ARE ATTITUDES INTERNALLY CONSISTENT?

As we have seen, expectations, symbols, and ideology influence attitudes and persua - sion. This raises a new question, one filled with intriguing dimensions. Given that attitudes are complex macromolecules with so many different components, are they in harmony or in disarray? Are attitudes at peace or ready to ignite, due to the combustible combination of cognitions, affect, and behavior? In other words, when we have an attitude toward an issue, are we all of one mind, consistent in our thoughts and feelings, or are we divided and ambivalent? These are questions that many of us have probably asked in one way or another. We have heard people say, “Intellectually, I agree, but emotionally I don’t,” or “You’re a hypocrite; you say one thing and do another.”

Intra-Attitudinal Consistency

It is pleasant when we are all of one mind on an issue—when our general attitude is in sync with specific beliefs about the topic or has the same “electrical charge” as our feelings. However, life does not always grant us this pleasure. We are ambivalent about many issues. Ambivalence occurs when we feel both positively and negatively about a person or issue (Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin, 1995). Ambivalence is characterized by uncertainty or conflict among attitude elements.

One type of ambivalence occurs when we hold seemingly incompatible beliefs. Many people evaluate their own doctor positively, but view the health system negatively. They believe their family is healthy, but American families are in trouble. And they frequently have kind things to say about their own representative to Congress, but disparage double-talking Washington politicians (Perloff, 1996). One source for this discrepancy

is the mass media, which typically focus on the seamy side of political life. An effect is an ambivalence about the issue in question.

Perhaps the most common type of ambivalence is the head-versus-heart variety—our cognitions take us one way, but our feelings pull us somewhere else. Expectancy–value theory deals with this when it stipulates that people can have strong beliefs about two or more outcomes, but evaluate the outcomes very differently. For example, a student may believe that her professor taught her a lot about physiology, but at the same time kept her waiting in his office. She evaluates knowledge gain positively, but time misspent negatively. A more dramatic example involves the ambivalent attitudes many young women harbor toward safer sex. For example, many women (correctly) believe that using condoms can prevent AIDS, and they evaluate AIDS prevention positively. Some also believe that requesting condoms will upset their boyfriends, and worry about this. “My boyfriend hates them,” one young woman said, adding, “Frankly, I can’t blame him. For me it certainly puts a crimp on what I would like to do to satisfy him” (Perloff, 2001, p. 13). Persuaders face a challenge in cases like this one. To change this woman’s attitude toward safer sex, they must help her rethink her fear of offending her boyfriend. Ambivalence can frequently be found among young women who love the power and responsibility that come with high-powered jobs, yet also worry that their commitment to a career will compromise their chances of raising a family when they reach their 30s. Writer Peggy Orenstein (2000) documented this, interviewing scores of women across the country, asking them to share their feelings about careers, relationships, and future plans to become a mom and raise a family. Some of the 20-something women Orenstein interviewed worried that “having a child ‘too soon’ would be a disaster: it would cut short their quest for identity and destroy their career prospects” (pp. 33–34). At the same time, these women felt pressure not to have kids too late, noting that women have more difficulty conceiving a child when they reach their late 30s. On the other side of the career track, educated women who “mommy-tracked” their aspirations to raise families also experienced mixed feelings. These women found enormous gratification in being a mom, yet at the same time lamented, as one woman put it, that “I don’t really have a career and I feel crummy about that” (p. 224). “Ambivalence may be the only sane response to motherhood at this juncture in history, to the schism it creates in women’s lives,” Orenstein concluded (p. 141).

Ambivalence is also a reasonable response to the complex issues women face in another arena: abortion. In contrast to the us-versus-them and pro-life versus pro-choice polarities that characterize the media debate, in reality, most women find themselves on shakier ground, balancing moral values against practical realities, “weighing religious, ethical, practical, sentimental and financial imperatives that [are] often in conflict” (Leland, 2005, p. 29). Women who learn that a child has a strong chance of

having Down syndrome must balance their fear of raising a child with this condition against a religious belief in the sanctity of life. Poor women who received abortions at an Arkansas medical clinic readily admitted their ambivalence and pain. “I know it’s against God,” said Tammy, who works in a coffee shop in Tennessee:

But you have three kids, you want to raise them good. My friends and sister-in-law say, “You care about money problems but don’t care about what God will do,” I believe it’s wrong. I pray to God to forgive me. This will be the last one. Never, never again.

