Blog one: Attitude Changes

Attitudes are global response dispositions that a person holds towards a person, object or issue (Scott, 1996). People organise their perceptions of the world in terms of their attitudes towards various stimuli (Scott, 1996). Attitudes are important for humans, they help people adjust to new situations, separate punishment from reward and influence what risks or precautions we take with our lives (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). Attitude and attitude changes influence how people construct their world but also how people behave in a wide range of situations (Scott, 1996). When a person’s attitude changes about a certain object, person or issue, it either becomes more or less favourable and is usually the consequence of persuasion (Coleman, 2006).
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a model of attitude change viewed as developing form two distinct routes, the central and the peripheral route (Petty, Wegener & Fabrigar, 1997; Scott, 1996). The central route states that a change in attitude is most likely to occur from careful and thoughtful consideration of the information presented (Scott, 1996). For attitudinal change to occur through the central route an individual must be motivated to think and scrutinise the merits of an advocacy, because of this, central route attitude change tent to persist and are more predictive of behaviours (Scott, 1996). The peripheral route of attitudinal changes usually includes the use of simple decision rules, cues from the environment or mere exposure processes that induces change without the scrutiny of the merits of information relevant to the issue (Petty et al.1997; Scott, 1996). Attention to these cues may cause an individual to reach an attitude without engaging in any meaningful cognitive processing (Scott, 1996). As a consequence, this form of attitude change is less persistent as the individual is less likely to personalise the message arguments within the context of their attitude schema (Scott, 1996). Thus attitudes can be formed and changed under different circumstances based on either environmental cues or motivated thinking.
Drug abuse is common among adolescents and as there are many short-term and long-term risks associated with drug use a variety of polices and prevention and intervention programs related to drug use have been developed (Scott, 1996). The Australian Government has implemented a National Drug Campaign which aims to reduce young Australians motivation to use illicit drugs by increasing their knowledge about the potential negative consequences of drug use. The campaign aims to change young Australians (ages 13-25 years) attitudes about four illicit substances; ice, marijuana, speed and ecstasy by increasing their knowledge of potential serious consequences through credible evidence-based depictions of negative drug outcomes. The ads show the potential negative physical, psychological and social consequences of drug use.
Whether a message is successful in changing attitudes depends on a number of factors including the target characteristics, source characteristics, message characteristics and cognitive routes (Harrington et al., 2003). Target characteristic refer to the characteristics of the person who receives the message. Intelligence is an example of a target characteristic, the more intelligent a person is the less easily they are persuaded by the message content. Self-esteem, mind frame and mood are other target characteristics that may affect the successfulness of the message (Harrington et al., 2003). Source characteristics are how trustworthy or credible the source of the message is. People are more likely to be persuaded to change their attitudes if the source of the message is from is trustworthy source such as a professional journal rather than a popular magazine or newspaper (Harrington et al., 2003) The message characteristics can play a role in the effectiveness of a campaign, sometimes hearing both sides of the story can help change peoples attitudes (Harrington et al., 2003). Central and peripheral routes as explained by the ELM determine the level of cognitive processing. Modern advertising that use celebrities, experts or doctors to endorse certain messages encourage individuals to look at the source of the message and not the content utilising the peripheral route to try and change peoples attitudes (Harrington et al., 2003).
For most adolescents the topic of drug use is neither important nor relevant in their lives (Scott, 1996). Most of them have not lives long enough to have experienced any serious negative consequences to drug taking (Scott, 1996). They typically view the negative consequences associated with drug use abstractly, as something that will happen to other people and not to them and thus not relevant to them (Scott, 1996). As adolescents have this view, the attractiveness and credibility of the message source would be an important factor as well as the number of arguments presented within the message (Scott, 1996). A successful intervention or prevention campaign would be one that increases the exposure to expert and or attractive sources and the message delivery should focus on many arguments instead of focusing on just one (Scott, 1996).
The current government National Drug Campaign seems to incorporate these key factors into their drug prevention strategy and thus indicates that it should be affective in changing young Australians and adolescents attitudes about drug behaviours.


References

Baumesister, R. F. and Bushman, B. J. (2008). Attitudes, beliefs and consistency. In Social Psychology and Human Nature (pp. 223-249). Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

Harrington, N. G., Lane, D. R., Donohew, L., Zimmerman, R. S., Norling, G. R., An, J., Cheah, W. H., McClure, L., Buckingham, T., Garofalo, E. and Bevins, C. C. (2003). Persuasive strategies for effective anti-drug messages. Communication Monographs, 70(1), 16-38.

Petty, R. E., Wegener, P. T. and Fabrigar, L. R. (1997). Attitudes and attitude change. Annual Review of Psychology, 98, 609-647.

Scott, C. G. (1996). Understanding attitude changes in developing effective substance abuse prevention programs for adolescents. School Counsellor, 43(3), 187-196.