The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change
Student Resources
Chapter 11: An Eye to the Future
1. Regarding the role of behavior on attitudes, which statement is NOT correct?
- The effect of behavior on attitudes is weak because habits’ prediction of behavior is dependent on relevant attitudes and the thoughts and emotions they subsume
- The effect of behavior on attitudes is strong because habits can predict behavior. independently of relevant attitudes and the thoughts and emotions they subsume.
- The effect of behavior on attitudes is strong because once a habit is in place, it can take a life of its own, often with little thought and emotion.
- The effect of behavior on attitudes is strong habits are notoriously hard to break.
Answer: A
2. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
- Reciprocal influences among cognitive, affective, and behavioral information impact the way in which each type of information is processed.
- The effects of behavioral and affective content may depend on when they are processed and the behavior they are predicting.
- Attitude structure could subsume conflict between conscious and nonconscious levels and between different types of attitude content.
- There are no links between attitude function and attitude content.
Answer: D
3. Evaluative-cognitive inconsistency ______.
- does not affect attitude strength
- does not moderate the impact of attitudes on judgments and behavior
- is the amount of inconsistency between people’s overall attitude and the evaluations implied by their beliefs about the attitude object
- has the same effect on attitudes as evaluative-affective and evaluative-behavioral inconsistency
Answer: C
4. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
- Attitudes that serve different value-expressive or ego-defensive functions is less likely to contain emotional content than attitudes serving other functions.
- Ambivalent attitudes serve unique attitude functions and not simply less of a knowledge function.
- The positive and negative dimensions of attitudes may serve different functions.
- Interventions that change attitudes might also shape the content, structure, and function of the attitudes.
Answer: A
5. Which of the following subdisciplines in psychology may best help the development of theories of attitude function, according to your text?
- clinical psychology
- personality psychology
- educational psychology
- animal psychology
Answer: B
6. According to Thompson and Zanna (1995), ambivalence may be particularly high in people who are ______.
- high in need for cognition and high in fear of invalidity
- high in need for cognition and low in fear of invalidity
- low in need for cognition and high in fear of invalidity
- low in need for cognition and low in fear of invalidity
Answer: C
7. In the future, theoretical analyses of attitude function need to consider important potential differences between ______.
- social functions of objects and utilitarian functions of objects
- functions of objects and functions of attitudes toward the objects
- functions of holding an attitude and functions of holding a particular attitude valence
- functions of objects and functions of attitudes toward the objects as well as functions of holding an attitude and functions of holding a particular attitude valence
Answer: D
8. The lack of correspondence between people’s explicit feelings of ambivalence and the high or low number of conflicting evaluations they can bring to mind about an object occurs because ______.
- people’s feelings of ambivalence are affected by whether they mind inconsistency in their attitude and are aware of it
- people are aware of other people’s attitudes being different from their own
- people have some reason to doubt the validity of the information supporting their attitudes
- all of these
Answer: D
9. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
- Attitude change interventions can decay over time or increase over time, depending on personal and situational factors.
- Attitude change interventions cannot shape properties of attitude other than attitude valence.
- Effects of interventions on attitudes toward novel issues may be different than effects of interventions on attitudes toward topics that are long-standing issues with applied significance.
- Resistance to social marketing occurs because the issues are much more relevant to personal values and the self-concept, and people are resistant to being persuaded about self-relevant issues
Answer: B
10. Which of the following statements is NOT correct?
- Attitudes’ content, structure, and function are distinct and not interrelated.
- Interventions that change attitude valence also shape other properties of attitudes, including their strength, content, structure, and function.
- Cognitive, affective, and behavioral content have different levels of influence on attitude.
- Attitude structure varies in multiple ways other than reflecting two evaluative (negative and positive) dimensions or one (negative-positive).
Answer: A
11. Suppose you measure an attitude toward the President of the United States on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from very negative (–3) to very positive (+3). One of your participants crossed the scale in the middle (0). How would you interpret this response?
- This person has an ambivalent attitude.
- This person is uninterested in this topic.
- This person has a biased attitude.
- This person has an ambivalent attitude and is uninterested in this topic are possible.
Answer: D
12. Habits can be the source from which we infer our motives or goals. This phenomenon is an example of ______.
- attitude ambivalence
- self-perception
- attitude-behavior consistency
- the object-appraisal function of attitudes
Answer: B