Evaluative language,cognitive effort and attitude change

The present article deals with the effects of the use of evaluatively biased language on attitudes, and with the role of cognitive effort. We tested whether active information processing — formulating arguments on the basis of evaluatively biased language — was a necessary condition for attitude change. Results of the present study support the prediction that using evaluative language can infuence attitudes, but that these effects depend on the amount of cognitive effort.     

Involvement and response language effects in attitude scaling

An analytic procedure was developed for separating the effects of involvement from the number of response language categories the subject employs in judging a set of sentence stimuli. The procedure treats category usage as an independent variable and an aspect of the subject's response language. Category usage was shown to have significant influence on several attitudinal judgment processes: Informational complexity, mean judgment functions, and a successive intervals analysis testing Thurstone's assumption of the effect of involvement on equal category spacing. The decrement in scale responding typically associated with involvement is shown to depend on category usage operating either singly or in interaction with involvement. Some tentative conclusions about category usage as a response language variable are discussed.     

Social categorization and attitude change

Two experiments were carried out investigating the effect of categorization on attitude change. It was predicted that the division of a number of individuals into two subgroups (categorization), in such a way that initial attitudes correlate with subgroup membership, would lead to accentuation of attitudinal differences between subgroups. It was further predicted that an identical distribution of initial attitudes without superimposed categorization would lead to convergence of attitude positions. In experiment 1, the effect of a male-female classification on attitude change was studied. It was indeed found that subjects changed their attitudes in the direction opposite to the position of the outgroup (intergroup attitude differentiation), but only for groups who were initially more extreme than the comparison group. In the control condition (no categorization), conformity effects were observed. In experiment 2, an antagonistic intergroup setting was induced. In this situation, strong intergroup attitude differentiation effects were observed, which were not affected by the magnitude of the initial intergroup discrepancy. In the control condition, subjects did not show conformity to the overall group mean, but maintained their initial noncentral attitude position.     

Aging and attitude change.

Social psychologists have proposed a variety of different models to account for people's relative openness to attitude change through the life cycle. Two of the most important models are the impressionable years model, which suggests an especially great openness to change among the young, and the lifelong openness model, which suggests that age is unrelated to openness to attitude change. Two studies were conducted to examine the openness of people of varying ages to attitude change. In both studies, the influence of personal experiences with government agencies on attitudes toward government was examined. The attitudes of older people changed as much or more in response to their personal experiences as did those of younger people. These results support the lifelong openness model of attitude change.     

Perceptions of entitativity and attitude change

The current work explored the properties of groups that lead them to be persuasive and the processes through which such persuasion occurs. Because more entitative groups induce greater levels of information processing, their arguments should receive greater elaboration, leading to persuasion when members of groups present strong (vs. weak) counter attitudinal arguments. Experiment 1 explored these hypotheses by examining if idiosyncratic perceptions of group entitativity and manipulations of argument strength affect attitude change and argument elaboration. Experiment 2 experimentally manipulated group entitativity and argument strength independently to examine the causal relationship between entitativity, attitude change, and argument elaboration. In both experiments, it was found that groups greater in entitativity were more persuasive when presenting strong (vs. weak) arguments and induced greater argument elaboration. Implications for our understanding of entitativity, persuasion, and information processing about social groups are discussed.     

Internalization of conflict and attitude change

In a 2 × 2 × 2 design, eighty smokers were exposed to an anti-smoking appeal attributed either to an expert source (superior status) or a minority source (inferior status). Subjects were either allowed or not to smoke during the experiment. In addition subjects had to memorize part of the appeal and a recall task either followed after reading the appeal (completed task) or not (uncompleted task). The results show that the expert source produces more attitude change than the minority when the tension induced by the source is weakened (either by the opportunity to smoke or task completion). In contrast the minority has more impact when subjects are not able to smoke or when the task is not completed, which is to say when the conflict has been internalized. An explanation of these effects is offered in terms of the more defensive forms of resistance involved with respect to sources of superior status compared to more assertive forms with respect to minorities.     

Presidential debates and change in students' attitude

The effects of debates on influencing potential voters' attitudes were assessed in a group of 45 undergraduates who watched the third presidential debate of election year 2000 between candidates Bush and Gore. A repeated measures t test indicated a significant change in immediate ratings of attitude from pretest to posttest, with Gore being rated higher at posttest.     

