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ATTITUDES
Aims

• To introduce the concept of attitudes, components, and ways of assessment.

Objectives
• To discuss definition of an attitude and its components
• To describe direct and indirect methods of assessing attitudes.
Discussion about new section “Evaluating Persons and Relationships” of study in Social Psychology
Since with the study of Attitudes, a new section is being started, some discussion was carried out about the main components of this section “Evaluating persons and relationships”. This section will comprise on the general study of attitude formation and change. This section will also focus on specific attitudes like negative attitudes of prejudice and discrimination, and positive attitudes of interpersonal attractions and attachments.
The section will discuss causes of social intolerance and different forms of prejudice. Discussion will also be carried out on how positive attractions are formed.

What is an Attitude?
• A positive or negative evaluation of an object (Schuman, 1995), where an attitude object is a person, thing, event, or issue
• Earliest use of the term attitude came from theatre, described it as a body posture; dates back to the 1800s; later referred to as a “posture of mind” than of body.
• According to Allport, attitude is the most indispensable concept of social psychology. He maintained that “Attitudes determine for each individual what he will see and hear, what he will think and what he will do. To borrow a phrase from Willliam James, “they engender meaning upon the world” (Allport, 1935, p. 806).
Three components of Attitudes
Before 1990s attitudes were interpreted in terms of their three components (tricomponent).

This idea was based on “ABC” information namely:
• Affective component: the person’s emotions and affect towards the object
• Behavioral component: how person tends to act towards the object; Attitudes are but one determinant of behavior but not the only one; conversely past behavior also determines attitudes.
• Cognitive component: consists of thoughts and beliefs the person has about the object. Attitudes are often cognitively complex but evaluative simple.
Because all of these components may not be present always, many psychologists have moved to single dimension definition-evaluative.
Assessing Attitudes

Direct Assessment:
Usually three methods are employed to measure attitudes directly:
1. Likert (Summated Ratings) scales:
What is your opinion about co-education at college level?
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4
Very much opposed Very much in favor
2. Semantic Differential Scales:

Do You feel about the taste of this (any brand) coffee?
Unpleasant ______________________________________ Pleasant
3. Latitude of Acceptance
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4
All options acceptable to the respondent are encircled, while those not acceptable are encircled.
Indirect Assessment
• Social desirability problem in direct assessment led to indirect assessment of attitudes.
• Studies conducted in 1930s and then in 1969 showed reduction in stereotypes of White against black  people. However, the evidence does not show a reduction in prejudice over time. This artifact thus can be attributed to social desirability factor.
• Bogus pipeline technique is used to convince the respondents that the experimenter has a pipeline into the respondent’s real attitudes
• Bogus pipeline techniques are effective in getting people to admit that they smoke or drink too much, and engage in other unhealthy behaviors
• Recent advances in electrophysiology may remove the “bogus” from the bogus pipeline and make it possible to detect attitudes directly. For example, electromyography recordings can detect minute
changes in these muscles accurately reflecting a person’s feelings and thus can help detect attitudes.
Reading
• Franzoi, S. (2003). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 6.
• Lord, C.G. (1997). Social Psychology. Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Company. Chapter 6.