Attitudes and Advertising
Lectures
Inhoudsopgave
Lecture 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2
Lecture 2 - Attitudes formation ................................................................................................. 3
Lecture 3 - Measuring (explicit) attitudes.................................................................................. 7
Lecture 4 - Measuring (implicit) attitudes................................................................................ 10
Lecture 5 - Attitude-behavior link............................................................................................ 13
Lecture 6 - Attention............................................................................................................... 16
Lecture 7 - Memory ................................................................................................................ 19
Lecture 8 - Persuasion ........................................................................................................... 22
Lecture 9 - Compliance .......................................................................................................... 25
Lecture 10 - Behavior............................................................................................................. 29
Lecture 11 - Internal and external influences ......................................................................... 32
Lecture 12 - Individual differences ......................................................................................... 37
1
,Lecture 1 - Introduction
What is an attitude?
It is a very important construct in social psychology and relevant in different fields.
There are several definitions. They seem the same, but they differ. Not every definition is right.
You observe a stimulus, this is the attitude
object. People form an attitude and later react
on the stimulus. This is called the evaluative
response. You can’t observe the attitude they
form, it is a hypothetical construct.
We can measure this with questions, for example Likert Scale, but this can give you social
desirability or people don’t know what their actual (implicit) attitude is. We can also use an
indirect measurement to measure the attitude.
Do attitudes influence behavior?
This is very important because we want to know what people do! At least we have to measure
the behavior correctly.
Yes. We spend a lot of money on it
No. Not always
Maybe. Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn’t. We want to know when it works!
How can we change and create attitudes?
Persuasion: the symbolic process in which communicators try to convince people to
change their attitudes or behavior though the transmission of a message in an
atmosphere of free choice.
Compliance or conformity: you just want to change the behavior, but not the attitude.
Internal and external influences: think about mood, weather, culture, memory, etc.
Advertising
Functions of advertising
Facilitating competition: present the product to inform consumers. They know what is on
the market.
Funding public mass media and other public resources: events get sponsored by
companies, this is important because otherwise these events wouldn’t be possible!
Creating jobs
Communicating with consumers about products and services: if something is wrong with
the product, the company should let you know and you can give it back.
Informing the individual consumer: give information, the strong points and the weak
points about the product.
Persuading the individual consumer: selling something that the consumer otherwise
wouldn’t buy. Is this manipulation?
2
,Approach
Psychological approach: relate specific advertising stimuli to specific and individual
consumer responses. It articulates the intrapersonal, interpersonal or group-level
psychological processes that are responsible for the relationship between stimuli.
Naïve approach: advertising must be effective because people use it and it is increasing
Economic approach: do you get more sales if you spend more money on an
advertisement?
Media approach: number of individuals who get reached with the message.
Creative approach: how creative?
Lecture 2 - Attitudes formation
What is an attitude?
Attitudes are…
1. Evaluative responses
2. Directed towards some attitude object
3. Based on three classes of information: cognitive, affective and behavioral.
Attitudes can be about pretty much anything. It doesn’t have to be concrete, it can also be
abstract, for example technology. We can make them very quickly and it doesn’t have to be
based on a lot of information.
Cognitive I believe Something you can look up Beliefs, knowledge,
expectations, associations
Affective I feel You just like it, you can’t Feelings, moods, emotions,
explain it physiology
Behavioral I do Interpretation of your own Action intentions, actual
behavior behavior
These three things are not exactly the same! There is only a moderate correlation, they do not
correlate completely, so it are distinct entities.
You can have an affect-free cognition, you know something is true, but you don’t have
feelings for it.
You can have a cognition-free affect, you feel something but you just can’t explain why.
You can have a behavioral component without cognition, you see yourself perform a behavior
and later you interpret why you performed that behavior.
People often can’t vocalize their reasons for liking or disliking something. Sometimes if we can,
we use post-hoc reasoning. You don’t know why you do something, but if someone asks you,
you just name a reason you never thought about it yourself. Also, often you can’t change
someone’s attitude if it is based on a strong affect. Sometimes, even if you know you are wrong,
you still won’t change your attitude.
