Attitude is another main element that this study will explore and use to find an answer to the research question. Attitude is much valued in social psychology because it can determine behaviour. When one takes into account the definition of attitude, its nature and applicability to a wide number of topics, attitude formation as well as
measurement techniques, attitude change produces a large scope of research.
The main focus on attitude in this thesis is how attitudes are formed, and their roles in evaluation of archives, including how existing attitudes can be changed, or if there is none, how can positive attitudes be formed.
2.3.1 Definition of attitudes
A pioneer in the study of attitude, Gordon Allport in 1935 defined attitude thus:
A mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s
response to all objects and situations with which it is related (Schwarz and Bohner 2).
According to this definition, attitudes are an individual’s state of mind or reaction towards particular persons or objects. D.W. Rajecki described that an attitude is a personal psychological entity that no one but the attitude’s owner can experience directly. The closest we can come to a direct observation of attitudes is by directly asking the person, but this can provide very limited insight. Secondly, Rajecki also explained other attributes of this definition, specifically, that attitude is learned by experience. Some attitudes are formed from when the person is young, through family and schooling. Thirdly, attitude directs individuals to act in certain ways. Lastly, attitudes are the individual’s response to all related objects and situations. Due to attitudes, one can have consistent behaviours in decisions related to specific objects (Rajecki 4-6).
Gerd Bohner and Michaela Wänke defined attitude as “a summary evaluation of an object of thought” (Bohner and Wänke 4-5). This definition shows that attitude always comes with evaluation. Also, the evaluation is specifically about good or bad
(R.Maio and Haddock 2). In other words, attitude is what individuals use to judge the objects to guide their behaviour towards them.
Unlike values, attitude is more specific. It can be called an attitude towards specific events or objects. However, values and attitudes work closely with each other because how one can judge specific things is linked to one’s broader enduring beliefs, namely values.
However, attitude shares some similarities with values in terms of endurance.
Eagly and Chaiken defined attitude as “[a] psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” (R.Maio and Haddock 4). Similar to the previous definition that expresses the evaluative nature of attitude, this definition identifies the liking or disliking, or approval or disapproval aspect of attitude.
2.3.2 Attitude functions
The importance of attitude in human life has largely been connected to its functions (especially in the functionalist perspectives). Psychologists studied attitude’s functions, and found that they have a relation to attitude’s influence on action.
Attitude can facilitate or complicate human life. Daniel Katz proposed a list of attitude functions (Katz 170-6). This should be considered to understand why people need to evaluate.
Knowledge function
This function helps humans to “structure [their] universe” (Katz 170). Attitude helps individuals to organise the world by categorising different things to likes and dislikes.
This is the mental activity in information management.
Utilitarian function
Attitude enables people to maximise pleasure and minimise pain.
Ego-defensive function
This helps an individual to protect their self-esteem by understanding themselves and the external world, which can be difficult to perceive (Katz 170). Smith et al. talked about the same concept but used the phrase ‘externalisation function’ instead (Hogg and Vaughan 150).
Value expressive function
Attitude can also express an individual’s self-concept and values. This function of attitude shows the connection between attitude and value. However, there is a balance in the expression of value. That is, a person has to consider the compromise between social adjustment8 – which stresses correspondence with social norms – and self-expressiveness – which emphasises the self and involves less self-monitoring. This points out that the attitude of expressiveness is in control of being with others and standing up for one’s identity. One point of this research is to investigate the weighting between the individual’s and social values.
2.3.3 Attitude: compatibility between the evaluator and evaluated
Deborah Prentice contended that people have different orientations in their attitude.
“The functional orientations toward their valued possessions indicate the functional orientation of their attitudes more generally” (Fazio and Olson 146). This means that the objects an individual values clarify their attitude functional orientation. One may value the practical function of objects more than the symbolic function and vice versa.
On the other hand, each object has a different functional orientation. For example, a wedding ring has a symbolic functional orientation while a washing machine has practical functions. Advertisements need to have the right functional orientation in their message in order to respond to the function that their target groups need. Sharon Shavitt explained that, with attitude objects, attitude functions ‘inhere’ in them (Fazio
8 This concept has been raised by Smith at al.
and Olson 146). As for archival materials, it is worth considering what attitude functions archives have, and how to apply this knowledge to access strategies.
Many parts of this research involve the contemplation of this relationship between evaluators (users, archivists, the public) and the evaluated object (archival materials) in both values and attitude functional orientations. To consider this, many variables surrounding people and materials have to be considered, such as people and their contexts, and objects and their nature. However, objects could be used in different ways according to how they are emphasised. The ways they are presented may be as important as their functions.
2.3.4 How attitudes are studied
Attitudes can be studied directly by asking participants questions for their opinions on the topics or on other relevant topics. However, people also have implicit attitudes.
People sometimes say that they are unprejudiced but they can conceal biased attitudes within, so there are both direct and indirect methods to study attitudes.
