Hey reader. Have you ever thought a little more deeply about attitudes? What are they and how are they formed? When? How do they influence our opinion, and how do they determine our behavior? These are all legitimate everyday questions to which I will try to offer you a complete and simple answer.
Attitudes are relatively consistent and stable evaluative summaries about an object and are an important psychological construct because they have been shown to influence and predict many behaviors, including predicting behavior when choosing food. An attitude is a set of beliefs about an object (eg food) that motivates people to behave in a certain way. Also, attitude can be interpreted as a positive or negative evaluative reaction to people, things and/or objects. Evaluative reactions imply a tendency towards the object of the attitude, which can be for or against, which is expressed by concepts such as liking/disliking or preferring/not preferring. So let’s put it into practice: “I like product X more than product Y”, or: “I prefer to buy in small family farm’s because I like encouraging the development of local cultivation”. Attitude is broadly defined as the beliefs that individuals have about the possible consequences of performing a target behavior and their thinking about the outcomes of each consequence. It is believed that attitudes are based on beliefs and assessments and are stored in long-term memory, and can also be connected in associative memory with other attitudes and knowledge.
From a marketing perspective, an attitude is an evaluative assessment of objects and it is formed by accessing various information from memory or developed by consumers at a given moment. Also, it is possible that they are formed by a combination of the above actions in accordance with the goals and available information that the consumer processes in the context in which the evaluation takes place, for example when choosing food. Information is decoded and transformed into evaluative judgments in two ways: intentionally (cognitive beliefs) or affectively (spontaneous affective responses). Therefore, it can be concluded that the process of attitude formation is complex and depends on different stimuli to which the consumer is subject at the time of attitude formation.
But why are attitudes important to us in the context of understanding children as consumers? Attitudes are among the most important factors that determine behavioral intentions in children, and attitudes toward behavior have been shown to predict behavioral intention with high accuracy. The literature provides strong evidence that attitudes play a key role in consumer intentions and behavior. Since attitudes are positively correlated with food choices, more positive attitudes toward food should be an effective way to influence behavior toward healthier food choices.
Two types of attitudes are thought to influence behavior: directly measured (explicit, self-reported) attitudes and indirectly measured (implicit) attitudes.
It’s time to distinguish which attitude is which! Explicit (conscious), self-reported attitudes toward food correspond to conscious judgments about the nutritional value and health benefits of certain foods. Explicit attitudes are readily available and therefore can be measured through direct self-report (eg via a survey), allowing for cognitive reflection. Explicit attitudes can include evaluating the benefits of certain behavior and influence rational decision-making. However, explicit attitudes are sometimes not sufficient for understanding and predicting behavior, and as an alternative approach, he proposes to measure implicit (unconscious) attitudes in addition to explicit ones.
We view implicit attitudes as underlying evaluations that occur quickly and automatically, and often occur below the level of awareness, thereby addressing the problem of reporting bias. Implicit attitudes are more automatic evaluations related to sensations and emotions experienced in response to food, such as taste and smell. Implicit attitudes are non-verbal and can be measured indirectly, usually through the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Implicit attitudes can influence behavior in a more spontaneous, affective way without rational consideration of benefits, so they are often a better predictor of behavior than explicit attitudes, especially in the domain of food choices. Likewise, they represent spontaneous, fast, and automatic behavior, and for this reason, measuring implicit attitudes can provide new insights into understanding consumer habits and predicting behavior that develops without much thought.
Explicit and implicit attitudes may be strongly correlated in some cases but weakly correlated in others, even in children. So-called dual-processing models explain convergence by assuming that explicit and implicit attitudes are represented in memory structures and that links between the two types of attitudes develop when they are repeatedly activated. In other words, explicit and implicit attitudes are related in the sense that they can reinforce or provoke each other to initiate behavior. Implicit and explicit attitudes are potential antecedents of food choice and combine affective and cognitive components that may vary in their relative dominance. However, the affective and cognitive components of food attitudes can lead to different predispositions towards certain foods and potentially different food choices.
To date, several authors have examined children’s implicit and explicit attitudes towards food. There is evidence that changes in implicit and explicit attitudes lead to changes in food choices. Studies show that explicit attitudes better predict food choice in people with high cognitive capacity (eg older children), that is, when there are no other stimuli to pay attention to. In contrast, implicit attitudes better predict food choices when a person’s cognitive capacity is low (eg, younger children).
It can be concluded that changing children’s behavior towards food requires changing their explicit and implicit attitudes towards food. By understanding children’s attitudes, it is possible to find effective ways to change the behavior of children of preschool and elementary school age regarding the choice of healthy food.
Take 10 minutes and think about what you read. Try to ask yourself how you influence the explicit and implicit attitudes of your children. Are they positive or negative? Do you have any idea how to change them?
Everything is still not completely crystal clear to you? Naturally, we talked about a lot. Get in touch to clarify everything and discuss the next step.