Attitudinal Objects Research Articles

Is visual content modality a limiting factor for social capital? Examining user engagement within Instagram-based brand communities

AbstractIn the age of virtual cocreation of value by consumers, the role of the content modality in the development of social capital has been largely overlooked. Given that different modalities lead to varied forms of digital communication, this study examines whether a predominantly visual modality can enhance social capital and improve the collective value perceived by members of an online brand community. Through quantitative analysis, this study demonstrates that the visual modality of Instagram fosters social interactions, shaping the platform’s engagement dynamics. Affect-based visual imagery is persuasive in eliciting responses that match the hedonic nature of the platform. Therefore, fostering a positive emotional connection to both the community and the brand can lead to increased loyalty. This research proposes a different perspective on the interactive social exchange that facilitates the establishment of social capital. Value cocreation engagement is not necessarily dependent on the extensiveness of information depth. Adopting an affective orientation in persuasion has shown efficacy in forming attitudes towards attitudinal objects, particularly the community and brand.

Differences in General and Specific Attitudes Toward Animals by Diet and Gender

ABSTRACT Recent research indicates that the same ingroup–outgroup disposition responsible for the psychological representation of human–human relations can be applied to human–animal relations. This work aimed to study the differences between general attitudes toward animals and specific attitudes toward different animal categories (pets, pests, and profitable animals) and explore whether those differences vary by people’s diet and gender. A mixed-design ANOVA was performed on a sample of 285 participants. The results showed that vegetarians/vegans scored more positively in general and specific attitudes toward animals than omnivores, except when evaluating pets. Female and male participants evaluated animals in general, and pets, similarly. Furthermore, vegetarians/vegans had fewer differences in their scores among the different attitudinal objects in comparison with omnivores. The findings of this study show that general attitudes toward animals differ from attitudes toward specific types of animal and that they vary according to dietary choice and gender. Therefore, for future research in human–animal interaction, we recommend measuring attitudes toward specific types of animal.

Agency influences vicarious approach/avoidance effects

ABSTRACT Social learning plays a prominent role in shaping individual preferences. The vicarious approach-avoidance effect consists of developing a preference for attitudinal objects that have been approached over objects that have been avoided by another person (model). In two experiments (N = 448 participants), we explored how the vicarious approach-avoidance effect is affected by agency (model’s voluntary choice) and identification with the model. The results consistently revealed vicarious approach-avoidance effects in preference, as indicated by the semantic differential and the Implicit Association Test. Agency increased the size of the preference assessed through the semantic differential but did not significantly impact preference in the Implicit Association Test. Identification with the model had no significant impact on the vicarious approach-avoidance effect. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Blind Spots in Abortion Attitudes: Investigating the Nuance of UK Women’s Pro-Choice Perspectives

Abortion attitudes are typically contextualized as pro-life or pro-choice, yet these characterizations ignore the complex ideas that individuals hold about abortion. To address this gap, we conducted a thematic analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with women in the UK, both with (n = 12) and without (n = 16) personal abortion experience. The theme “blind spots” captures patterns in our participants’ accounts, wherein complexity and even conflict would emerge within expressed abortion judgments. Our subthemes highlight those conflicts between more and less restrictive abortion attitudes that occurred when considering either the same (self or other) or different (self vs. other) attitudinal objects. Many participants were unaware of the conflicting and nuanced attitudes they held about abortion, evidenced by an inability to integrate these positions into a clear and consistent judgment, indicating that a dichotomy of abortion attitudes may be too simplistic.

On the Independent Roles of Cognitive & Political Sophistication: Variation Across Attitudinal Objects

AbstractPeople are motivated to maintain consistency between importantly held identities, preferences, and judgments. In political contexts, motivated reasoning can help explain a wide range of political phenomena, including extremism, polarization, and misperceptions. However, recent findings in psychology have challenged this account. These perspectives emphasize the role of cognitive sophistication (e.g., analytical reasoning, numerical literacy) in political attitudes, but differ in terms of whether it is expected to attenuate or exacerbate politically motivated reasoning and belief in conspiracy theories. Yet prior investigations have not examined the relative and independent effects of both political and cognitive sophistication. Using data from two samples, including one sampled to approximate representativeness in the U.S., we demonstrate that both types of sophistication have independent and (at times) countervailing effects on belief in COVID‐19 conspiracy theories and other political attitudes. Our results are critical for theories of cognitive sophistication, political cognition, and attitudes, and the psychology of conspiracy theories.

