Attitudes can be regarded as evaluative responses towards a person, place, group or thing. They are implicit and enduring predispositions but they are learned rather than innate. This means they are susceptible to change. It is usually maintained that by changing people's underlying attitudes, you can produce change in people's behaviours. Traditionally, people have used the carrot or stick approach (i.e. rewards or punishment) to produce changes in attitudes and its related behaviour. However, this is not quite as simple as that. You need to consider how attitudes are formed, how they are related to other psychological processes, how they are manipulated and even how they are measured [typically they are divided into three components:affect (evaluation or liking of), cognition (beliefs or knowledge) and behaviour (overt behaviour directed towards something)]. Measuring attitudes is difficult and work on it is ongoing in social research. There are number of validated scales you can use to measure attitudinal change. For example, Thurstone's method of equal-appearing intervals; Likert's method of summated ratings; Guttman's Scalogram and Osgood's Semantic Differential.
There are two main schools of thought to changing attitudes and behaviours:
1. Formal attitude change approach - people are rational information processing beings and you can motivate them to listen to a communication, learn it and incorporate it into their repertoire of responses when this learning is rewarded.
2. Group dynamics approach - this assumes that people are social beings who need and use other people as a basis of self-knowledge and regulate their behaviours in accordance to the group norms and the demands of the surrounding environment.
Research has shown that attitudes which are enduring and generalised do not necessarily produce enduring and generalised behaviour. There is a discrepancy between what people think and what they actually do. So trying to change people's attitudes to something (e.g. encouraging people to have a more physically active lifestyle)may mean that they are not accompanied by changes in behaviour. If behavioural change does not automatically follow from attitude change, should we give up? There a large number of attitude change techniques that social psychologists have developed that could be adapted for use in public health. One example is 'social learning'. This theory states that most human behaviour leads to consequences which feed back to the behaviour. An easy illustration I came across is if a child touches a cold iron (behaviour), nothing happens so s/he do it again. Next time,the iron is hot and s/he burns his/her hand. S/he then learns not to touch it again. You can learn by direct experience, looking, listening or reading.
1. What an audience thinks of a communicator may be directly influenced by what they think of the message.
2. The more extreme the opinion change that the communicator asks for, the more actual change s/he is likely to get.
3. The audience's attention to the communication and comprehension of the arguments, examples and appeals are crucial to help changing attitudes.
4. The audience's initial position should be recognised at the start. The greater the discrepancy between the message and the recipent's initial position, the greater the attitude change. However, with extreme discrepancy (and low credibility sources) there is a falling off in attitude change.
5. Successful persuasion takes into account all the reasons underlying attitudes. You also need to be aware of what motivation the audience will need to accept the change.
6. All techniques of attitude change rely upon the assumption that change comes out of conflict, discrepancy, inconsistency or discontent with the status quo. For example, group pressure techniques make the individual aware that his behaviour is in disagreement with the status quo.
1. In time, the effects of a persuasive communication ten to wear off. (Interestingly, a message from a positive source tends to wear off quicker than one from a negative source!)
2. Attitude change may be more persistent over time if the receiver actively participates in, rather than passively receives the communication.
3. Repeating a communication tends to prolong its influence.
4. More of the desired opinion change may be found some time after exposure to the communication than right after the exposure (sleeper effect).
Your PCT is falling behind in reaching its target for Chlamydia Screening in your area. Scoping of the issue identified that teenagers do not see Chlamydia as a health issue that they should be concerned about. Imagine you are hired to change teenagers' attitudes towards Chlamydia Screening and help promote uptake amongst 16 to 20 year olds in your community. Try answering the following questions to get a feel for how you may go about tackling this issue:
1. How specific does the change have to be?
2. How long does the change have to last?
3. How many people have to be changed?
4. What are you actually changing?
5. Are you changing attitudes or behaviour?
6. What media, resources and time frame do you have?
7. What are the potential barriers to effective communication?
8. What is the evidence for what works and doesn't work?
9. If changing behaviours, what theories could be applied to help change attitudes and behaviours?
10.How will you know if it worked?