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Psychology of Marketing & Advertising (Subject) / Chapter 4: 1 Attitude Definition, Formation of Attitudes (Lesson)

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• What is an attitude? 1. Major determinant of our behavior – Attitudes towards products: predictors of buying decisions • We buy products we consider attractive or useful • We avoid buying products we consider unattractive or useless • “The single most important concept in social psychology” • Still some debate on what attitude is exactly!
• The concept of attitudes Agreement on three aspects of the definition 1. Attitudes are evaluative responses 2. They are directed towards some attitude object (= any aspect of the physical or social environment) 3. Derive from three classes of info: • Cognitive • Affective/emotional • Behavioral • Attitudes reflect the way we evaluate world around us our likes and dislikes  • Important distinction from other concepts : Attitudes always directed towards attitude objects – Different e.g. from mood 
• Attitudes derive from three classes of info – Cognitive information • Can be from ads or experience – Affective or emotional reactions • Music, warm or funny scenes in ads, etc. – Behavioral information • Self-perception theory • “I always drink Coca Cola, so I must like it!” 
• The most influential definition of attitudes “Attitude is a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” Eagly & Chaiken (1993) 
• Disagreement in definition Major point of disagreement:1. Is attitude a predisposition to evaluate things a certain way? 2.  Or is it the evaluative response itself?  Attitude = Predisposition expressed by three types of evaluative responses – Cognitive – Affective – Behavioral 
• Implicit and explicit attitudes 1. Explicit attitudes – Evaluations of which we are aware – Can be expressed in self-report measures 2. Implicit attitudes – Evaluations of which we are not aware – Influence reactions over which we have little / no control  Problem:  • We typically think of consistency between evaluative responses – We feel good about brands we hold positive beliefs about and should want to buy these • Implicit attitude research challenges this consistency idea – Sometimes what we say and do is different! 
• Methods of explicit attitudes measurement 1. Semantic differential scales • Labeled by adjectives of opposite meanings • E.g., good-bad; positive-negative; favorable-unfavorable 2. Likert scales • Agreement with statements • E.g., 1 – strongly disagree, 7 – strongly agree An overall index score can then be computed for both types of scales to assess overall attitude – Average scores of items 
• Methods of implicit attitudes measurement – Affective priming method – Implicit Association Test (IAT) 
• Affective priming method First: Individuals shown prime (picture / name of item) Then: Given positive or negative adjectives → Asked to decide as fast as possible if adjective is positive or negative Method: Prime activates automatically an evaluative response Time it takes (i.e. response latency) determines implicit attitude  Response will inhibit or facilitates answers – If evaluative response = negative, respond faster with negative adjectives, slower with positive adjectives
• Implicit Association Test (IAT) 1. Uses response latencies to infer implicit attitudes 2. Assesses strength of association between two concepts with positive and negative evaluations → Prejudice towards minority groups – Trial 1 • Press Z if word is positive or majority • Press M if word is negative or minority – Trial 2 • Press Z if word is negative or majority • Press M if word is positive or minority – Response latencies • If one’s attitude towards minorities is negative, response times will be shorter when minorities share the same key with negative words (Trial 1) than with positive words 
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• Implicit attitudes Mostly used to study prejudice – For socially sensitive issues: low association between explicit and implicit measures • Scores in racism scales usually uncorrelated with implicit measures – But implicit measures predict levels of nonverbal behavior (e.g., eye contact or touch)  Implications for consumer attitudes – For controversial... • ...products (e.g., drugs) • ...brands (e.g., brands associated with soccer hooliganism) • ...advertising executions (sexual appeals or fear appeals 
• Theory of dual attitudes Dual attitudes about the same attitude object • A negative attitude on a controlled, explicit level – E.g., fast food should be avoided • A positive attitude on an implicit level  – E.g., fast food is yummy! Depends on the cognitive capacity to retrieve explicit attitude and suppress implicit attitude 
• Are attitudes stable or context-dependent? Attitudes are often context-dependent 1. Traditional perspective:  “File-drawer model” – Attitudes as rather enduring dispositions as mental “files” in long-term memory that can be consulted for the evaluation of a given attitude object  2. “Attitudes-as-constructions perspective” – More recent perspective Attitudes as less stable, context-dependent and can fluctuate over time, depend on what people happen to be thinking at that very moment Individuals make judgments online based on info that comes to mind in a particular situation => Evidence for both views! Political attitudes persist for many years or even a lifetime Attitudes even for political candidates or partners can change when people question why they hold them 
