Attitude towards Advertising

Attitudes can also arise due to observational learning, wherein people internalize the attitudes of others; passing them on from one individual to the other. Attitudes can be held implicitly and do not innately imply behavior. Often individual’s will have consideration of a ground or opinion but not act on it when the chance rises. Many factors influence whether or not attitudes will come to impact behavior.

Attitude - Attitude toward a behavior is referred as an individual’s positive and negative evaluation of a relevant behavior and is composed of an individual’s salient beliefs regarding the perceived consequences of performing behavior (Ajzen, 1991, p.207).

An attitude are the long lasting beliefs, feelings, and behavioral responses towards social objects such as other people or issues (Attitudes and Behavior, n.d.). Attitudes can either be positive or negative.

“Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations, feeling, and tendencies that individuals harbor toward objects or concepts” (Wild). As the book mentions, attitudes are similar to values, these are formed according to a culture background and varies from country to country.

Attitude–a relatively constant feeling, predisposition, or a set of beliefs that is directed toward an object, a person, or a situation.

Attitudes are thoughts that you have accepted as true and that lead you to think, feel, or act positively or negatively toward a person, idea or event. They represent an emotional readiness to behave in a particular manner. (Reece) Positive and negative attitudes affect how you work and how you influence other people around you. These attitudes can absolutely be changed though because we are not born with those attitudes. We form them as time passes, depending on the situations that we have been through. For instance, if you had a job where your supervisor was racist toward you, you would begin to form a negative attitude about supervisors thinking that all of them are going to be racist. Instead, you can change your attitude by thinking that not everyone acts the same way. A positive attitude can make a difference between an amazing life and a nonsense one. Therefore, a lot of people should try to change their attitude to a positive one.

This essay will examine the strength of the link between attitudes and behaviour and show that attitudes do not always predict behaviour as there are a number of variables that need to be put in place before the evaluation of a person behaving according to their attitudes can be assessed. These variables will be discussed in some detail. The three component model will be discussed and also attitude formation will be touched upon, before the link between behaviour and attitude can be examined a general understanding of how and why attitudes are formed needs to be addressed.

The viewer sits on the couch, nestled inside a cozy, warm blanket with a large bowl of buttery and salty popcorn on his lap. His heart starts racing as the movie reaches its climax. Just as his lungs stop breathing and his eyes grow wide with fascination, the channel changes to an old advertisement that he’s seen a thousand times. Ads like that one appeal to the three main techniques that have subliminal messages to viewers. These different techniques have proven to be effective with television watchers. Advertisers use these three techniques to target a certain audience.

Attitudes carry a huge weight in social psychology. In the past, the theory of attitudes was considered the most dominant study in social psychology (Allport, 1935). Throughout time, the term attitude has accumulated many definitions, a renowned definition being “a relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols” (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014, p. 150). The focus on attitudes is so significant because the question of whether attitudes can predict behaviour has arisen time after time. If attitudes do predict behaviour, we can discover why people act in certain ways and, therefore, attempt to change negative behaviours. Over time, work has been carried out to determine to what extent attitudes predict behaviour.

There was a time when advertisement were made only to market and sell the products but now dramatic changes have taken place in this field (Shead and Dobson 01). Today companies not only want to sell their products but also aim to create emotional attachment with the customers for which they do emotional or subliminal advertising.

Social psychologists know that people’s attitudes define whether they have a successful, bright, happy future. Most people can agree that this is the case, but people must ask themselves why and what really makes up a person’s attitude. In past years, attitude was recognized as one of the most important psychological experiences of human beings. Over time, the significance of attitudes has increased specifically in understanding how people come to be who they are. This paper will discuss the structure of attitudes through the ABC Model which explains three different components (affect, behavior and cognition) and how these components play a role in people’s lives.

Attitudes refer to one’s evaluations of the social world: others, objects and ideas. These overall evaluations can be positive, negative, or neutral, vary in their extremity and be based on a variety of information (Tesser and Martin, 1996; Petty, Wheeler, and Tormala, 2003 ). A popular conceptualization of the attitude construct, the tripartite theory, holds that there are three primary types of information in which attitudes can be based (Breckler, 1984; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960; Zanna & Rempel, 1988) : cognitions or beliefs, affect or feelings and actions or behaviour. As defined by Richard Perloff, persuasion is the process which moulds and shapes attitudes. It is through persuasion that changes in attitudes can occur. The two methods

Advertising has become an integral part of our society. In the world of advertising, many tactics and strategies are used to lure consumers into purchasing a product or delivering a message. Producers try various ways to attract people’s attention, and persuasive advertising is one of the many methods they use to promote ideas that can earn them consumers’ trust and loyalty as well as to advertise for their products. In persuasive advertising, advertisers try to apply the appropriate use of persuasive tools to appeal to the consumer and get their message through. The BMW advertisement of texting and driving uses pathos, or the emotion of regret, and the use of this emotion is being applied effectively because regret is associated with all car accidents especially those due to texting and driving.

Attitudes are the way someone communicates, behaves and interprets the message from others. This is when they will apply different generalities to specifically comprehend various groups (such as: stereotyping). These factors help them to analyze and interpret the meanings of numerous cultures / subcultures. In most cases, this can often lead to clashes with many people not fitting into these categories and using them to generalize about specific segments of society. (Deresky, 2011) (Sepehri, 2011)

Advertising is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce one’s prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes for which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object, or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to ‘persuade’ to consumer in order to generate new markets for production.