Attitude change

The catastrophe theory of attitudes (Latane & Nowak, 1994) predicts that extremity will be a function of involvement, with uninvolving attitudes normally distributed about a neutral midpoint and involving attitudes categorical and extreme. Two processes that may lead attitudes to become more involving and extreme were tested in this experiment--thought-induced polarization and information-induced polarization. College students rated social issues before and after thinking and/or reading information about them. Attitudes became more extreme after respondents read mixed information about the attitude object, particularly for issues on which participants were initially uninvolved, but did not extremify after thought alone. There was little evidence for selective encoding or retrieval or for biased assimilation, though increases in attitude extremity were associated with increases in involvement. Thus, as predicted by catastrophe theory, reading mixed information may increase involvement in an issue, which in turn leads to more extreme attitudes.

Argument is made for the use of variation permissive methods in the study of social judgment; one such dynamic method which purports to track on-line social evaluation (the mouse paradigm) is then introduced. The methodology of the mouse paradigm, which involves updating 'moment-to-moment' feelings via manipulation of a cursor by computer mouse, permits a wide range of experimental contrivance. Three varieties (SCALE, 1D and 2D), which differ in the amount of virtual (on screen) freedom of movement and psychological constraint, were tested with stereotyped targets (negative, ambivalent and positive) to determine any differences in their absolute distance time series and the extent to which aspects of these time series remained correlated with traditional scale-ratings of positivity and stability in feelings about targets. Results indicated a sharp difference between the two-dimensional (2D) variety and the one-dimensional varieties (SCALE and 1D), a finding which supports contention that the 2D variety possesses an appropriate balance of freedom and constraint.

The three specific objectives of this study were to develop
a clearer understanding of the image which business has on
the college campus, to develop insights into the attitudes
of business students and a comparison of students in the
business college with members of Delta Sigma Pi, a professional
fraternity for male students enrolled in business.
In order to base the response evaluations on a reasonably
homogeneous group of subjects, only those colleges with
chapters of the fraternity were considered. The research
data was collected during the fall of 1972 from 1,000
questionnaires mailed to 13 selected colleges . Based on
the comparative data obtained, it is possible to accept
the major hypothesis that students in professional fraternal
organizations are significantly different in their
attitudes and personal characteristics than are students
who do not belong to these organizations.

The eighties will be known as a decade of reform, a time when several key reports highlighted serious deficiencies in education and alerted the public to the possibility of a crisis in this country. It has been suggested that for education to improve, teachers must become more aware. What is needed, many believed, is for teachers to become more reflective. Reflection, in the context of teaching, refers to teachers thinking systematically about their work, evaluating what happens in the classroom and eventually making changes to improve teaching and learning. Although the literature was replete with theory on how a practitioner can approach the act of reflection, there was no practical model which could be directly applied to the classroom situation. The purpose of the study was to provide teachers with a practical model for daily reflection in the classroom. A model was designed using reflection, decision making and problem solving theory. The model was tested using a two-phased pilot study, followed by experimental use by 60 teachers in grades K-12. Participants used the Teacher Reflection Model for 10 school days and filled out and returned a questionnaire. The questionnaire provided Likert-type attitude statements that were rated by the respondents on a scale of from 1 through 5, according to their agreement or disagreement with the statement. The attitude statements were designed to measure the practicality of the model. The average of the scores of the attitude statements became the Attitude Index for the teacher and provided a measure of practicality for the Teacher Reflection Model. Several subgroups within the sample of 60 teachers were compared using a t-test to analyze whether there was a significant difference in their average Attitude Index. Linear correlation tests were run to evaluate the relationships between the computed Attitude Index, the years of teaching for the respondents and the average time needed to fill out the Daily Reflection Form. Results of the study indicate that the Teacher Reflection Model is a practical instrument to assist teachers to reflect and that the questionnaire was a reliable instrument to evaluate the model. Several recommendations for improving the model are included in the study.