An Evaluation of the Effects of a Virtual Museum on Users’ Attitudes towards Cultural Heritage

(1) Background: Several opportunities have appeared for the dissemination of culture and heritage thanks in part to the widespread use of information and communications technologies. Virtual museums have appeared as innovative technological products but often lack an evaluation of the impact that they have and their success in achieving their purpose. In this sense, this work seeks to evaluate the impact of a virtual museum on users’ attitudes toward cultural heritage. (2) Methods: We used a factorial design of 2 (direction of thoughts: positive vs. negative) × 2 (presence level: high vs. low) × 2 (virtual museum vs. interactive website). (3) Results: Attitudes toward heritage can change as a function of a multimedia experience, thought favorability, and presence. In a virtual museum, when general attitudes are evaluated, a sense of high psychological presence reduces the effect that thoughts (especially when negative) have on attitudes. However, in the case of visiting an interactive website, the effect of the direction of thoughts on attitudes occurred regardless of conditions of high or low presence. Similar tendencies are observed for specific attitudinal objects. (4) Conclusion: A virtual museum can have different effects depending on the interaction of important variables from the virtual reality literature and not only the classic main effects. Recommendations for interventions and future practical and theoretical work are presented.

How People Evaluate Anti-Corona Measures for Their Social Spheres: Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control.

Restrictions on outdoor activities, tips for hygiene, and tips for mental health are among the most common initiatives to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures aim to protect people’s health and, at the same time, impact their social lives. So far, it is little known how people evaluate those anti-Corona measures with regard to their social spheres (close family, wider family and friends, colleagues, and society). Furthermore, it is plausible that the subjective evaluation of attitudinal objects and especially severe events, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the related counter-measures, is multidimensional. Against this background, we combine the social spheres with the elements of the Theory of Planned Behavior. On the methodological basis of the Means-End Theory of Complex Cognitive Structures, we determine the perceived relevance and quality of the attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and social spheres regarding anti-Corona measures. Furthermore, the applied methodology allows the deduction of norm strategies to define the priority of securing or increasing the effectiveness of elements of anti-Corona measures. Based on the answers of 663 participants, we found that the protection from COVID-19 and its consequences (attitude) are more important to people than the practicability of anti-Corona measures in their social lives (perceived behavioral control), which, again, has a higher subjective relevance than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others (subjective norm). Additionally, people distinguish between their close family (higher subjective relevance) and their other social spheres (lower subjective relevance). The people attribute the highest quality to the tips on hygiene, followed by the restrictions on outdoor activities and the tips for mental health. The protection and practicability of the anti-Corona measures have higher quality ratings than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others. Based on the norm strategies, policymakers should secure the effectiveness of the current anti-Corona measures with a high priority by focusing on the protection and practicability with regard to close and wider family and friends. Increasing the effectiveness of the protection and practicability of anti-Corona measures in work and society also has a high priority. Focusing on the subjective norm should be of lower priority.

Propositions and attitudinal objects

Propositions and attitudinal objects

Information Valence and Evaluations of Congress and Individual Legislators: Experimental Evidence Regarding Negativity Bias in Politics

We use a survey experiment to assess whether negativity bias affects voters’ judgments of the legislative effectiveness of Congress (MCs) and Congress as an institution. These political actors allow us to evaluate voters’ perceptions of somewhat impersonal attitudinal objects (MCs) and very impersonal attitudinal objects (Congress as an institution). We find strong evidence of negativity bias, where individuals tend to place more weight upon negative information when evaluating MCs/Congress, and require less negative information to make an overall negative judgment of these actors. Specifically, our experiments indicate that less negative information is required to reach a judgment than is positive information. Similarly, our evidence suggests that voters are quicker to punish politicians and institutions for negative behavior than to reward them for positive behavior. In most cases, these effects are moderated by partisanship, with negativity bias being more severe against members of the partisan outgroup.

Attitude Reports, Cognitive Products, and Attitudinal Objects

In a range of recent and not so recent work (Moltmann 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2013, 2014, 2016b, 2016d), I have developed a novel semantics of attitude reports on which the notion of an attitudinal object or cognitive product takes center stage, that is, entities such as thoughts claims and decisions. The purpose of this note is to give a brief summary of this account against the background of the standard semantics of attitude reports and to show that the various sorts of criticism that Felappi (2014) recently advanced against it are mistaken.

On Product-based Accounts of Propositional Attitudes

Propositional attitude sentences, such as "John believes that snow is white," are traditionally taken to express the holding of a relation between a subject and what ‘that’-clauses like ‘that snow is white’ denote, i.e. propositions. On the traditional account, propositions are abstract, mind- and language-independent entities. Recently, some have raised some serious worries for the traditional account and thought that we were mistaken about the kind of entities propositions are. Over the last ten years there has then been a boom of accounts of propositions in terms of (types of) mental acts (Burge 2007; Hanks 2011; Soames 2010). But Friederike Moltmann (2013; 2014) has recently suggested that in accounting for attitudes we should forget about mindand language-independent entities and (types of) acts and follow Twardowski (1912) in focusing instead on attitudinal objects, which are the products of our mental life. In this paper, I will focus on some semantic problems that any product-based account seems to face. Moreover, I will show that product-based accounts may be also criticised on ontological grounds. My conclusion will be that we lack a reason to think that in accounting for propositional attitudes we should focus on the alleged products of our mental lives.

