Assignment;
Attitude Measurement
Attitude Measurement: Types of Measurement/To understand attitudes, it is necessary to know how attitudes are measured. Attitudes cannot be observed directly, but rather, they are inferred through behavior and self-report. As a result, social psychologists use a variety of methods to measure attitudes. By analyze methods social psychologists use to conduct attitude research and taking an in-depth look at the distinction between explicit and implicit attitudes and their respective measures. In their seminal article on subjective reporting of mental processes, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) argue that when asked to self-report on mental processes, people report more information than would be possible for them to actually know. This argument has implications for research that relies on introspective awareness for the self-reporting of attitudes and behaviors. As applied to attitude measurement, this argument leads to the question
Questions:
1. Which factors influence whether or not you can provide an accurate self-report of your attitudes and behaviors?
2. What are two possible implications of the Nisbett and Wilson (1977) article on self-reporting of attitudes.
3. Explain how the perspectives in the article might influence how social psychologists conduct attitude research.
4. Provide your position on whether or not individuals are capable of accurately reporting their own attitudes and justify your position with references.
Some resources and other scholarly literature you can use:
Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Christie, C., & Gonazales, P. M. (2007). Plausible assumptions, questionable assumptions and post hoc rationalizations: Will the real IAT, please stand up? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(3), 399-409.
Cunningham, W. A., Preacher, K. J., & Mahzarin, R. B. (2001). Implicit attitude measures: Consistency, stability, and convergent validity. Psychological Science, 12(2), 163-170.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6),1464-1480.
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Nosek, B. A. (2007). Implicit-explicit relations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(2), 65-69.
Crites, S. L., Jr., Fabrigar, L. R., & Petty, R. E. (1994). Measuring the affective and cognitive properties of attitudes: Conceptual and methodological issues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(6), page 619-634.
Fazio, R. H. (2001). On the automatic activation of associated evaluations: An overview. Cognition and Emotion, 15(2), 115-141.