Effects of displayed emotion on attitude and impression formation in visual speech-reading

In two experiments on visual speech-reading, with a total of 132 normal-hearing participants, the effects of displayed emotion and task specificity on speech-reading performance, on attitude toward the task and on person impression were explored, as well as associations between speech-reading performance, attitude, and person impression. The results show that displayed emotion increased speech-reading performance and attitude ratings, and that the actor was perceived as more extraverted both when displaying emotions, and when his speech was high in specificity The main conclusion was that displayed emotion enhances speech-reading performance by providing information that is useful to the speech-reader.     

Aging and susceptibility to attitude change

Two hypotheses about the relation between age and susceptibility to attitude change were tested. The impressionable years hypothesis proposes that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood and that susceptibility drops precipitously immediately thereafter and remains low throughout the rest of the life cycle. The increasing persistence hypothesis proposes that people become gradually more resistant to change throughout their lives. Structural equation models were applied to data from the 1956-1960, 1972-1976, and 1980 National Election Panel Studies in order to estimate the stability of political attitudes and unreliability in measures of them. The results support the impressionable years hypothesis and disconfirm the increasing persistence hypothesis. A decrease in the over-time consistency of attitude reports among 66- to 83-year-olds was found to be due to increased random measurement error in their reports, not to increased attitude change.     

Vindication of the Humpty Dumpty attitude towards language

Effective objective (sachlich) verbal communication is dependent upon the use of linguistic locutions which are: a) suitable for some special purposes, b) clear (i.e., having a satsifactorily high degree of subsumability), and c) in accordance with some ordinary (i.e., frequently occurring) language usages. Only in so far as point c is concerned is a study of actual language usage of (indirect) value to philosophers. And this holds true regardless of whether one's underlying assumption tends towards the view: 1) that ordinary language is perfect (Oxford), or: 2) that ordinary language is a mess (Oslo). In any case, one needs to know about the most ordinary usages to prevent unnecessarily drastic deviations from them. Drastic deviations may mislead the sender, as well as the receiver, create communicational disturbances, misunderstandings, and confusion (vide: Strawson's use of “presupposition"). However, considerations of a) suitability for special purposes, and b) clarity (subsumability) will most often, if not always, prevent a communicator from flatly adopting any one of the existing language usages of a given important linguistic locution. He would feel the need for: “explications,”; “rational reconstructions”; or conceptual alterations of one kind or another. In fact, there are instances where the sender finds it most advantageous to disregard completely ordinary language (vide: Einstein's use of “simultaneity"): He “makes words mean what he wants them to mean.”; This is the Humpty Dumpty sender attitude towards language. The corresponding receiver attitude manifests itself as awareness of and tolerance for language ambiguities.     

Language organization and language change in bilinguals

Two experimental studies with bilingual speakers examined the influence of (I) semantic organization across language, (2) input language change and (3) output language change on speech encoding during a sentence completion task. The first study used fluent Welsh-English bilinguals while the second used fluent French-English bilinguals; all subjects were at school in the U.K. A model proposed how subjects with different degree of overlap in bilingual semantic organization achieved functional separation of the two languages. Predictions derived from this were tested and were substantially confirmed for both groups of bilinguals. It was concluded that subjects have different degrees of overlap in semantic organization of their two languages and that this influences speech encoding where input or output language changes are present.     

Virtual experiments in megastudies: A case study of language and emotion

A recent dramatic increase in the number and scope of chronometric and norming lexical megastudies offers the ability to conduct virtual experiments—that is, to draw samples of items with properties that vary in critical linguistic dimensions. This paper introduces a bootstrapping approach, which enables testing of research hypotheses against a range of samples selected in a uniform, principled manner and evaluates how likely a theoretically motivated pattern is in a broad distribution of possible outcome patterns. We apply this approach to conflicting theoretical and empirical accounts of the relationship between the psychological valence (positivity) of a word and its speed of recognition. To this end, we conduct three sets of multiple virtual experiments with a factorial and a regression design, drawing data from two lexical decision megastudies. We discuss the influence that criteria for stimuli selection, statistical power, collinearity, and the choice of dataset have on the efficacy and outcomes of the bootstrapping procedure.     

Distraction and attitude change: A resolution

Previous studies have shown that distraction may either increase or decrease attitude change. The present experiment, designed to reconcile earlier findings, was based on the hypothesis that distraction should interfere with message reception but also increase yielding to the message. Distraction should thus increase attitude change to a simple message (one which is easily understood but not very convincing), but decrease attitude change to a complex message (one which is difficult to understand but convicing if understood). Subjects beard messages on two topics, sometimes while distracted by a tape recording of music and sometimes not. Message complexity was successfully manipulated for one of the topics. The results support a model of attitude change which considers the effects of independent variables on both reception and yielding.