Propositions, attitudinal objects, and the distinction between actions and products

Propositions as mind-independent abstract objects raise serious problems such as their cognitive accessibility and their ability to carry essential truth conditions, as a number of philosophers have recently pointed out. This paper argues that ‘attitudinal objects’ or kinds of them should replace propositions as truth bearers and as the (shared) objects of propositional attitudes. Attitudinal objects, entities like judgments, beliefs, and claims, are not states or actions, but rather their (spatio-temporally coincident) products, following the distinction between actions and products introduced by Twardowski (1912). The paper argues that the action–product distinction is not tied to particular terms in a particular language, but is to be understood as the more general distinction between an action and the (abstract or physically realized) artifact that it creates. It thus includes the distinction between the passing of a law and the law itself and an act of artistic creation and the created work of art.

Patients' Ways of Speaking About Antiretroviral Medications and Possible Implications for Adherence

The medical literature reports that antiretrovirals (ARVs) are considered attitudinal objects (Dunbar-Jacob, 1995). Drawing on the pragmatics of emotion (Caffi & Janney, 1994), this study analyzes how patients' stances about their ARTs shape their emotional relationships with their treatments. The data, collected in a public hospital in Uruguay, are analyzed by means of qualitative (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) and quantitative methods. For several reasons, patients do not always report directly when their adherence to ARTs is suboptimal, but pharmaceutical adherence is essential for their survival. This study suggests that patients' emotional adherence might be anticipated by their linguistic choices used to refer to ARVs. It is observed that emotional alienation from the ARTs is expressed either by overt (e.g., devil terms) or covert linguistic choices related to a non-ego, non-hic, or non-nunc perspective. The implications for medical providers are in developing awareness of their patients' linguistic choices in talking about ARTs, since emotional (non)adherence might anticipate pharmaceutical (non)adherence.

Developing and Validating AFFINITY: A New Scale to Measure Consumer Affinity toward Foreign Countries

ABSTRACT Consumers do not look at attitudinal objects (products, nations) in terms of black and white. Because conflicting attitudes exist, it is important to understand how these translate into consumer buying behavior. Our objective is to build a parsimonious affinity scale (AFFINITY) by collecting data from Thai consumers concerning their affinity and animosity toward the U.S. and Singapore. We find that affinity and animosity form different constructs and relate to different stages in the purchase decision process.

Environmental Protection and Nature as Distinct Attitudinal Objects

In environmental psychology, many researchers have apparently placed appreciation of nature and appreciation of environmental protection in the same attitudinal category. In this article, the authors argue that this involves a misconception. The authors used survey data from 1,336 Swiss adults to compare competing attitudinal models: the currently accepted one-dimensional model against a two-dimensional model that distinguishes appreciation of nature from appreciation of environmental protection. A Rasch-type measurement model was implemented to test the theoretically anticipated item-factor structure. The model that treated appreciation of nature and appreciation of environmental protection as distinct attitudes was statistically superior to the one-dimensional model. The gains in reliability and model accuracy were modest, but the authors see substantial theoretical and practical value in treating appreciation of nature and appreciation of environmental protection as separate attitudes. For example, if the intention is to promote more environmental engagement, then appreciation of nature might be the more malleable target and thus the critical factor for change.

Two kinds of first-person-oriented content

In this paper, I will argue that two kinds of first-person-oriented content are distinguished in more ways than usually thought and I propose an account that will shed new light on the distinction. The first kind consists of contents of attitudes de se (in a broad sense); the second kind consists of contents that give rise to intuitions of relative truth. I will present new data concerning the two kinds of first-person-oriented content, together with a novel account of propositional content in general, namely based on the notion of an attitudinal object. That notion solves two major problems with Lewis’s account of contents of attitudes de se and clarifies the difference between contents of attitudes de se and contents that give rise to intuitions of relative truth. I will propose an analysis of contents of the second kind in terms of what I call first-person-based genericity, a form of genericity most explicitly expressed by sentences with generic one. I show how the overall account explains the particular semantic properties of sentences giving rise to intuitions of relative truth that distinguish them from sentences with expressions interpreted de se. I will start by introducing Lewis’s account of attitudes de se and the problems that go along with that account. Introducing the notion of an attitudinal object, I will extend the account by an account of the truth conditions of the content of attitudes de se. I then discuss the second kind of first-person-oriented content, which is associated with intuitions of relative truth, and give an account of such contents on the basis of an analysis of generic one. Again making use of attitudinal objects, I will make clear what exactly distinguishes those contents from first-person-oriented contents of the first sort.

