Attitudes become stronger when we have direct positive or negative experiences with the attitude object, and particularly if those experiences have been in strong positive or negative contexts. Although the people who watched ended up either liking or disliking the puzzles as much as the people who actually worked on them, Fazio found that attitudes, as assessed by reaction time measures, were stronger in the sense of being expressed quickly for the people who had directly experienced the puzzles.
Because attitude strength is determined by cognitive accessibility, it is possible to make attitudes stronger by increasing the accessibility of the attitude.
This can be done directly by having people think about, express, or discuss their attitudes with others. Because attitudes are linked to the self-concept, they also become stronger when they are activated along with the self-concept.
Attitudes are also stronger when the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition all align. They have strong positive feelings about their country, many positive thoughts about it, and tend to engage in behaviors that support it. Your cognitions toward physical exercise may be positive—you believe that regular physical activity is good for your health.
On the other hand, your affect may be negative—you may resist exercising because you prefer to engage in tasks that provide more immediate rewards. Consequently, you may not exercise as often as you believe you ought to. These inconsistencies among the components of your attitude make it less strong than it would be if all the components lined up together.
Social psychologists as well as advertisers, marketers, and politicians are particularly interested in the behavioral aspect of attitudes. Because it is normal that the ABCs of our attitudes are at least somewhat consistent, our behavior tends to follow from our affect and cognition.
Furthermore, if I can do something to make your thoughts or feelings toward French toast more positive, then your likelihood of ordering it for breakfast will also increase. The principle of attitude consistency that for any given attitude object, the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other thus predicts that our attitudes for instance, as measured via a self-report measure are likely to guide behavior.
However, our attitudes are not the only factor that influence our decision to act. These three factors jointly predict our intention to perform the behavior, which in turn predicts our actual behavior Figure 4. To illustrate, imagine for a moment that your friend Sharina is trying to decide whether to recycle her used laptop batteries or just throw them away.
We know that her attitude toward recycling is positive—she thinks she should do it—but we also know that recycling takes work. But if Sharina feels strongly about the importance of recycling, if her family and friends are also in favor of recycling, and if she has easy access to a battery recycling facility, then she will develop a strong intention to perform the behavior and likely follow through on it.
Since it was first proposed, the theory of planned behavior has grown to become an extremely influential model for predicting human social behavior. More generally, research has also discovered that attitudes predict behaviors well only under certain conditions and for some people.
These include:. The extent of the match between the social situations in which the attitudes are expressed and the behaviors are engaged in is important; there is a greater attitude-behavior correlation when the social situations match. Imagine for a minute the case of Magritte, a year-old high school student. Magritte tells her parents that she hates the idea of smoking cigarettes. The relevant social norms are of course much different in the two situations. Behaviors are more likely to be consistent with attitudes when the social situation in which the behavior occurs is similar to the situation in which the attitude is expressed Ajzen, ; LaPiere, Another variable that has an important influence on attitude-behavior consistency is the current cognitive accessibility of the underlying affective and cognitive components of the attitude.
For example, if we assess the attitude in a situation in which people are thinking primarily about the attitude object in cognitive terms, and yet the behavior is performed in a situation in which the affective components of the attitude are more accessible, then the attitude-behavior relationship will be weak. Wilson and Schooler showed a similar type of effect by first choosing attitudes that they expected would be primarily determined by affect—attitudes toward five different types of strawberry jam.
They asked a sample of college students to taste each of the jams. While they were tasting, one-half of the participants were instructed to think about the cognitive aspects of their attitudes to these jams—that is, to focus on the reasons they held their attitudes—whereas the other half of the participants were not given these instructions. Then all the students completed measures of their attitudes toward each of the jams. Wilson and his colleagues then assessed the extent to which the attitudes expressed by the students correlated with taste ratings of the five jams as indicated by experts at Consumer Reports.
They found that the attitudes expressed by the students correlated significantly higher with the expert ratings for the participants who had not listed their cognitions first. And the students who simply rated the jams used their feelings to make their judgments. On the other hand, the students who were asked to list their thoughts about the jams had some extra information to use in making their judgments, but it was information that was not actually useful.