(Leland, 2005, p. 29)

Balancing Things Out

Ambivalence drives some people berserk. They will do anything to resolve it. More generally, psychologists argue that individuals dislike inconsistency among cognitive elements and are motivated to reconfigure things mentally so as to achieve a harmonious state of mind. Fritz Heider (1958) proposed an algebraic model of attitudes, called balance theory. Heider’s model involves a triad of relationships: a person or perceiver (P), another person (O), and an issue (X). Heider argued that people prefer a balanced relationship among P, O, and X.

Borrowing from chemistry, Heider suggested that cognitive elements have a positive or negative valence (or charge). A positive relationship, in which P likes O or X, is symbolized with a plus sign. A negative relationship, in which P dislikes O or X, is assigned a minus sign. A visual thinker, Heider diagrammed his model with a series of triangles. Each of the three relationships (P,O; P,X; and O,X) is assigned a plus or minus. Attitudes are in harmony when the signs multiplied together yield a plus. If you remember your elementary arithmetic, you recall that a plus – a plus is a plus, a minus – a minus is a plus, and a plus – a minus yields a minus. Let’s see how this works in real life to understand how people cope with inconsistency among attitudinal elements. Consider for a moment the contemporary quandary of an individual—let’s call him Sam—who believes in evolution. A religious friend, Samantha, a devotee of intelligent design, believes God created human beings in their present form. She questions the validity of Darwinian evolution. Sam’s belief in evolution is symbolized by a + in the model. Sam’s liking of Samantha is conveyed by a +. Samantha’s disagreement with evolution is symbolized by a –. Multiplying the three terms, one gets a minus, suggesting that Sam’s attitude is imbalanced, or not entirely consistent (Figure 3.6a). Presumably, Sam would find the inconsistency uncomfortable and would feel impelled to restore mental harmony. Balance theory says that he has several options. He could change his attitude toward evolution and question the notion that human beings evolved

(a) + + – (b) – + – (c) + – – Sam Sam Sam Samantha Samantha Samantha

Cognitively imbalanced triad

Cognitively balanced triad

Cognitively balanced triad

Darwinian evolution Darwinian evolution Darwinian evolution

■ Figure 3.6 Balance Theory Analysis of Sam’s Attitudes toward Darwinian Evolution and Those of a Friend Who Does Not Believe in Evolution (“+” Indicates Positive Sentiments; “–” Shows Negative Ones)

from earlier species of animals (Figure 3.6b). Or he could alter his attitude toward Samantha, deciding that he can’t be friendly with someone who harbors such opinions, perhaps going so far as to unfriend her on Facebook (Figure 3.6c).

Balance theory helps us understand many situations in which people face cognitive inconsistency. For example, one anti-abortion activist told a researcher that she could not be a friend with somebody who disagreed with her on abortion (Granberg, 1993). Unfortunately, balance theory does not describe many subtleties in people’s judgments. It also fails to describe those situations in which people manage to like people with whom they disagree (Milburn, 1991). Thus, we need another approach to explain how people grapple with inconsistency. A time-honored model proposed by Robert P. Abelson (1959) is more helpful. Abelson suggested that people resolve cognitive conflict in four ways: (a) denial, (b) bolstering, (c) differentiation, and (d) transcendence, or what could also be called integration.

Consider how this could work in the earlier example:

Denial. Sam could try to forget about the fact that he and Samantha disagree about evolution.

Bolstering. Sam could add mental elements to his attitude, noting that there is strong empirical support for the idea of natural selection and no scientific challenge to the notion that human beings evolved from earlier species of animals. In this way, he might feel more strongly about the belief, thereby reducing cognitive imbalance. Differentiation. He might differentiate his liking of Samantha from her disbelief in

evolution. In effect, Sam could agree to disagree with Samantha, noting they have been long-time friends and agree about other issues.