The Nature and Implications of Implicit Weight Bias

Although overweight is undesirable from both public and personal health perspectives, the focus of this paper is on exploring the nature of fat prejudice within a social cognition framework. Fat prejudice refers to the tendency to form judgments about people on the basis of excessive body weight. Body size has been described as one of the few per- sonal attributes considered an acceptable target of prejudice, despite the fact that targets of fat prejudice experience sig- nificant psychological distress. Fat prejudice is likely to become an increasingly common psychosocial problem in light of the obesity epidemic that is currently affecting many countries. The current paper reviews findings from nineteen experi- mental studies of implicit anti-fat attitudes; these studies have used either the implicit association test or the affective priming task. The empirical data highlight that implicit anti-fat attitudes are widely held and relatively universal. Robust implicit anti-fat bias is evident among many groups including university students, members of the general public, health professionals, and among those who are themselves overweight or obese. The current data suggest that, similar to findings with other attitudinal objects, the relationship between implicit and explicit measures of anti-fat attitudes is complex. The possibility of changing implicit anti-fat attitudes, either by modifying the underlying associative structures or by altering the pattern of activation, is discussed. Avenues for future research are offered, keeping in mind the challenge of formulat- ing appropriate public health messages whilst also challenging weight bias, and promoting acceptance of diversity in body size.

The Impact of Short-Term Quality Intergenerational Contact on Children's Attitudes Toward Older Adults

ABSTRACTThis article describes a research study designed to investigate the influence of short term quality intergenerational contact on the attitudes of children toward older adults. Glass and Trent's (1982) Typology of Approaches to change attitudes and Amir's (1969) Contact Hypothesis guided the development of this study. Glass and Trent reported that there are three primary ways that attitudes change: through discussion with others about the attitudinal object, direct experiences with attitudinal objects, and the acquisition of more knowledge about the attitudinal object. If attitudes are a reflection of internal and external influences, then it is assumed they can change.The study revealed that children who participated in the treatment had a more positive attitude toward older adults. Both inclusion in the intergenerational activities and time spent with related older adults were significant in explaining the changes in the children's attitudes toward older adults.

ASSESSING ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY: POLIZZI'S REFINED VERSION OF THE AGING SEMANTIC DIFFERENTIAL

While the number of elderly men and women continues to grow, an accurate assessment of attitudes toward the elderly remains difficult. Many problems exist that contribute to this difficulty of assessment. The first problem is the age of the Aging Semantic Differential, an instrument often used for the assessment of attitudes toward the elderly. The adjectives employed are not necessarily descriptive of attitudes today. Another problem was the failure to employ women as attitudinal objects as well as men in the original instrument. Therefore, the Aging Semantic Differential is perhaps outdated for such assessments of attitudes toward today's elderly population. The purpose of this study was to refine the Aging Semantic Differential for the purpose of more accurately assessing current attitudes toward older people in general by generating a more up-to-date list of adjectives. Possible differences in attitude toward men and women were assessed in order to establish a refined list of adjectives for use on the generalized elderly population. Three hundred undergraduate students (136 men, 164 women) evaluated men and women 70-85 years of age. The results of the factor analyses revealed strong similarities in item composition on four factors of the factor structures for old men and old women; however, the orders of the loadings were different on each of the four factors. The final list of adjectives has Cronbach alphas of .9737 and .9713, and test-retest reliabilities of .8127 and .7938 for the old men and the old women, respectively. Recommendations are made on the use of the updated list of adjectives, as well as for methodological and conceptual considerations for future research. Also, future research is called for to determine attitudes toward the elderly rather than to debate the number of factors necessary to explain the attitude concept, as has been done in a majority of studies concerning attitudes toward the elderly.

Accomplishing attitudes: Fact and evaluation in racist discourse

This paper explores some of the distinguishing features of a discourse approach to analysis of racism. A contrast is developed with attitude research in social psychology and we demonstrate how the concept of attitude inevitably neglects social and rhetorical context. In particular, attitude theory ignores the way respondents construct evaluations through their varying ‘factual’ accounts of attitudinal objects. The argument is illustrated through the detailed analysis of a section of interview transcripts concerning ‘Polynesian immigrants’. Overall, it is suggested that research concerning ‘attitudes’ to such contentious issues as race and gender has failed to appreciate the pressure on respondents to construct evaluative versions as out-there-in-the-world to avoid the blame we attached when those versions are seen, not as features of the world, but as a consequence of their own psychology or special interests.