Perloff, R. M. (2010). The dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the twenty-first century. Routledge. Chapter 3: Attitudes: Definition & Structure Chapter 4:The Power of Our Passions: Theory & Research on Strong Attitudes Chapter 5: Attitudes: Functions & Consequences

1. PART TWO:
THE NATURE OF
ATTITUDES
Chapter 3: Attitudes: Definition & Structure
Chapter 4:The Power of Our Passions: Theory & Research on Strong Attitudes
Chapter 5: Attitudes: Functions & Consequences
Chapter 6: Attitude Measurement
Perloff, R. M. (2010). The dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the twenty-first century.
Routledge.

2. CHAPTER 3:
ATTITUDES:
DEFINITION & STRUCTURE

4. The Concept of Attitude
■ Being familiar with a term does not mean one can necessarily
articulate a clear, comprehensive definition
– Darwin – attitude as a motor concept
– Freud – endowed attitude with vitality; longing, hatred and love,
passion and prejudice
– Thomas & Znaniecki (1918) – placed attitude in a social context; a
state of mind toward a value
– Gordon Allport (1935) – attitude was the most indispensable
concept in contemporary social psychology
– Behaviorism – Attitude is unreal or mere Mental Constructs
■ All human activity can be reduced to behavioral units
– Notion rejected by contemporary scholars

5. Defining Attitude
■ Attitudes are Learned
– Acquired over the course of socialization
■ No one is born prejudiced – human beings learned to hate
– Not all attitudes are negative
■ Attitudes vary widely
– People tend to cluster with those who share their attitudes
■ Not one definition is better than the other
– Defining terms is a logical, not empirical exercise
■ Science requires a leap of faith!
– Does not mean that one must settle with definitions that are
inadequate or incomplete

6. Characteristics of Attitudes
■ Attitude is a Hypothetical Construct
– Concept that cannot be observed directly but can only be inferred from
people’s actions
■ Attitude is a Psychological Construct
– Mental and emotional entity that inheres in, or characterizes the person
■ A Biological Basis for Attitudes?
– Nature shapes some attitudes
■ Genes do not operate in isolation but in combination with the
environment
– Tesser (1993) – inherited physical differences might influence
attitudes
– Albarracin & Vargas (2010) – there is a genetic basis for certain
personality traits, like impulsivity

8. So what is “Attitude”?
■ Attitude is defined as:
– A learned, global and emotional evaluation of an
object (person, place or issue) that influences
thought and action
– It is not a behavior
– It is not pure affect
– It is a predisposition
– It is a tendency
– It is a state of readiness that guides and steers
behavior in certain, though not always rational ways

9. Attitudes Are Global, Typically
Emotional, Evaluations
■ Attitudes are large summary evaluations of issues and
people, that involve affect and emotions
– You are no longer neutral about the topic!
■ Mixed feelings are allowed
– Attitudes are not always consistent
– You may have contradictory attitudes towards the same issue
■ Attitudes (and values) organize our social world
– Allow us to categorize and figure out what’s going on

10. Attitudes ↔ Emotions
■ Attitudes developed through the development of emotions
– Through affection – reward and punishment of previous
behaviors
– Through intellect – by absorbing information
■ Attitudes can be expressed through “attitudes systems”
consisting of several subcomponents
– Thoughts, feelings, and behavior
– Beliefs, feelings, intention to behave, and behavior itself

11. Attitudes Influence Thought &
Action
■ Attitudes shape and influence judgments, and thus, behavior
– They guide our actions and steer us in the direction of doing
what we believe
■ Consistency between attitudes and behavior is valued
– “Practice what you Preach”
■ Attitudes come in different shapes and sizes; complex, dynamic
entities
– Strong
– Weak and susceptible to influence
– With inconsistent elements

13. Values
■ Like attitudes, values and beliefs are learned and shaped the
way we interpret information
■ Values – general ideals; more global and abstract than
attitudes
– Can either transcend or celebrate selfish concerns
– Can conflict and collide
– Are macro constructs that underlie attitudes and strike to
the core of our self-concepts

14. Beliefs
■ Beliefs – more specific and cognitive than values or attitudes
– People have hundreds of attitudes but dozens of beliefs
– They are often confused with facts
– They can be patently and unequivocally false
– Some can be strongly held but impossible to verify
– Can be categorized into different subtypes:
■ Descriptive – perceptions or hypotheses about the world
■ Prescriptive – “ought” or “should” statements of preferred end-
states

