1.2.1 Attitudes

Attitudes: Components and Measurement

The attitude of a person is their feeling and/or thoughts, beliefs and behaviour predispositions towards people, groups, ideas, or objects. Attitudes tend to have a direction (positive or negative) as well as an intensity. The reason attitudes are important in psychiatry is how they can influence the behaviour of the individual and consequently how they act or behave in a certain situation.

Stronger-held attitudes are more accessible (recalled more easily) as opposed to weaker attitudes. This means that a stronger attitude is more likely to be activated in the presence of associated stimuli, thus having an influence on thought and behaviour.

Various scholars have developed ways of measuring attitudes by proposing different scales:

Measurement	Summary	Pro’s	Con’s
Thurstone scale	Series of agree/disagree items assessing varying strengths of that attitude.	Quantitative measures; can access all aspects of an attitude; anonymous responses are possible.	Responses influenced by social desirability; challenges to create/test these scales; a poor measure of implicit attitudes.
Likert scale	Measure attitude on numerical scales.	As above	As above
Osgood semantic differential scale	Rate attitudes/topics on a series of bipolar adjectives.	As above	As above
Projective	Open interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus.	Less vulnerable to social desirability.	The answer may be unrelated to attitudes of interest. Interpretation is more subjective.
Computerised	Speed of reaction/accuracy used to assess the strength of an attitude.	Quantitative measure.	Poor set shifting and slow reaction times may result in accurate results.

Thurstone scales:

A Thurstone scale, one of the measures of attitude, uses “agree or disagree” statements to measure the level of attitude towards a given statement (Richardson, 1960). The Thurstone scale is usually complex and time-consuming, so researchers and scientists prefer other scales to measure attitude (Richardson, 1960). The Thurstone scale is essentially categorized into three; the method of appearing intervals, the method of successive intervals, and the method of paired comparison. The method of equal-appearing intervals involves choosing items equally spaced.

Likert scales:

The Likert scale is widely used. The principle was developed in 1932 when individuals were asked to respond to questions regarding their attitudes (Joshi et al., 2015). Unlike the Thurstone scale, which has fixed answers, the Likert scale asks the degree to which an individual agrees to these questions. The variety of agreements includes; strongly agree, agree, do not know, disagree, and strongly disagree. Providing these options gives an individual the freedom to express their attitudes in a broad manner. Thus, the Likert scale gives the researcher a wider variety of knowing how a respondent thinks and attitudes towards a given topic.

Osgood semantic differential scales:

The Osgood semantic differential scale uses two bipolar adjectives to find an appropriate position for the respondent (Heise, 1969). For example, an adjective like warm or cold might be used to describe a feeling, and the respondent is made to select this to measure attitude. Where there is an adjective, the respondent is made to place a mark near the desirable adjective, thus giving the researcher a hint of the respondent’s attitude. These objectives can be assigned a range of one to seven, depending on the closeness with the desired adjective.

Attitude Change and Persuasive Communication

Persuasive communication is an important element when it comes to convincing an individual to act in the desired manner. Strong persuasive arguments always lead to a positive association and direct an attitude toward the desired direction of the message (Guyer et al., 2019). For example, suppose an individual had a negative attitude towards a statement or an opinion, depending on the persuasive nature of the researcher. In that case, an attitude can be got through positively speaking about the same statement or opinion. Persuasive communication is therefore categorized into weak and strong arguments, where an individual is likely to follow a given lead according to how the information will be portrayed.

In broader examples, speeches, posters, advertisements, and presentations are written with a strong persuasion to change the audience’s attitudes. The strength of an argument would make an audience desire to listen more and change an attitude toward a given subject (Guyer et al., 2019). In a political context, politicians usually use persuasive tones to make the crowd like them, and they would usually speak what the crowd would like to hear so that they can be loved. Siero & Doosje (1993) proposed a model to elaborate on the social judgment theory using various forms of attitude change. The experiment found that the message that produced the desired outcome, with the greatest persuasion, led to the greatest attitude change compared to messages with little persuasion.

