Attitudes!

Today’s class discussion was all about attitudes, which is a long lasting reaction that can be either positive or negative, towards people, objects or ideas (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983) According to Cacioppo and colleagues in 1997, an attitude cannot by defined as solely positive or solely negative because the strength of these directions can vary, allowing us to have four possible attitude reactions: 1) Positive attitudes, 2) Negative attitudes, 3) Indifference or apathy, or 4) Dual attitudes or those attitudes which are strong but have multiple sides. Even just after we had class today, I was listening to the radio on my drive home, and the same ad I hear every day multiple times came on about that “raspberry ketone” weight loss supplement. My immediate first though was “Oh no not again with this crazy wives tail commercial about some miracle pill that magically increases you body’s ability to burn fat” but after giving the commercial a full listen, I began to change my first reaction from “no way I would ever believe this works” to “well if Dr. Oz said it works, and there are statistics showing that it does what it says it is supposed to, maybe it isn’t totally bogus and does have some effects on weight loss”. Without realizing it all of these times I have heard that ad, I have been developing and maintaining an  dual attitude reaction towards the pills since I was showing strong emotion and opinion towards the pills, but neither completely negative or completely positive. As I continued my drive home, I had not been influenced to by the weight loss pill commercial, but I was influenced to make a quick stop at home to change and then go to the gym to try achieve weight loss and get in better shape. Although it is safe to say hearing about weight loss on the radio had an influence on my desire to go work out, my attitudes about the weight loss pills and general weight loss are not the only reason why I decided to go to the gym.

 According to Ajzen’s 1991 theory of planned behavior, our attitudes paired with subjective norms and how much control we believe we have over a behavior influences our intentions, which then guide our behaviors. To better see the underlying reasons for my decision to go to the gym to work out, I first must understand my attitudes towards that behavior, which are positive because going to the gym is known to attribute to weight loss, and positive self-esteem. I also must understand the aspect of subjective norms about going to the gym, which for most males and females is mostly positive since it attributes to a healthy and fit lifestyle. Lastly, I must understand the control I have over the behavior which I feel is a large amount of control since I enjoy going to the gym, but do not need to go every single day to feel okay. The combination of these three areas determines my intention, or how likely I am to do participate in the behavior, which was highly likely since I made the end decision of going to the gym. In the end, we can easily state that Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior is a generally normative concept, and that people do use all of the information they have available to them to decide whether to act in a certain behavior or not.

Until Next Blog,

Your Social Psychista

Word Count: 574

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1983). The role of bodily responses in attitude measurement and change. In J. Cacioppo & R. Petty (Eds.) Social Psychophysiology: A sourcebook (pp. 51-101). New York: Guilford.

Cacioppo, J, T., Gardner, W, L., & Berntson, G. G. (1997). Beyond bipolar conceptualizations and measures: The case of attitudes and evaluation space. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 3-25.

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211.