16. Attitude Structure &
Persuasion■ The structure of attitudes cannot be examined with the same
exactitude that scientists examine molecules under a microscope
– Perspectives on attitude structure provide insights about the
underlying dynamics of people’s attitudes
A. Expectancy-Value Approach
– Suggests you should first explore beliefs and then find information
to counteract these beliefs
B. Symbolic Approach
– Focus on the affective basis of attitudes
C. Ideological Approach
– Locate the bedrock principle underlying a particular ideological
perspective

17. Expectancy-Value Approach
■ EVT was developed my Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen in 1975
■ Asserts that attitudes have two components:
– Cognition
– Affect
■ Attitude is a multiplicative combination of
a. Strength of beliefs about attributes
b. Evaluation of those attributes
A = sum b(i) x e(i)
b(i) = each belief
e(i) = each evaluation
■ The focus on beliefs help to identify “why”s
Evaluation
Beliefs
Attitude

18. Symbolic Approach
■ David O. Sears (1991) – people acquire affective responses to symbols
early in life from parents, peers and mass media
– Symbolic Predispositions
■ Attitudes, particularly political ones, are characterized by emotional
reactions, weeping sentiments, and powerful prejudices
– Evaluations are charged with affect
■ Symbolic View – Structure of Attitudes
– This approach helps to deconstruct people’s views on contemporary
issues
■ Calls attention to the role that associations play in attitude structure

19. Ideological Approach
■ Emphasis on ideology or worldview
– General rule – individuals with strong ideological positions view social
and political issues differently from the way ordinary citizens do.
■ People without ideology – begin with simple symbolic predisposition(s)
■ Broad ideological principle – begin with an ideology
■ Asserts that attitudes are organized “top-down”
– They flow fro the hierarchy of principles or predispositions that
individuals have acquired and developed
■ Shortcoming
– Assumes that people operate on the basis of one set of ideological
beliefs
■ Individuals frequently call on a variety of prescriptive beliefs when thinking

20. Are
Attitudes
Internally
Consistent?

21. Intra-Attitudinal Consistency
■ We are ambivalent about man issues – we feel both (+) and (-)
– Uncertainty or conflict – Incompatible beliefs
■ Head versus Heart
– Expectancy Value Theory says that people can have strong beliefs
about two or more outcomes

22. Balancing Things Out
■ Balancing Things Out
– Individuals dislike inconsistency among cognitive elements and are
motivated to reconfigure things mentally so as to achieve a
harmonious state of mind
■ Fritz Heider (1958) – Balance Theory
– Cognitive elements have a positive or negative valence or charge
■ Attitudes are in harmony when the multiplication of the signs yield a
(+)
– Triad of relationships
■ (P) = a person or perceiver
■ (O) = another person
■ (X) = an issue
■ When they yield a (-) balance theory provides options to reach

23. How to Grapple with Inconsistency
■ Balance theory helps understand cognitive inconsistency
– Does not describe many subtleties in people’s judgments
– Fails to describe those situation sin which people manage to like
people with whom they disagree
■ Mental inconsistencies are part of life
■ Robert P. Abelson (1959)
– People resolve cognitive conflict in four ways:
1. Denial – forget about the fact that there is disagreement
2. Bolstering – add mental elements to one’s attitude to strength its system
of beliefs
3. Differentiation – agree to disagree
4. Integration – when ideas are combined to peacefully coexist

24. QUESTIONS

25. CHAPTER 4:
THE POWER OF OUR
PASSIONS:
THEORY & RESEARCH ON
STRONG ATTITUDES

26. What are Strong Attitudes?
■ What it means psychologically to feel deeply about an issue?
■ How strong attitudes differ from weaker or more ambivalent ones?
■ Attitudes
– Influence though and action
■ Strong attitudes
a. Affect judgement
b. Guide behavior
c. Prove resistant to change

27. Strong Attitudes
■ Are probably anchored by other beliefs and values, making them more
resistant to change
■ People are likely to know more about issues they feel strongly about,
making them more resistant to counter arguments
■ People are likely to associate with others who feel similarly, which
tends to maintain and support these attitudes
■ Are often more elaborated and accessible, which makes them more
likely to be at to the tip of the tongue
■ People with strong attitudes are likely to attend to and seek out
information relevant to the topic, arming them arguments used to resist
attempts to change their minds

28. From Attitude to Strong
Attitude■ People acquire strong attitudes at an early age
– They are formed through observation of role models and reinforced
with rewards
■ Strong Attitudes are characterized by:
– Importance
– Ego-involvement
– Extremity
– Certainty
– Accessibility
– Knowledge
– Hierarchical organization