The persuasiveness of a message is dependent on three things:

• Message – argument and/or emotional appeal.
• Source – credibility, trustworthiness, attractiveness and similarity to the receiver.
• Recipient – relevance, motivation and cognitive capacity to process the message.

Elaboration likelihood model: demonstrates that the more motivated a person is to process a message, then the more likely they are to focus on the arguments presented. Instead of being swayed by superficial cues such as the number and repetition of arguments (Payne, 2008).

Cognitive Consistency and Dissonance

Cognitive consistency describes how we carry out a given behaviour and value similarly. Cognitive consistency describes preference and congruence to belief, values, and behaviour so that any change would lead to a distorted normal outcome or expectation. These beliefs and attitudes cannot contradict for whatever reason (‌Gawronski & Brannon, 2019). Consistency will always be a priority when an individual likes something at a given time because they believe they are right in their judgment. Any incongruency or inconsistency usually leads to tension and a detrimental psychological state, so the individual must seek change in behaviour and attitude to find congruency and reduce tension. Cognitive in this state means thoughts and beliefs held by an individual, and any interference with this may lead to serious psychological consequences.

On the other hand, cognitive dissonance is when an individual holds two contradicting beliefs, values, and attitudes. Cognitive dissonance is when beliefs are incongruent, leading to mental discomfort (‌Gawronski & Brannon, 2019). Most individuals like being consistent with their beliefs, and any disturbance or turbulence within their minds is enough to cause provocation. According to the American Psychological Association, cognitive dissonance results in an unpleasant psychological state, and individuals in this state would strive to ensure they resume their previous consistency.

How do Attitudes Influence Behaviour?

Attitude and behaviour are related because one is a manifestation of the other. Focusing on a specific attitude or belief makes a person act that way. For example, if a person is focused on religious doctrines and believes this is the only way to be morally upright, their behaviour tends to follow them (Ajzen et al., 2018). Thus, actions are more consistent with behaviour because an individual expresses what they experience from the inside. Attitude ensures that a person exhibits cognitive consistency and avoids instances of mental breakdown due to guilt and peer pressure.

There are a number of different models and theories for how attitude influences behaviour:

Influence:	Description:
Intention-behaviour gap	Attitudes influence an individual’s intention to participate in behaviour, which consequently influences the likelihood the behaviour will occur. But intention does not always translate to actual behaviour.
Health belief model	Behaviour reflects a weighing-up of a person’s cognitions (health beliefs) about a particular illness and preventative behaviour. An individual understanding of risk tends to be overly optimistic.
Protection motivation theory	A discrepancy between behavioural intention, which is influenced by attitudes and actual behaviour.
Theory of planned behaviour	A person’s behavioural intention is dependent on attitudes, subjective norms and the perceived control someone has over their own behaviour.

References:

(1) Ajzen, I., Fishbein, M., Lohmann, S., & Albarracín, D. (2018). The influence of attitudes on behavior. The handbook of attitudes, 197-255.

(2) Conner M, Sparks P (2005). Theory of planned behaviour and health behaviour. In Predicting Health Behaviour. Open University Press.

‌(3) Gawronski, B., & Brannon, S. M. (2019). What is cognitive consistency, and why does it matter?

(4) Guyer, J. J., Briñol, P., Petty, R. E., & Horcajo, J. (2019). Nonverbal behavior of persuasive sources: A multiple process analysis. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 43(2), 203-231.

(5) Heise, D. R. (1969). Some methodological issues in semantic differential research. Psychological Bulletin, 72(6), 406.

(6) Joshi, A., Kale, S., Chandel, S., & Pal, D. K. (2015). Likert scale: Explored and explained. British journal of applied science & technology, 7(4), 396.

(7) Payne, C.R. (2008). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion: Implications for trial advocacy. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, 14(2). doi:10.1558/ijsll.2007.14.2.309.

(8) Richardson, C. E. (1960). Thurstone scale for measuring attitudes of college students toward physical fitness and exercise. Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 31(4), 638–643.

(9) Siero, F. W., & Doosje, B. J. (1993). Attitude change following persuasive communication: Integrating Social Judgment Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23(5), 541–554. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420230510