3
,Cognition free affect?
Zajonc (1980) says that people don’t need cognition, it is immediately affect. Affect is a separate
and quick system. He bases his theory on empirical support:
If you present a stimuli multiple times (merely exposure effect) below the threshold of
awareness, people have an increasing affect but they don’t recognize that they have
seen it before (cognition).
Recognition mistakes are affectively related. People remember the affect of a word, but
not the actual word. So they make mistakes with their memory (cognition) (not processed
the word enough), but they remember if they have seen a negative or positive word.
It appears that an affective reaction is immediate. Sometimes with or without cognition.
Behavioral information
Self-perception theory: you look at your own behavior and
then infer what your attitude is behind your performed
behavior. So your behavior had an effect on your attitude.
For example: Haddock (2002) asked participants to come
up with 2 or 5 reasons to like or dislike Tony Blair. Later
they had to rate how much they like him. Naming 2 reasons
is easier than naming 5 reasons, this influences how much
you think you like him (attitude). So, people use how easy it
is to come up with reasons to make their opinion.
Cognitive dissonance: you don’t have a good reason to do something, so you adjust your
attitude to make it more in line with what you did. Your behavior and attitude is
inconsistence.
Aspects of disagreement
1. Are attitudes a predisposition to evaluate an attitude object, or are attitudes the
evaluative response itself? No, attitudes are no unitary construct
The unity of attitudes is doubtful:
There is not a strong correlation between what people say is their attitude and their
behavior.
Explicit and implicit attitudes
o Explicit attitudes are evaluations of which the individual is consciously aware and
that can be expressed using self-report measures. It is deliberate, conscious
introspective, and slow/cold. You can measure it with self-report.
o Implicit attitudes are evaluations of which the individual is typically not aware and
that influence reactions or actions over which the individual has little or no control.
It is automatic, non-conscious, associative and fast/hot. You can measure it with
indirect measures (for example: sitting farer away from a minority).
Sometimes explicit and implicit attitudes are the same, but when it involves socially
sensitives issues this is often not the case. They have a correlation of 0.24.
Attitude Ambivalence is the state in which an individual gives an attitude object
equivalently strong positive or negative evaluation.
4
, So, it has two dimensions (equivalence). This gives the following attitude dimensions:
Negative attitude: high on negative and low on
positive
Positive attitude: low on negative and high on
positive
Ambivalence: high on negative and high on
positive
Indifference: low on negative and low on positive
For example: Cacioppo, Gardner, and Berntson (1997) told
their students their grade and the average of the class.
Students rated their affect higher if they had a negative affect
and a failure, or a positive affect and a success. Otherwise
there is no effect found.
People have a need for consistency, but with ambivalence
you are doubting. This is not a problem, unless you need to act on it.
2. Are attitudes stable or context dependent? Depends on attitude strength
File-drawer model: attitudes are in your memory. You develop one, store it, later you
grab and present it.
Attitudes-as-constructions perspective: you re-create your attitude if someone asks. It
isn’t a memorial retrieving process.
Evidence for both: attitudes can persist for many years (memory),
but attitudes can also change with a changing context (re-create).
Schwarz, Strack and Mai (1991) showed that first asking about someone’s
relationship satisfaction influences how you rate your life satisfaction. If
you don’t ask this, they do not concern relationship but also other factors.
So, attitudes are constructed on the spot! You do not only retrieve from memory.
You have strong and weaker attitudes. If attitudes are strong, then…
They have a higher stability,
A greater impact on behavior
A greater influence on information processing
A greater resistance to persuasion
So, strong attitudes are likely stored in memory and therefore stable. Weak attitudes are likely
constructed on the spot and therefore likely to be affected by random influences, this makes
them unstable. This gives you more space in your memory.
This is why advertising works! Most attitudes about products are not that important to us.