29. Attitudes
&
Information
Processing

30. Social Judgment Theory
■ Emphasizes that receivers do not evaluate a message purely on the
merits of the argument but instead people evaluate issues based on
where they stand on the topic
– Comparison of advocated position with their own attitude
– Determination of whether they should accept the position
■ Receivers are consumed with their own attitudes
– Can never escape their own point of views
■ Core concepts:
a. Latitudes of acceptance, rejection, and noncommitment
b. Assimilation and Contrast
c. Ego-involvement

32. Latitudes of Acceptance,
Rejection, & Noncommitment
■ Continuum of Evaluations
– Latitude of Acceptance – all the acceptable positions on an issue
– Latitude of Rejection – all the objectionable positions on an issue
– Latitude of Noncommitment – issues with neutral or noncommittal
positions

33. Assimilation & Contrast
■ Perceptual mistakes, distortions that result from then tendency to
perceive phenomena from a personal standpoint reference or anchor
– Natural human biases that occur because we perceive events
subjectively – through our own frames of reference – not objectively
– Allow us to maintain our view of the world – stability
■ Can perpetuate dogmatic perspectives and unwillingness to be
opened
■ Assimilation
– Assumption that a message is more compatible to our attitudes
than it really is
■ Contrast
– Assumption that a message is more different our attitudes than it
really is

35. Ego-Involvement
■ Involvement seems to have a strong impact on latitudes and
assimilation/contrast
■ People are ego-involved when they perceive that the issue touches on
their self-concepts or core values
– When people are deeply involved they have larger LOR relative to
their LOA and LON and thus, they are hard to persuade
– Engage in Selective Perception and Biased Assimilation – perceive
things in a way that they fit their preconceived beliefs and attitudes
■ People are more apt to assimilate ambiguous messages only when
the arguments are generally consistent with their preconceived
attitudes
■ No intention of mentally searching for information to the contrary

39. Attitude Accessibility
■ Accessibility
– Refers to the degree to which attitude is automatically activated from
memory – “getting in touch with your feelings”
■ Associations are links among different components of the attitude
– The stronger the linkages are, the stronger is the attitude
■ Russell Fazio (1995)
– Attitudes as an association between an object (person, place, or issue)
and an evaluation
– Attitudes vary along a continuum of strength
■ Weak attitudes – familiarity with the object but a lukewarm evaluation of
its worth
■ Strong attitudes – characterized by well-learned associations between an
object an the evaluation

41. Cognitive Model of Associative
Networks
■ Reaction time procedure
– The quicker the response time the more accessible the attitude
■ Key findings about attitude accessibility:
– The more frequently that people mentally rehearse the association
between an object and an evaluation, the stronger the connection
will be.
– Objects toward which we have accessible attitudes are more likely
to capture attention
– Accessible attitudes serve as filters for processing information

43. Implicit Attitudes
■ Timothy D. Wilson (2000) – people have dual attitudes
– Explicit – operates on a conscious level and guides much
everyday behavior
– Implicit – influences nonverbal behaviors and other responses
over which we lack total control
■ Strong attitudes outside conscious awareness
– We are not consciously aware that we harbor certain feelings
about the person or issue
■ Are defined as evaluations that
– Have an unknown origin – are habitual
– Are activated or emerge automatically
– Influence implicit response – uncontrollable

45. A Neuroscience Approach
■ Attitudes have both biological and psychological foundations
– Myers (2008) – “everything psychological … is simultaneously
biological”
■ Neuron – nerve cell, foundation of nervous system
– Information goes from an extension of the cell to the body of the
cell and then passed on to other neurons, glands, or muscles
through synaptic gaps in an elaborate communication system
facilitating information processing.
– MRI and fMRI
■ Positive relationship between a type of strong attitude and activity in
the portion of the brain involved in processing such information
■ Persuasive message effects have biological brain-based

47. CHAPTER 5:
FUNCTIONS AND
CONSEQUENCES

48. Functions of Attitudes
■ Attitudes are functional
– Attitudes serve different purposes for different people
■ They help people manage and cope with life
■ Functional Theories
– Examine why people hold the attitudes they do
– Explore the needs that attitudes fulfill and the motives they serve
– Suggests that a persuasive is most likely to change an individual’s
attitude when the message is directed at the underlying function the
attitude serves.
■ Messages that match the function served by an attitude should be
more compelling than those that are not relevant to the function
addressed by the attitude.

