Attitudes

Priority labels: Must know = cold; Know the logic = mechanism not names; Passage-level = recognize, don't memorize; Optional = skippable.

What Is an Attitude?

Must know

An attitude is a learned, relatively stable evaluation of a person, object, idea, or situation. The key word is evaluation — attitudes have a direction (positive/negative) and an intensity. They act as a bridge between inner mental states and outward behavior. The MCAT tests how attitudes form, when they predict behavior, and what happens when the two fall out of sync.

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Components of Attitudes: The ABC Model

Must know

Any attitude has three components (ABC):

• Affective — the feeling: your emotional, often immediate reaction (uneasiness at a spider). Affective responses can form via classical conditioning or mere exposure (Zajonc's mere exposure effect: repeated encounters increase liking, even without conscious awareness).
• Behavioral — the action tendency: how you're inclined to behave. This is behavioral intention/tendency, not necessarily actual behavior.
• Cognitive — the belief: thoughts and perceptions ("spiders can be venomous"), accurate or not.

In a consistent attitude all three align (believe it's dangerous, feel afraid, avoid it). Inconsistency among components generates the tension that drives attitude change. A passage may name one component and ask you to identify it, or present conflicting components.

Quick check: A person believes exercise is healthy (cognitive), enjoys a good workout (affective), but almost never goes to the gym (behavioral). Which components are consistent, which is inconsistent?

Answer: Cognitive and affective are consistent (both favor exercise); behavioral is inconsistent — setting the stage for cognitive dissonance.

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Attitude Formation

Know the logic

Three pathways:

• Classical conditioning: a neutral stimulus is paired repeatedly with one that already triggers a response (a candidate's image paired with upbeat music). Most directly shapes the affective component.
• Operant conditioning: an attitude that is reinforced (praised, rewarded) strengthens.
• Observational/social learning (Bandura): we form attitudes by watching models we respect or identify with.

Quick check: A teenager hears her parents express disapproval every time a music genre plays, and begins to feel discomfort hearing it. Which conditioning explains this?

Answer: Classical conditioning — the music (neutral) was paired with the parents' negative reactions, so she learned to associate it with negativity.

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The Link Between Attitudes and Behavior

Knowing an attitude does NOT perfectly predict behavior. The MCAT tests when it does.

Factors That Strengthen the Attitude–Behavior Link

Must know

Attitudes predict behavior best when they are:

• Strong (deeply held, from personal experience and self-relevance) — vs. weak/ambivalent.
• Specific — a specific attitude (toward recycling) predicts a specific behavior better than a general one (toward "the environment") does.
• Accessible — quickly/automatically called to mind, so they guide behavior.

Optional

Also: the principle of aggregation (an attitude predicts the overall pattern of behavior across many occasions far better than any single act), plus social pressure and deliberation can override or modulate attitudes.

Theory of Reasoned Action / Theory of Planned Behavior

Must know

Behavioral intention is the best immediate predictor of behavior.

• Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen): intention is shaped by (1) attitude toward the behavior and (2) subjective norms (what important others think you should do).
• Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen): adds (3) perceived behavioral control (belief in your ability to perform the behavior — akin to self-efficacy). Strong intentions don't produce behavior if you feel unable to act.

So: attitude toward behavior + subjective norms + perceived behavioral control → intention → behavior.

Quick check: A patient believes daily medication is beneficial (attitude), their doctor insists (subjective norm), but they can't remember to take it on time (low perceived behavioral control). Per the Theory of Planned Behavior, what is the key barrier?

Answer: Low perceived behavioral control — it undermines intention and ultimately the behavior, even with positive attitude and social pressure.

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Processes by Which Behavior Influences Attitudes

The counterintuitive direction the MCAT loves: sometimes behavior comes first and the attitude adjusts to match.

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

Must know

Foot-in-the-door (Freedman & Fraser): agreeing to a small request makes you more likely to agree to a later large one. Mechanism: behaving consistently with a value updates your self-concept, so you comply with future consistent requests. The attitude follows the behavior.

