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Psychology of Communication: consistency theory
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Psychology of Communication: consistency theory
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Before continuing, please take a look at Heider's balance theory.
It seems likely that peoples' attitudes all cohere, in other words they all fit together without contradicting one another. They do not contradict one another, because they derive from some underlying core system of values. This view of the internal consistency of attitudes seems to be supported by, for example, what is referred to by the psychologist Eysenck as the radical-conservative factor or liberal-conservative factor. Its interesting that those people who display a liberal attitude in one of the fields tested will also tend to display a similarly liberal attitude in most of the other fields tested. The same consistency applies to those on the conservative side of the scale, to those in the middle and those at any other points on the scale. Generally speaking, their attitudes will be consistently liberal, conservative or middle-of-the-road.
Psychologists have studied this logic of our attitudes and beliefs under the label cognitive consistency. The idea underlying cognitive consistency is that we all actively strive to be consistent in our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Any inconsistency acts as a stimulus to change them so as to bring them back into a coherent whole.
Given what weve just said, you might expect such attitudes as those on the liberal-conservative scale to be resistant to change by propaganda, advertising or any other means. Can you think why they should be resistant?
If it is true that attitudes tend to form a coherent whole, then, if you wish to change the conservative persons attitude to feminism, you will not be able to do so unless you also change most of the other attitudes with which his/her anti-feminism is interlinked.
Our desire to maintain such consistency and avoid changing our attitudes if we possibly can accounts for the results of Allport's and Postman's study (1954). Subjects were asked to describe a picture which showed a white man arguing with a black man. The white had an open razor in his hand. As the story was passed from one to another the details changed. Those who were prejudiced against blacks changed the details so that it was the black who held the razor.
An interesting TV investigation into the reliability of eyewitness reports produced similar results. A mugging was carried out by an actor in a shopping precinct in broad daylight. The mugger was clearly not a stereotypical mugger. He was white, middle-aged, reasonably well dressed and wearing glasses. In the eyewitness reports, all described him as a teenager or in his early twenties. Many described him as black. No one mentioned the glasses.
As the media analyst, James Curran, puts it: 'Believing is seeing'.
Although deep-seated attitudes may be difficult to change, it's not impossible. Rokeach's study
An interesting study conducted by Rokeach in 1968 demonstrated this. He asked three groups of individuals to rank twelve values in order of importance. The three groups were
The results, showing how highly each group ranked the values of freedom and equality were:
| Participated | Sympathetic | Hostile | |
| Freedom | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Equality | 3 | 6 | 11 |
As you can see, freedom was put in first or second place by everyone, but equality was rated as pretty unimportant (eleventh place) by those who were unsympathetic to the civil rights protesters.
The experimenter then discussed these results with the participants in the study. He speculated aloud that maybe those who gave equality a low ranking cared a great deal about their own freedom, but not much about other peoples. The participants were then invited to ponder on their own attitudes in the light of this possibility.
Three weeks later, then three months later and, finally, five months later they were asked to rank their values again. Those who were pro-civil rights but had originally ranked equality low now gave it a higher ranking and remained pro-civil rights. Perhaps more significantly, though, those who had ranked equality high but were hostile to civil rights protesters became more pro-civil rights, while still ranking equality high.
On the subject of attitude change, you may also be interested in the research into persuasive communication conducted by Carl Hovland.
Why should that have happened? It would seem that the experimenter's suggestion (that those who ranked freedom highly, but ranked equality low were more concerned for their own freedom than for others) actually introduced an awareness of possible inconsistency into the subjects belief system. The theory of cognitive consistency suggests that once individuals were aware of that inconsistency then they would have to do something to overcome in, namely by adjusting the attitudes they held. It is interesting that the changes were greater after three to five months than they were after three weeks. That seems to suggest that it takes some time for the inconsistency to filter through the individuals' belief systems.
[see Beliefs, Attitudes and Values Rokeach 1968 in Atkinson et al (1990)]
If we know what people's attitudes are then we should be able to predict their behaviour. If people have a positive attitude towards a party's political programme, the chances are that they will vote for that party; if they have a positive attitude towards our beans, they'll buy them.
That's the theory at any rate. In practice, the correlation between attitudes and behaviour does not appear to be as straightforward as that. One problem is quite simply that people may lie about their attitudes, so it's difficult to know what their attitudes are in the first place. (For information on attitude measurement, see the Likert scale and Osgood's semantic differential) The public opinion polls before the 1992 General Election consistently showed voters' favourable attitudes towards the Labour Party, but a large proportion voted for the Conservatives on polling day. La Piere
One such example of a mismatch between expressed attitudes and behaviour which is frequently quoted is that reported by LaPiere in 1934 (LaPiere Attitudes versus actions, 1934, quoted in Atkinson et al (1990)). LaPiere, a Caucasian professor travelled across the USA with a young Asian couple. At the time prejudice against Asians was widespread and there were no laws against racial discrimination. They stayed at over 200 hotels, motels and restaurants and - with one exception - were served without problem. Later, a letter was sent to all of the establishments visited asking if they would refuse to serve Asians. Of the 128 replies received, 98% said they would refuse; in other words an attitude which was contradicted by their actual behaviour.
Assuming that we can actually determine what people's attitudes are in the first place, then it seems that attitudes work best as predictors of behaviour when
they are strong and consistent
Thus it is not easy to predict the behaviour of voters who have weak or ambivalent attitudes. Katz and Lazarsfeld's research shows that, if any voters are going to be moved by pre-election publicity, it is the uncommitted, floating voters. So they are the ones targeted by the campaigns.
It is interesting that prior to the 1992 election, the survey of British Social Attitudes suggested that the values of Thatcherism had not really taken root in the British electorate, most preferring a greater level of provision of social services and showing a willingness to pay for them with higher taxes. Labour gambled on this, saying that they were going to put up taxes for moderately high earners. That provided the Conservatives with an easy target and much of the Conservative campaign focused on Labours intention of increasing taxes. It seems likely that, when put to the test, the belief in paying higher taxes proved to be inconsistent with the desire for personal enrichment and the widespread belief that charity begins at home. It would be only by attacking that belief that Labour could hope to win support for the realisation of the desire for better services.
they are based on and related to personal experience
There is plenty of evidence to support the view that attitudes which are based on personal experience are much better predictors of behaviour than those which have come from simply reading or hearing about an issue. It is also much more likely to be the case that people will act on their attitudes towards an issue if that issue is likely to have a direct effect on them For example, you might have grown fed up during your two years at college that there is not enough parking space for students and you feel strongly that there should be more. When approached by the Students' Union to support the first-year students inn their campaign to ensure that a large area of the new site just acquired by the college is set aside for student parking, the chances are that you'll sign a petition, but not much more - quite simply, because you'll have left the college by then and so won't be affected.
they are specifically related to the behaviour being predicted
Attitudes which are only generally related to a specific behaviour do not seem to be good predictors of that behaviour. For example, attitudes towards environmental matters are not a good predictor of people's willingness to turn out on a march for Greenpeace, whereas their attitudes towards Greenpeace are better predictors of such behaviour. Asking people about their immediate intentions rather than their general beliefs seems to produce more accurate predictions.
Attitudes
Cognitive dissonance
Fishbein method
Kelly's Personal Construct Theory
Likert Technique
Osgood's Semantic Differential
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