• How can these findings be reconciled? 1. "File-drawer model” Attitudes remain stable over time, their expression only depends on the context 2. “Attitudes-as-constructions”Attitudes looks stable over time, because each time we draw on similar sources of info brands and ads remain relatively the same 3.“Continuum of attitude strength” For novel or irrelevant issues: no attitude formed yet For familiar or relevant issues: strong, well-defined attitudes 
• Implications for the definition of attitudes Challenges for the dispositional view of attitudes – Discrepancy between implicit and explicit – Context-dependence New definition that does not imply disposition – Attitudes are “the categorization of a stimulus object along an evaluative dimension” 
• How do we form attitudes? Overview • Attitude formation, not change Attitude object is novel and unfamiliar  Based on low effort cognitive processes Requires little elaboration • Attitudes can derive from: – Cognitively based evaluative responses – Emotion based evaluative responses – Behavior based evaluative responses 
• The formation of cognitively based evaluative responses Attitudes based on info gathered about attitude object 1. Direct or indirect experience test drive vs. friends’ recommendations 2. Heuristics • Brand-quality heuristic• Country of origin heuristic• Price-quality heuristic 3. Source expertise and trustworthiness  doctor, other consumers  
• Direct vs. indirect experience Attitudes based on direct (vs. indirect) experience: More Info Held with more confidence More stable over time More accessible in memory More predictive of future behavior ---> In other words, stronger attitudes 
• Heuristics Like stereotypes (beliefs about outgroup attributes) we use heuristics when product quality is ambiguous  1. Brand names  2. Country of origin  3. Price 
• Heuristic 1: Brand image 1. Brand image = Beliefs, feelings, & evaluations triggered by brand name → Strongly influenced by advertisements 2. Brand equity= Impact of brand name on people’s judgment of and behavior towards a product e.g. blind tasting
• Heuristics 2: Country of origin 1. Laws about the display of country of origin: cues about quality 2. Of particular importance for food: We feel the food is better if made by people from the place it originally comes from
• Heuristics 3: Price-quality heuristic – If it’s expensive, it’s good – If it’s inexpensive, it’s bad Ps asked to judge wine quality from price -> Subjective price-quality correlation much higher than actual correlation  Not just quality perceptions, also actual experience! The other way around: Discount leads to less satisfaction  When consumers infer quality from price: Information load Need for cognitive closure Desire to arrive at an opinion and avoid confusion and indecision 
• Attitude formation based on emotional experience 3 ways a stimulus can acquire positive valence 1. Mere exposure: Frequency of exposure to a stimulus 2. Classical conditioning: Association of a stimulus with positive / negative events 3. Affect-as-information: Affect evoked by the stimulus or the stimulus context as information about object 
• Emotional based attitudes: 1. Mere exposure 1. First demonstration of the effect –  Nonsense syllables as “Turkish words” –  IV: Presented 0 to 25 times –  DV: Guess how positive the meaning of the word is –  Result: Increasing frequency of exposure  more positive attitudes • Big meta-analysis of 200 studies – Stimulus doesn’t need to be recognized – Effect levels off after 10-20 exposures  2. interpersonal attraction  • Effect not only on attitudes, but also on behavior – IV: Advertising boards of candies in the corner of the photos (vs. not) – DV: Choose a sweet as “thank you” – Result: Preference for the candy advertised 
• 2. Classical & Evaluative conditioning • Good old classical conditioning – A stimulus incapable of eliciting a response (Conditioned Stimulus or CS) is paired with a stimulus that does elicit a response (Unconditioned Stimulus or UCS)  • Pavlov’s dog food + bell ringing famous example • Advertisers love this! – Pairing their products with things we like – Even if little relationship with the product advertised 
• Emotional-based attitudes l 3. Affect-as-information = a different way association of a product with nice things might increase liking 1. Individuals may infer attitude from present mood  I feel great, so this product must be great! Impact of weather on life satisfaction  Disappears when we attribute feelings to weather  2. Ease of argument generation affected attitude towards brand  One reason vs. ten reasons for or against There are many reasons to drive a BMW Implications: In-store music, free samples Context effects only really occur when feelings are relevant about the product – Hedonic vs. instrumental 
• Attitude formation based on behavioral information 1. Self-perception: People derive attitudes from past behavior (consistency)  Influence of past behavior on attitudes Increasing salience of past pro- (anti-) religious past behaviors increased positive (negative) attitudes towards being religious Only seems to occur for weaker attitudes → Suitable for novel or unfamiliar brands  2. Reinforcement: Verbal reinforcement on stated attitudes Harvard students asked about Harvard teaching philosophy For half, experimenter responded with positive cues when participants agreed with positive things and disagreed with negative ones
• Implications for marketing from experiences Marketing tools that promote direct experience • e.g., free samples, test drives, scratch-’n’-sniff cards, etc.  However, context can make a difference! The predictive validity of experience-based attitudes depends on the similarity between the context in which the experience was gained and the context in which the behavior is performed E.g., if initial goal is hedonic, but later goal is instrumental, the effect of direct experience disappears

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