Passage-level

Related compliance techniques: door-in-the-face (Cialdini) starts with a large request that's refused, then a smaller "concession" — works via the reciprocity norm. Low-ball gains commitment to a deal, then reveals hidden costs; the prior commitment keeps the person in. Distinguish: foot-in-the-door escalates; door-in-the-face starts high and retreats.

Role-Playing Effects

Must know

Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (1971): participants randomly assigned as "guards" or "prisoners"; guards quickly adopted genuinely authoritarian attitudes they didn't start with. Adopting a role reshapes attitudes — the behavior (acting as a guard) produced the attitude.

Self-Perception Theory

Know the logic

Bem's self-perception theory: when internal attitudes are weak or ambiguous, people infer their attitudes by observing their own behavior ("I volunteered — I must care about this"). The attitude is constructed after the fact. It applies best when there's no strong prior attitude (so no real dissonance).

Quick check: Someone writes a persuasive essay on a position they feel neutral about, then reports slightly favoring it. Bem would explain this how?

Answer: Self-perception theory — with a weak (neutral) initial attitude, the person infers their belief from their own behavior; there was no strong prior attitude to create dissonance.

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Processes by Which Attitudes Influence Behavior

The intuitive direction: how preexisting attitudes shape what we do.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Must know

Petty & Cacioppo's ELM describes two routes of persuasion:

• Central route: careful evaluation of the message content (arguments, evidence). Requires motivation and ability. Produces durable attitude change that resists counter-persuasion and strongly predicts behavior.
• Peripheral route: reliance on surface cues/heuristics (speaker attractiveness, celebrity, number of arguments, mood). Produces temporary, weakly predictive change.

High-involvement audiences process centrally; distracted/uninvolved audiences process peripherally.

Implicit Attitudes

Passage-level

Implicit attitudes (unconscious evaluations, e.g. measured by the IAT) can influence behavior even when they conflict with — and the person is unaware they differ from — explicit attitudes. (IAT scoring mechanics are out of scope.)

Quick check: A drug company sends a celebrity (not a scientist) to give a brief talk so doctors will prescribe a new drug. Which route is targeted, and would the change strongly predict prescribing?

Answer: The peripheral route (celebrity cue, not argument quality). Peripheral change is weak and less durable, so it would not strongly predict a deliberate decision like prescribing.

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Must know

Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory (1957): holding two or more cognitions (beliefs, attitudes, awareness of behavior) that are psychologically inconsistent produces aversive tension, which motivates the person to reduce the inconsistency. ("I smoke" + "smoking causes cancer" is dissonant for someone who values health.)

Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)

Must know

The key study. Participants did a boring task, then were paid $1 or $20 to tell the next person it was interesting (a lie). The $1 group later rated the task as more enjoyable. Why: the $20 group had sufficient external justification ("I did it for the money"), so no attitude change was needed; the $1 group had insufficient justification, so they reduced dissonance by changing their actual attitude. This is induced compliance.

Ways to Reduce Dissonance

Know the logic

Change the attitude (to match behavior), change the behavior (to match the attitude), add new cognitions to rationalize, or reduce the importance of a conflicting cognition.

Effort Justification

Must know

Effort justification: working hard for something makes us value it more (admitting it was mediocre creates dissonance — "I went through all that for this?"). Explains loyalty produced by harsh initiations.

Post-Decision Dissonance

Know the logic

After a hard choice between two attractive options, people spread the alternatives — emphasizing the chosen option's positives and the rejected option's negatives — until the choice feels obviously right.

Cognitive Dissonance vs. Self-Perception Theory

Must know

Both say behavior can change attitudes. The distinction: dissonance requires conflict (a strong prior attitude clashes with behavior → tension); self-perception requires ambiguity (no strong prior attitude → infer from behavior, no tension).

Quick check: A medical student who believes physicians must always put patients first is told to discharge a patient earlier than she thinks is safe. She complies, then finds herself thinking the patient was probably ready. Which mechanism?

Answer: Cognitive dissonance — a strong prior attitude clashed with her behavior, so she changed the attitude to reduce tension. The strong, clear prior attitude makes self-perception less applicable.