5
Lectures
Inhoudsopgave
Lecture 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2
Lecture 2 - Attitudes formation ................................................................................................. 3
Lecture 3 - Measuring (explicit) attitudes.................................................................................. 7
Lecture 4 - Measuring (implicit) attitudes................................................................................ 10
Lecture 5 - Attitude-behavior link............................................................................................ 13
Lecture 6 - Attention............................................................................................................... 16
Lecture 7 - Memory ................................................................................................................ 19
Lecture 8 - Persuasion ........................................................................................................... 22
Lecture 9 - Compliance .......................................................................................................... 25
Lecture 10 - Behavior............................................................................................................. 29
Lecture 11 - Internal and external influences ......................................................................... 32
Lecture 12 - Individual differences ......................................................................................... 37
1
,Lecture 1 - Introduction
What is an attitude?
It is a very important construct in social psychology and relevant in different fields.
There are several definitions. They seem the same, but they differ. Not every definition is right.
You observe a stimulus, this is the attitude
object. People form an attitude and later react
on the stimulus. This is called the evaluative
response. You can’t observe the attitude they
form, it is a hypothetical construct.
We can measure this with questions, for example Likert Scale, but this can give you social
desirability or people don’t know what their actual (implicit) attitude is. We can also use an
indirect measurement to measure the attitude.
Do attitudes influence behavior?
This is very important because we want to know what people do! At least we have to measure
the behavior correctly.
Yes. We spend a lot of money on it
No. Not always
Maybe. Sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn’t. We want to know when it works!
How can we change and create attitudes?
Persuasion: the symbolic process in which communicators try to convince people to
change their attitudes or behavior though the transmission of a message in an
atmosphere of free choice.
Compliance or conformity: you just want to change the behavior, but not the attitude.
Internal and external influences: think about mood, weather, culture, memory, etc.
Advertising
Functions of advertising
Facilitating competition: present the product to inform consumers. They know what is on
the market.
Funding public mass media and other public resources: events get sponsored by
companies, this is important because otherwise these events wouldn’t be possible!
Creating jobs
Communicating with consumers about products and services: if something is wrong with
the product, the company should let you know and you can give it back.
Informing the individual consumer: give information, the strong points and the weak
points about the product.
Persuading the individual consumer: selling something that the consumer otherwise
wouldn’t buy. Is this manipulation?
2
,Approach
Psychological approach: relate specific advertising stimuli to specific and individual
consumer responses. It articulates the intrapersonal, interpersonal or group-level
psychological processes that are responsible for the relationship between stimuli.
Naïve approach: advertising must be effective because people use it and it is increasing
Economic approach: do you get more sales if you spend more money on an
advertisement?
Media approach: number of individuals who get reached with the message.
Creative approach: how creative?
Lecture 2 - Attitudes formation
What is an attitude?
Attitudes are…
1. Evaluative responses
2. Directed towards some attitude object
3. Based on three classes of information: cognitive, affective and behavioral.
Attitudes can be about pretty much anything. It doesn’t have to be concrete, it can also be
abstract, for example technology. We can make them very quickly and it doesn’t have to be
based on a lot of information.
Cognitive I believe Something you can look up Beliefs, knowledge,
expectations, associations
Affective I feel You just like it, you can’t Feelings, moods, emotions,
explain it physiology
Behavioral I do Interpretation of your own Action intentions, actual
behavior behavior
These three things are not exactly the same! There is only a moderate correlation, they do not
correlate completely, so it are distinct entities.
You can have an affect-free cognition, you know something is true, but you don’t have
feelings for it.
You can have a cognition-free affect, you feel something but you just can’t explain why.
You can have a behavioral component without cognition, you see yourself perform a behavior
and later you interpret why you performed that behavior.
People often can’t vocalize their reasons for liking or disliking something. Sometimes if we can,
we use post-hoc reasoning. You don’t know why you do something, but if someone asks you,
you just name a reason you never thought about it yourself. Also, often you can’t change
someone’s attitude if it is based on a strong affect. Sometimes, even if you know you are wrong,
you still won’t change your attitude.
