Attitude and Social Cognition

The A-B-C components and properties of attitudes, how attitudes are learned and changed, balance, cognitive dissonance, the two-step concept, and when attitudes predict behaviour.

Key ideas

• An attitude is a set of views about an object with a feeling and a tendency to act; an opinion is only the thought.
• Attitudes are learned by association, reward and punishment, modelling, group norms and information, shaped by family, school, reference groups, experience and media.
• Heider’s balance: in the P-O-X triangle an imbalance is uncomfortable, so an attitude shifts until balance returns.
• Festinger’s cognitive dissonance: when thoughts clash, we change one of them to reduce the discomfort.
• Mohsin’s two-step concept: the target first identifies with a liked source, then copies the source’s changed behaviour.
• Change depends on the source (credibility, attractiveness), the message (information, rational or emotional appeal) and the target (persuasibility, openness).
• Attitudes predict behaviour best when they are strong and central, and outside pressure is low.

Remember

Watch out

• Calling an opinion an attitude: an attitude also has a feeling and an action part.
• Thinking three negatives balance a P-O-X triangle: the product is negative, so it is unbalanced.
• Expecting the $20 group to change more: the $1 group had no outside reason, so felt more dissonance.

Worked example