Therefore, when these students used their thoughts about the jam to make the judgments, their judgments were less valid. MacDonald, Zanna, and Fong showed male college students a video of two other college students, Mike and Rebecca, who were out on a date. According to random assignment to conditions, half of the men were shown the video while sober and the other half viewed the video after they had had several alcoholic drinks.
In the video, Mike and Rebecca go to the campus bar and drink and dance. At this point the film clip ends, and the male participants are asked about their likely behaviors if they had been Mike. Although all men indicated that having unprotected sex in this situation was foolish and irresponsible, the men who had been drinking alcohol were more likely to indicate that they would engage in sexual intercourse with Rebecca even without a condom.
One interpretation of this study is that sexual behavior is determined by both cognitive factors e. When the students were intoxicated at the time the behavior was to be performed, it seems likely the affective component of the attitude was a more important determinant of behavior than was the cognitive component.
One other type of match that has an important influence on the attitude-behavior relationship concerns how we measure the attitude and behavior.
Attitudes predict behavior better when the attitude is measured at a level that is similar to the behavior to be predicted. Normally, the behavior is specific, so it is better to measure the attitude at a specific level too.
For instance, if we measure cognitions at a very general level e. In general, more specific questions are better predictors of specific behaviors, and thus if we wish to accurately predict behaviors, we should remember to attempt to measure specific attitudes. One example of this principle is shown in Figure 4. Attitudes also predict behavior better for some people than for others.
To return to our example of Magritte, you might wonder whether she is the type of person who is likely to be persuaded by peer pressure because she is particularly concerned with being liked by others.
High self-monitors are those who tend to attempt to blend into the social situation in order to be liked; low self-monitors are those who are less likely to do so.
You can see that, because they allow the social situation to influence their behaviors, the relationship between attitudes and behavior will be weaker for high self-monitors than it is for low self-monitors Kraus, Abelson, R. Affective and semantic components in political person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42 , — Ajzen, I. The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50 2 , — The handbook of attitudes pp.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Banaji, M. Fiske, D. Lindzey Eds. Bargh, J. The automatic evaluation effect: Unconditional automatic attitude activation with a pronunciation task. A positive attitude is not just about sporting that smile on your face every time, it is more than that.
It is about maintaining that optimistic mindset and attitude even when things are in utter chaos. It is often said that what good or bad diet does to your body, positive and negative thoughts do the same to your mind!
Feed your mind with positive thoughts and you will see amazing changes around you. When you start thinking optimistically, your mind becomes clear of any negative thoughts and you will see the world in a new light.
You will stop blaming yourself or others. You will be in total control of your emotions and try to seek a valuable lesson in every setback you experience. Here are a few more reasons why should develop a positive attitude in life: Happiness: A positive attitude is known to be linked with the feeling of happiness. Happiness is a state of mind; it comes from within and not dependent on external factors. When you think positively, you will be in harmony and feel happy. To put it simply, with a positive attitude, you can be happy right now … irrespective of any situations you are in.
Self-confidence: When you develop a positive attitude, you will start feeling better about yourself. You will treat yourself with more respect and love, and this in turn will boost your confidence levels and inner strength. You will take on new challenges and come out of your self-limiting beliefs. Stronger immune system: People with a positive attitude are lively, energetic and healthy. Positive thinking renders a positive effect on health as well; it lowers stress and improves your overall wellbeing.
As you attempt to persuade listeners, you will certainly need to be aware of which beliefs are fixed and which are variable. It might also help if you realize how persistently we humans hold on to our beliefs, often even after we are presented with evidence that clearly contradicts them. This can make your attempt to convince your audience more difficult. We often see only what we want to see.
You must be prepared to combat that human tendency. Knowing what individuals in your audience value and believe can assist you in all phases of your speech preparation and presentation.
How can you gather this information from them? First, you will need to know what questions to ask and what types of data to collect. One of the first places to start is with the collection of demographic information. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Module 2: Audience Analysis and Effective Listening. Search for:. Values, Beliefs, and Attitudes Human beings are complex, multifaceted creatures.
Why does one person laugh off an insult while another feels the need to punch the offender? Why do some cultures value the uniqueness of the individual while others believe that the group working as a whole is more important? What makes one person persevere while another gives up? In one small section of this chapter, we certainly cannot hope to comprehensively cover all that comprises human psychology, but we do need to identify a few key terms that have relevance in our study of communication and speech.
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