In this paper we provide an overview of the most relevant research work on the simulation of attitudes which evolved in the late 90's and mainly after the year 2000. The general framework for the modeling, simulation and computational research on attitudes integrates research approaches (both fundamental and applicative) which combine theories from sociology, social psychology, social economics, political science, conflict theories, human-computer interaction areas with complexity theory, computer science, autonomous agents, artificial life, artificial intelligence, machine learning and decision making. One of the main dimensions is that of elaborating agent-based studies and simulations of the attitude dynamics.
115 US undergraduates received either no exposure, moderate exposure, excessive exposure, or exposure removal to a political message. Dormitory students were randomly assigned to 1 of the 4 groups. Over a 12-day period, the groups were asked to fill out the 10-item questionnaire which included the stimulus statement. The political & social questions were to be ranked 1-9 from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree'. During that period, the primary stimulus object, a poster with the slogan "reduce foreign aid" was displayed in the public areas of the dormitory with a sequentially greater number displayed, until they were all removed. Appended to each poster were postcards which could be returned if a student wished to help the campaign as a volunteer. A significant effect of experimental conditions & attitudinal evaluation was indicated by univariant analysis of variance of the questionnaire data. Positive attitude improvement toward the reduction of foreign aid was verified with Duncan Multiple Range Analysis. The results confirmed the preinvestigation prediction that the resulting attitudes would follow the inverse U curve associated with the exposure reactance effect. In addition to the measure of attitudal response, a measure of behavioral response of significance was calculated from the postcard returns. The behavioral response followed a linear function. Results indicated a positive evaluation to the message under moderate exposure, followed by negative evaluation under excessive exposure. A delayed posttest indicated that the negative attitude to overexposure improved over time. Psychological reactance was suggested as a possible explanation for the differences in findings between the behavioral response & the attitudinal response. 1 Table. S. Lupton.
Communicator-recipient similarity is conceptualized as having 3 dimensions: demographic similarity, att'al similarity, & situational similarity. The first 2 of these dimensions were tested in 2 factorial-design, cross-cultural persuasion exp's involving Amer & Filipino speakers & a total of 128 Filipino S's. The general hyp investigated was: The greater the communicator-recipient similarity, the greater the att change & the more favorably perceived/evaluated the communicator & the communication. Att'al similarity proved to be a more potent variable than demographic similarity. All cells showed signif before/after att change, but, contrary to what was hyp'ed, both exp's indicated that the least similar communicators were the most favorably perceived/evaluated by the recipients. These results are interpreted as instances of the disconfirmation of negative expectancies. AA.
This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.
This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.
This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.
In studies of attitude change, we must distinguish those changes of attitude which leave the R essentially on the same side of the issue from those in which his attitude changes from favorable to unfavorable or vice versa. Guttman scale theory provides a 'zero point' to mark the point of in diff. in'single determinations of att. A number of technical problems arise when this is applied to studies of attitude change. The problems include the choice of N of items, the N of response categories per item, the position of the zero point along the content continuum, & the special meaning of the 'invariance' of the zero point. Data from a study of attitude change resulting from public Sch desegregation is used to examine the likely utility of intensity analysis in attitude change problems. AA.
