Behaviour & Environment 3: Cognition, Attitude and Motivation
Video Lecture 2: Attitudes in Action
Introduction
Attitude: a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favour or disfavour.
Functions of attitudes
1. Knowledge and utility function (what to approach and what to avoid)
2. Social-adaptive function (bond with others over an attitude)
3. Value-expressive function (show who you are in different situations)
Measuring attitudes
➢ Explicit: semantic differential scales
➢ Implicit: effective priming procedure
A prime is shown (eg. Gert Wilders) and then the word “great” needs to be classified as either
a positive or a negative word. If you have a positive attitude towards Wilders, you will be
quicker to classify “great” as a positive word and relatively slow to classify “bad” as a
negative adjective.
Implicit and explicit attitudes – representation of attitudes
Dual model of attitude
, MODE model
An automatic evaluation leads to an attitude response. We can alter this if we have a
motivation and opportunity to do so. Eg. if we do not want to seem prejudiced towards
disabled people, we will correct our possibly negative automatic evaluation.
APE model
associative-propositional evaluation model
Making propositions on the basis of input
of associations.
Depending on truth-values
Attitudes are based on associative (input
for the implicit attitude) as well as
propositional processes (input for the
explicit attitude).
Video Lecture 2: Attitudes in Action
Introduction
Attitude: a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with
some degree of favour or disfavour.
Functions of attitudes
1. Knowledge and utility function (what to approach and what to avoid)
2. Social-adaptive function (bond with others over an attitude)
3. Value-expressive function (show who you are in different situations)
Measuring attitudes
➢ Explicit: semantic differential scales
➢ Implicit: effective priming procedure
A prime is shown (eg. Gert Wilders) and then the word “great” needs to be classified as either
a positive or a negative word. If you have a positive attitude towards Wilders, you will be
quicker to classify “great” as a positive word and relatively slow to classify “bad” as a
negative adjective.
Implicit and explicit attitudes – representation of attitudes
Dual model of attitude
, MODE model
An automatic evaluation leads to an attitude response. We can alter this if we have a
motivation and opportunity to do so. Eg. if we do not want to seem prejudiced towards
disabled people, we will correct our possibly negative automatic evaluation.
APE model
associative-propositional evaluation model
Making propositions on the basis of input
of associations.
Depending on truth-values
Attitudes are based on associative (input
for the implicit attitude) as well as
propositional processes (input for the
explicit attitude).
