Attitude Formation and Change — AP Psychology Notes

Key Characteristics:

• Can be positive, negative, or neutral
• Vary in strength (weak to strong)
• Influence behavior but don't always predict it
• Can be explicit (conscious) or implicit (unconscious)
• Relatively enduring but can change

Example: Attitude Toward Exercise

• Affective: "I enjoy exercising; it makes me feel energized"
• Behavioral: "I go to the gym three times per week"
• Cognitive: "I believe exercise is important for health"

1. Direct Experience

Attitudes formed through personal encounters tend to be strongest. If you try sushi and love it, you develop a positive attitude. Personal experience creates more vivid, memorable, and emotionally powerful attitudes.

2. Social Learning (Observational Learning)

We adopt attitudes by observing and imitating others, especially parents, peers, and influential figures. If your parents express negative attitudes toward a political party, you may adopt similar views without direct experience.

3. Classical and Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning: Pairing neutral stimulus with positive/negative experience (advertisers pair products with attractive people, good music)
• Operant conditioning: Reinforced attitudes strengthen; punished attitudes weaken (praised for expressing certain views)

Characteristics:

• Overgeneralize from a few examples to entire group
• Exaggerate differences between groups
• Minimize differences within groups (out-group homogeneity)
• Resistant to change due to confirmation bias and belief perseverance
• Can be positive, negative, or neutral (but often problematic)

Examples:

"All athletes are unintelligent," "Women are more emotional than men," "Elderly people can't use technology." These stereotypes ignore individual variation and create expectations that can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Key Features:

• Operate below conscious awareness
• The IAT is one indirect measure of relative association strength. A single score is not a diagnosis or definitive judgment of an individual’s character or future discrimination.
• Can contradict explicit attitudes (you may consciously reject bias but show implicit bias)
• Influence snap judgments and automatic behaviors
• Formed through repeated exposure and cultural conditioning

Example:

You consciously believe in gender equality (explicit attitude) but unconsciously associate leadership more strongly with men than women (implicit attitude). This can affect hiring decisions or evaluations without your awareness.

Prejudice (Attitude)

Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a group and its members. It's an unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude.

• Based on stereotypes
• Involves negative feelings and emotions
• Can lead to discrimination

Discrimination (Behavior)

Discrimination concerns unfair treatment based on group membership. It can reflect individual attitudes and/or institutional practices and incentives; it need not arise from a consciously expressed prejudice in every case.

• Unequal treatment based on group membership
• Can be overt (obvious) or subtle
• Examples: refusing to hire someone due to race, age, gender

Why It Happens:

• Changing beliefs requires cognitive effort
• Beliefs become part of self-identity
• We rationalize contradictory evidence
• Emotional investment in existing beliefs

Example:

You believe a friend is untrustworthy based on one incident. Even when they repeatedly demonstrate trustworthiness, you continue to doubt them, interpreting ambiguous actions as confirming your original belief.

How It Works:

• Selectively attend to confirming information
• Interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting our view
• Remember confirming examples more than disconfirming ones
• Seek sources that agree with us

The Process:

1. Attitude and behavior clash (or two attitudes clash)
2. Experience psychological discomfort/tension
3. Motivated to reduce dissonance
4. Change attitude OR change behavior OR add new cognition to justify inconsistency

Classic Example: Smoking

• Attitude: "Smoking is unhealthy and dangerous"
• Behavior: You smoke regularly
• Dissonance: Uncomfortable tension between knowing it's harmful and doing it anyway
• Ways to reduce dissonance:
  • Change behavior: Stop smoking or seek help to change the behavior. Difficulty varies; it is not a universal “hardest option.”
  • Change attitude: "It's not that bad" or "I enjoy it, worth the risk"
  • Add a justifying cognition, such as “My grandpa smoked and lived to 95.” This illustrates rationalization, not sound health evidence; exercise does not cancel smoking’s harms.

Festinger & Carlsmith Study (1959)

Classic experiment demonstrating cognitive dissonance:

• Participants did boring tasks, then were paid to tell next participant it was fun
• The $1 group rated the tasks more favorably on average than the $20 group and the no-payment control in the reported comparison; the result did not mean every participant found the task enjoyable.
• Group paid $20 still rated task as boring

The insufficient-justification account interprets the smaller payment as providing less external justification for the counterattitudinal statement. The group-level difference supports that account in this design; it does not show that a small payment always changes anyone’s attitude or that a larger payment never does.

Post-Decision Dissonance

After making a difficult choice between two appealing options, we experience dissonance. To reduce it, we emphasize positive aspects of our choice and negative aspects of the rejected option. "Spreading of alternatives" — options seem more different after the decision.

Effort Justification

We value things more when we've worked hard to attain them. If you endure a difficult initiation to join a club, you'll value the club more to justify your effort. Explains hazing, difficult training programs creating loyalty.

Why It Works:

• After agreeing to small request, you see yourself as helpful/committed
• Desire for consistency (cognitive dissonance if you refuse larger request)
• Self-perception: "I'm the kind of person who helps with this cause"

Example:

Charity asks you to sign a petition (small request). After you sign, they ask for a donation (large request). You're more likely to donate because you've already shown support.

Why It Works:

• Reciprocal concessions — if they "compromise," you feel obligated to meet them halfway
• Contrast effect — smaller request seems much more reasonable
• Guilt from refusing initial request

Example:

Friend asks you to help them move all day Saturday (large request you refuse). Then they ask if you could just help for one hour (smaller request). You're more likely to agree to the hour because it seems reasonable by comparison.

How It's Used:

• Free samples at stores make you feel obligated to buy
• Charities send free address labels with donation requests
• Restaurants give free mints with the check to increase tips
• Underlies door-in-the-face technique