Integration. Sam could try to integrate his views with those of Samantha in a way that suggests both can peacefully coexist. He could acknowledge that there is no contradiction between his belief in evolution and her belief in God. Integrating his beliefs with hers, he could conclude that science explains how human beings evolve, while religion explains why humans developed in the first place. By combining the views in a way that allows him to see good in both perspectives, he might reconcile his belief in evolution with Samantha’s theist principles.

As this example suggests, people regularly struggle with inconsistencies among different elements of their attitudes. Mental inconsistencies are part of life. Balance theory and the modification discussed above suggest that people try to find ways to reduce cognitive imbalance. They do not always succeed. Finding ambiguity uncomfort- able, many people prefer to deny or derogate a position that conflicts with an aspect of an attitude. On the other hand, there are times when the strain to achieve cognitive

balance can produce changes in attitude. A good example involves attitudes toward same-sex marriage.

Although attitudes have changed vastly in recent years, some Americans continue to be affectively uncomfortable with gay marriage. Yet they care deeply for their gay close friends and family members. These gay individuals favorably evaluate same-sex marriage. In balance theory terms, we have an unbalanced triad. Washington State representative Maureen Walsh faced just this quandary. She supported domestic partnerships for gay couples, but drew a line when it came to same-sex marriage. Then she began thinking about her 26-year-old daughter, who had recently announced she was gay. “In some selfish way I did think what an affront to my beautiful daughter, who deserves something everybody else has in this country,” she said. She then explained her change in attitude by stating, “It’s selfishness, but it’s motivated by love. And I’d rather err on the side of love, wouldn’t you?” (Cooper & Peters, 2012, p. A16). Interesting, isn’t it? Walsh’s need to restore cognitive balance among her attitude toward same-sex marriage, her daughter’s view, and her love of her daughter led to a change of heart. The affective aspect of her attitude, her feelings about her daughter, propelled her to cognitively reevaluate her beliefs, leading her to resolve that her daughter deserved the rights others had in the United States. In the transcendent value of love she found a way to unify head and heart.

CONCLUSIONS

Attitudes—emotional, evaluative, frequently formed at a young age—are a core dimension of persuasion. Attitudes, after all, are the entities that communicators seek to shape, reinforce, mold, and change. An attitude is defined as a learned, global evaluation of an object (person, place, or issue) that influences thought and action. Values underlie or shape attitudes. Values are guiding principles in an individual’s life. They include universal values, like freedom, and self-enhancing values, such as achievement. Beliefs, defined as cognitions about the world, in turn are viewed as components of attitudes. People cling tenaciously to beliefs, sometimes assuming their beliefs are facts. (They’re not.) There are two types of beliefs: descriptive beliefs, the perceptions of the world that people carry in their heads, and prescriptive beliefs, or mental prescriptions of what should or ought to happen in life.

One of the interesting questions about attitudes concerns their structure or organization. Expectancy–value theory says that attitudes are composed of expectations (beliefs) and evaluations of these beliefs. It emphasizes the role that salient, or psychologically relevant, beliefs play in shaping attitudes. Expectancy–value theory helps break down

the macro-concept of attitude into component parts, yielding rich information about the human mind. The symbolic attitude approach argues that symbolic predispositions, like prejudice and deep-seated values, lie at the heart of attitudes. It calls attention to the many affective attributes that are associated with the attitude object. An ideological perspective contends that attitudes are organized around ideological principles, like liberalism–conservatism.

Because people are complex, attitudes are not always internally consistent. Individuals frequently experience ambivalence, feeling both positively and negatively about a person or issue. Preferring harmony to discord, people strive to reduce inconsistency among cognitive elements. Balance theory and other cognitive consistency models describe ways that individuals can restore mental harmony. We don’t always succeed in this endeavor, and inconsistency is inevitably a fact of life.

Persuaders can change attitudes by gaining insights into their complex structure. They can focus on changing beliefs, altering the symbolic affect associated with beliefs, or target messages at bedrock moral principles. They can also encourage individuals to alter elements of their attitudes so as to gain cognitive harmony. In some cases, these persuasion attempts can fail, but in other instances, guided by a deft persuader who combines the science and art of persuasion, the appeals can prove stunningly successful.

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