49. Attitudes & Persuasion
■ People are deep and complicated creatures
– We should extend tolerance to others
■ persuaders must be acutely sensitive to the function attitude
serve
■ Attitude dysfunction
– Attitudes can be functional for one person, but with
functional or others
■ It's hard to know whether an article is primarily functional or
dysfunctional
– Prejudice for example is not functional for those at the other
end of the hate monger’s stick

50. Attitudes’ Main Functions
■ “Main Functions” or “Primary Benefits” that
attitudes provide:
1. Knowledge
2. Utilitarian
3. Social Adjustive
4. Social Identity
5. Value-Expressive
6. Ego-Defensive

51. Historical Background
■ Richard LaPiere (1934)
– Prejudice towards the Chinese ethnic group in California
– With a Chinese couple stopped at restaurants and hotels across US
■ They were accepted and served as quests at all but 1 establishment
■ After sending questionnaires, 91% responded NO to the question of
whether they would accept members of the Chinese race as guests in
their establishments
– Concluded that attitudes do not predict behavior
■ Biased – The couple was accompanied by an educated Caucasian
man
– Observed that attitudes always predict behavior
■ Useful guides or reasonable predictors

52. Attitudes & Behaviors
■ Attitudes DO influence action
– Predispose people toward certain behaviors, but not all the time
■ Connection is both of theoretical and practical
– Theoretically – attitudes are assumed to predispose people to behave in
certain ways
– Practitioners perspective – attitudes are important only if they predict
behavior
■ Factors that moderate the attitude behavior relationship
a. Aspects of the situation
b. Characteristics of the person
c. Qualities of the attitude

54. Situational Factors
■ Norm and individuals believe about the appropriate behavior in a situation
– Roles are parts we perform in everyday life socially prescribed functions
■ Norms and Roles
– Vary across cultures – “Depends on the situation”
■ Attitude fails to predict behavior because the public display the attitude runs
counter to cultural norms
■ Roles also influence the attitude behavior relationship
– When people take on a professional roles, they have to act the part and put
their biases aside
■ Script
– Organized bundle of expectations about an event sequence or an activity
■ Like an actor who has memorized he's lying and set them on cue

55. Characteristics of the Person
■ Personal factors moderate the attitude behavior relationship
– Self-monitoring – Mark Snyder (1974)
■ High self-monitoring – Look to the situation to then act
– Guided by general attitudes developed from indirect
experience and can lead to dysfunction
■ Low-self monitoring – Act what they preach
– Guided by strong attitudes developed from direct experience
– Direct experience
■ More clearly defined, held with greater certainty, more stable
over time, more resistant counter influence
■ Come more quickly to mind than indirect experience attitudes
– Strong attitudes

56. Self-Monitoring
■ High-self monitors
– Monitor the public appearances of self they display in social
situations
– Exhibit less attitude behavior consistency than do low self monitors
– Look to the situation to decide how to act
■ Low-self monitors
– Less concerned with getting into a situation or displaying socially
correct behavior
– Consult their inner feelings and attitudes

57. Direct Experience
■ Based on direct experience with an issue
– We have encountered the issue in real life
– It has evoked string feelings
– Or led us think through the implications of behaving in
certain way
■ Indirectly
– From listening parents and peers, reading books,
watching television, skimming Facebook posts, etc…

58. Characteristics of the
Attitude
■ Ajzen and Fishbein (1977)
– General vs Specific Attitudes
■ Are based on direct experience with an issue
■ That we have encountered at a problem in real life
■ And that has evoked very strong feelings or led us to
think through the implications of behaving in a
certain way

59. General & Specific Attitudes
■ Ajzen and Fishbein (1974-1977)– Attitude towards the
object will not predict each and every type of behavior
– Compatibility Principle
■ General attitudes predict broad classes of behavior that cut
across different situations
■ Specific attitudes toward a behavior predict highly specific
acts
– When people have strong feeling on both sides of an issue
they are less apt to translate attitude into behavior.

61. Models of Attitude-Behavior
Relations
■ The Reasoned Action Model (updated in 2010)
– Once individuals develop a set of beliefs, they proceed to
act on these beliefs in a predictable and consistent fashion
■ Beliefs are not always rational but they can powerfully
influence behaviors
■ Accessibility Models (less empirical evidence)
– Sheds light into impulsive and spontaneous behaviors
■ For an attitude to affect action, it must come spontaneously
to mind in a particular context and influence key perceptions
of the issue or person