3
,Cognition free affect?
Zajonc (1980) says that people don’t need cognition, it is immediately affect. Affect is a separate
and quick system. He bases his theory on empirical support:
If you present a stimuli multiple times (merely exposure effect) below the threshold of
awareness, people have an increasing affect but they don’t recognize that they have
seen it before (cognition).
Recognition mistakes are affectively related. People remember the affect of a word, but
not the actual word. So they make mistakes with their memory (cognition) (not processed
the word enough), but they remember if they have seen a negative or positive word.
It appears that an affective reaction is immediate. Sometimes with or without cognition.
Behavioral information
Self-perception theory: you look at your own behavior and
then infer what your attitude is behind your performed
behavior. So your behavior had an effect on your attitude.
For example: Haddock (2002) asked participants to come
up with 2 or 5 reasons to like or dislike Tony Blair. Later
they had to rate how much they like him. Naming 2 reasons
is easier than naming 5 reasons, this influences how much
you think you like him (attitude). So, people use how easy it
is to come up with reasons to make their opinion.
Cognitive dissonance: you don’t have a good reason to do something, so you adjust your
attitude to make it more in line with what you did. Your behavior and attitude is
inconsistence.
Aspects of disagreement
1. Are attitudes a predisposition to evaluate an attitude object, or are attitudes the
evaluative response itself? No, attitudes are no unitary construct
The unity of attitudes is doubtful:
There is not a strong correlation between what people say is their attitude and their
behavior.
Explicit and implicit attitudes
o Explicit attitudes are evaluations of which the individual is consciously aware and
that can be expressed using self-report measures. It is deliberate, conscious
introspective, and slow/cold. You can measure it with self-report.
o Implicit attitudes are evaluations of which the individual is typically not aware and
that influence reactions or actions over which the individual has little or no control.
It is automatic, non-conscious, associative and fast/hot. You can measure it with
indirect measures (for example: sitting farer away from a minority).
Sometimes explicit and implicit attitudes are the same, but when it involves socially
sensitives issues this is often not the case. They have a correlation of 0.24.
Attitude Ambivalence is the state in which an individual gives an attitude object
equivalently strong positive or negative evaluation.
4
, So, it has two dimensions (equivalence). This gives the following attitude dimensions:
Negative attitude: high on negative and low on
positive
Positive attitude: low on negative and high on
positive
Ambivalence: high on negative and high on
positive
Indifference: low on negative and low on positive
For example: Cacioppo, Gardner, and Berntson (1997) told
their students their grade and the average of the class.
Students rated their affect higher if they had a negative affect
and a failure, or a positive affect and a success. Otherwise
there is no effect found.
People have a need for consistency, but with ambivalence
you are doubting. This is not a problem, unless you need to act on it.
2. Are attitudes stable or context dependent? Depends on attitude strength
File-drawer model: attitudes are in your memory. You develop one, store it, later you
grab and present it.
Attitudes-as-constructions perspective: you re-create your attitude if someone asks. It
isn’t a memorial retrieving process.
Evidence for both: attitudes can persist for many years (memory),
but attitudes can also change with a changing context (re-create).
Schwarz, Strack and Mai (1991) showed that first asking about someone’s
relationship satisfaction influences how you rate your life satisfaction. If
you don’t ask this, they do not concern relationship but also other factors.
So, attitudes are constructed on the spot! You do not only retrieve from memory.
You have strong and weaker attitudes. If attitudes are strong, then…
They have a higher stability,
A greater impact on behavior
A greater influence on information processing
A greater resistance to persuasion
So, strong attitudes are likely stored in memory and therefore stable. Weak attitudes are likely
constructed on the spot and therefore likely to be affected by random influences, this makes
them unstable. This gives you more space in your memory.
This is why advertising works! Most attitudes about products are not that important to us.
5