Direct and indirect survey
Attitudes can be studied by directly asking participants for their opinions. Just like values, attitudes can be expressed explicitly when subjects are asked. Nevertheless, researchers might not be able to get real answers, as participants probably adjust their answers to fit their environment before giving the answers. Various kinds of scale can be used in the direct attitudes survey, such as semantic differential, Likert scale and Thurstone scale.
In contrast, in indirect attitude measurement, questions are disguised in the form of indirect questions but the answers can be linked to needed answers.
How to study implicit attitudes
Psychologists use two methods that are believed to help the expression of hidden attitudes: priming and Implicit Association Test (IAT) (Bohner and Wänke 39-45).
Firstly, the priming procedure can provide access to implicit attitudes. The
participants are asked to match the target words as quickly as possible by pressing a
‘good’ or ‘bad’ response key. The time used in matching can imply hidden prejudices in participants.
In some studies, participants were not asked to express opinions towards prime pictures but to categorise some adjectives as quickly as possible after the prime pictures appeared. It is believed that the prime picture affects the feelings of participants.
A bona fide pipeline research using priming methods interestingly pointed out that participants with implicit racist attitudes towards Black people were rated as behaving in a less friendly manner to Black experimenters.
Secondly, IAT measures the differential association of two target concepts. The participants are asked to press the left hand key every time pleasant words appear and right hand key every time bad words appear. Then the participants are asked to do combined tasks. One target word will appear at the same time as the adjective
‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’. The studies showed that tasks are done in less time when an appearing target word corresponds with right adjective in participants’ mind. For example, ‘flower’ is matched with ‘pleasant’ and ‘insect’ with ‘unpleasant’.
Participants did the task more slowly when dealing with mismatched words. More importantly, a person showing themselves to have no bias in respect of race used more time when their own nation was matched with unpleasant and performed better when their own race was matched with pleasant than when other races were matched in such a way.
2.3.5 Attitude components
Psychologists consider attitude from various perspectives. Some view attitude as an interaction with the evaluated object; others see several components in the attitude.
This section will enumerate these different points of view.
In 1931, Louis Leon Thurstone created one component attitude model. He revealed a simple scale of ‘the affect for or against a psychological object’. Allport offered the second component, ‘a state of readiness’, making the attitude a more complicated subject. Finally, the most widely known model is the ‘Multi-Component Model’
created by Eagly and Chaiken in 1993 and Zanna and Rempel in 1988. This model presented three aspects in attitudes, as follows.
Firstly, the cognitive component refers to the content of the attitude: belief, thought, information received about the object. This part is the information people gain to have positive or negative attitudes toward that object.
Secondly, the affective component is emotion in attitude. Various kinds of feelings affect one’s evaluation. The fear of the teacher might give a pupil a negative attitude towards schools. Cognitive and affective components can interact with each other.
Good affective components can help to adjust negative cognitive components and vice versa (Maio and Haddock 25).
Thirdly, the behavioural component is past experiences one has towards the object.
Daryl Bem indicated that sometimes attitudes are not easily accessible, so people tend to refer to their past experience with the object to articulate the attitudes (Maio and Haddock 25).
These components tend to correspond to one another; however, the studies show that they are different. Attitude change happens when inconsistency occurs among these elements.
2.3.6 Attitude formation
No one is born with an attitude, but they are rather formed at some moments in an individual’s life by different means. In other words, attitudes are not static but consist of multiple changeable components. Therefore, understanding the ways these
components can come together, or form attitudes, is important to this thesis in
understanding the phenomenon of attitude change. Michael A. Hogg and Graham M.
Vaughan explained the formation as involving behavioural and cognitive methods.
The behavioural method forms an attitude when a person has direct experience of the object in question. Individuals become familiar with different attributes of the object, gain an attitude and are able to make judgement on the specific object.
Robert Zajonc described the Mere Exposure Effect, which revealed that the more experience individuals have of an object, the more positive their attitude towards the object will be (Zajonc 1). Different behavioural learning forms different kinds of attitudes:
1) Classical conditioning
This kind of conditioning involves the combination of a neutral stimulus and other stimulus. Individuals can have a positive feeling towards the first, neutral stimulus merely because it occurs in conjunction with the other good stimulus. Some studies asked participants to read persuasive messages while soft drinks were served. The participants felt persuaded by the pleasant feeling they got from soft drinks (Hogg and Vaughan 170).
2) Instrumental conditioning
This kind of conditioning is in relation to reinforcement. The person learns that the object and action will lead them to reward, so they have positive attitude towards it.
This can happen in both adults and children.
3) Observational learning
Observation can form attitudes without direct reinforcement (Hogg and Vaughan 171). This kind of learning is also called modelling (Hogg and Vaughan 171).
Attitude is learned by investigating good or bad outcomes experienced by others.
The other kind of attitude formation which is from cognitive development perspective is indirect. It is processed by information obtained from various sources. The sources can be external or internal (self-perception). Parenting and teaching in schools are the main sources of this kind of attitude formation in children. Mass media is another source of public persuasion, involving not only the broadcasting of opinions but also the shaping of public attitudes (Hogg and Vaughan 173).