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Common Confusions & Tricks

Foot-in-the-door vs. door-in-the-face: Foot-in-the-door starts small and escalates (works via self-concept/commitment). Door-in-the-face starts huge and retreats (works via reciprocity).

Dissonance vs. self-perception — the "tension" test: discomfort/conflict driving the change → cognitive dissonance. Neutrally inferring an attitude from one's own behavior (no conflict) → self-perception.

The $1/$20 result is counterintuitive: the less you pay someone for counter-attitudinal behavior, the more their attitude changes. Less external justification = more internal change. Small incentive producing big attitude change → dissonance / insufficient justification.

Theory of Reasoned Action vs. Theory of Planned Behavior: the Theory of Planned Behavior adds perceived behavioral control. Mention of self-efficacy or ability to perform → Theory of Planned Behavior.

Central route = lasting; peripheral route = temporary: more persuasion isn't always better — peripheral change is weaker and poorly predicts behavior.

Cognitive vs. affective — "I think" vs. "I feel": evaluative thoughts = cognitive; emotions/gut reactions = affective; behavioral intentions/patterns = behavioral.

Effort justification is a type of cognitive dissonance, not a separate concept.

Zimbardo is primarily role-playing effects here, but also appears under conformity, deindividuation, and obedience — know which frame the passage uses.

The mere exposure effect does NOT require conscious awareness (even subliminal exposure increases liking).

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Key Theories & Terms

Term / Name	What It Means / Who
Attitude	A learned, relatively stable positive or negative evaluation of a person, object, idea, or situation
ABC Model	Three components of attitudes: Affective (feeling), Behavioral (action tendency), Cognitive (belief)
Mere Exposure Effect	Robert Zajonc; repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking, even without conscious awareness
Classical Conditioning (of attitudes)	Pairing a neutral stimulus with an emotionally charged one shapes the affective component of attitudes
Theory of Reasoned Action	Fishbein & Ajzen; behavioral intention is predicted by attitude toward the behavior + subjective norms
Theory of Planned Behavior	Ajzen; extends TRA by adding perceived behavioral control (self-efficacy) as a third predictor of intention
Foot-in-the-Door	Freedman & Fraser (1966); compliance with a small request increases compliance with a later large one; works via self-concept/commitment
Door-in-the-Face	Cialdini; a large request is refused, making a subsequent smaller request more likely to be accepted; works via reciprocity
Low-Ball Technique	Cialdini; gain commitment to a deal, then reveal additional costs; works via commitment consistency
Role-Playing Effects	Zimbardo / Stanford Prison Experiment (1971); adopting and enacting a role reshapes attitudes to match that role
Self-Perception Theory	Daryl Bem; when prior attitudes are weak or ambiguous, people infer their attitudes from observing their own behavior
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)	Petty & Cacioppo; central route (careful argument evaluation, durable attitude change) vs. peripheral route (heuristic cues, weak/temporary change)
Implicit Association Test (IAT)	A measure of implicit (unconscious) attitudes, which can influence behavior independently of explicit attitudes
Principle of aggregation	An attitude predicts the overall pattern of behavior across many occasions better than it predicts any single act
Cognitive Dissonance Theory	Leon Festinger (1957); holding psychologically inconsistent cognitions produces aversive tension that motivates attitude or behavior change
Induced Compliance	Festinger & Carlsmith (1959); $1 vs. $20 study; minimal external justification for counter-attitudinal behavior produces the greatest attitude change
Effort Justification	A form of dissonance reduction; suffering for an outcome leads to inflated valuation of that outcome
Post-Decision Dissonance	Dissonance arising after choosing between two good options; reduced by "spreading alternatives" (exaggerating the chosen option's merits)
Spreading of Alternatives	The post-decision cognitive process of amplifying perceived differences between chosen and unchosen options to reduce dissonance
Insufficient Justification	The condition under which cognitive dissonance produces attitude change: when external reasons for counter-attitudinal behavior are too small to fully explain the behavior