitudes feel distant or irrelevant, they fail to influence action.
Social Situation Moderates the Relationship
Even strong attitudes may not predict behavior if social pressure or situational constraints oppose the attitude. A person with a strong environmental attitude might not recycle at work if recycling bins are unavailable or coworkers mock recycling. External barriers matter as much as internal attitudes.
Intentions Mediate the Process
The Theory of Planned Behavior suggests that attitudes influence intentions, which then influence behavior. Someone might hold a positive attitude toward exercise but still not exercise because they don't intend to or face time constraints. Intention is the critical link between attitude and action.
Self-Monitoring Personality Effects
High self-monitors adjust behavior to fit social situations regardless of true attitudes. Low self-monitors behave consistently with their attitudes across situations. Your personality type affects whether attitudes guide your behavior.