26th October 2023

Attitudes

Defining attitudes

There are many different ways to define the concept of an attitude. It might seem a bit of a ‘fluffy’ concept, but there are luckily various psychological theories that can help us make sense of them for the purposes of MRCPsych.

We all hold beliefs – conscious or unconscious – about many things around us, but some will be held more strongly than others. The strength of attitude is linked to the value placed upon the belief, as well as any personal experiences or emotional connections to the belief.

The tripartite model of attitudes

Attitudes are thought to be made up of 3 different components:

• Affective – Feelings or emotions about the subject, e.g. Revising for Paper A makes me feel anxious.
• Behavioural – The way our behaviour is impacted, e.g. I might avoid revision.
• Cognitive – Thoughts or beliefs about the topic, e.g. I believe exams are stressful and hard work.

This is known as the ‘ABC model’ of attitudes, or the ‘tripartite model’ (tripartite, as in, ‘3 parts’) and was developed by Albert Ellis.

Functions of attitudes

Katz described four functions that attitudes serve for us as individuals in society:
1. Knowledge – Allowing us to predict what is likely to happen.
2. Adaptiveness – Helping us fit in with a social group or find approval with other people.
3. Self/ego-expressive – Forming part of our identity and communicating to others who we are.
4. Ego-defence – Protecting our self-esteem or justifying our actions or behaviour.

We are not likely to be consciously aware of the functions our attitudes serve, and it may be that the functions coexist or change over time.

Changes in attitudes

One assumption about attitudes is that they generally remain constant and unchanged unless impacted by an internal or external factor. Change in an attitude is usually a result of either cognitive dissonance or persuasion.

Cognitive dissonance theory

Psychologists describe the principle of ‘cognitive consistency’, which is based on the assumption that we as humans are wired to seek to be congruent in our attitudes, values and behaviour.

Cognitive dissonance is the sense of discomfort or distress that occurs as a result of a single individual holding attitudes or beliefs and enacting behaviours that clash with each other. The degree of discomfort or distress that we feel then motivates us to change one of the inconsistent components to bring them back in line with each other.

For example, if you steal a textbook and believe it is wrong to do so, you would feel internal discomfort: your belief (that it is wrong to steal) and your action (stealing) would conflict with each other. To resolve this conflict, one part would need to shift. This could be the belief (e.g. convincing yourself that it is not actually wrong to steal), the action (e.g. returning the textbook or paying for it), or the perception of the action (e.g. convincing yourself that what you did, didn’t count as stealing for some reason).

Image Source: Adapted from Dreamstime (no date). Resolution of Cognitive Dissonance. Available for free at: https://www.dreamstime.com/presenting-resolution-cognitive-dissonance-image226642662 (Accessed on: 18 October 2023).

The cognitive dissonance experiment

A psychologist named Leon Festinger investigated cognitive dissonance theory with an experiment in the late 1950s. Participants were initially asked to complete boring and repetitive tasks (e.g. moving pegs in a board) for an hour or so. The participants were then asked to convince a third party who had not yet completed the task that the task had been enjoyable.

They were split into 3 groups. Two received different amounts of money to tell the third party that the task had been fun (one dollar vs twenty dollars) while the other was a control group who were not rewarded. After this, participants were asked to rate their own enjoyment of the activity.

Results showed that the group receiving twenty dollars falsely told the third party they had enjoyed the task while actually rating their enjoyment levels as low. In contrast, the ‘one dollar’ group appeared to actually have convinced themselves that they had enjoyed the task, rating their own enjoyment as higher.

Festinger believed that the ‘twenty dollar’ group had felt lying to the third party was worth it to receive a good amount of money (shifted action perception), whereas the ‘one dollar’ group needed to shift their own belief about the task in order to feel okay with telling the third party false information.

Measuring attitudes

As we’ve ascertained, attitudes are quite subjective and individualised. This means they can be difficult to measure.

Let’s have a think about some of the common ways of measuring attitudes that might come up in your exam:

References

• Maio G, Haddock, G. The psychology of attitudes and attitude change. SAGE Publications Ltd. 2010. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446214299
• Prathap, S. SPMM Smart Revise. SPMM Course. 2019.
• McLeod, S. A. Attitudes and behaviour. Simply Psychology [online]. 2018, May. Available from URL: www.simplypsychology.org/attitudes.html [Accessed Feb 2023]
• Fishman J, Yang C, Mandell D. Attitude theory and measurement in implementation science: a secondary review of empirical studies and opportunities for advancement. Implementation Sci. 2021; 16(87).