Functional attitude theory (FAT) is a theory in psychology which suggests that beliefs and attitudes are influential to various psychological functions. Attitudes can be influential on many processes such as being utilitarian (useful), social, relating to values, or a reduction of cognitive dissonance. They can be beneficial and help people interact with the world. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956) and Katz (1960) separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served. This theory proposes that attitudes are held by individuals because they are important and integral to psychological functioning. The function of an attitude is more important than whether the attitude is accurate or correct.
Background
Aristotle's Rhetoric, renowned for its modes of persuasion in ethos, logos, and pathos, gave mankind its first recorded guide to and theory of social influence. Aristotle recognized that different appeals are necessary for different types of persuasion, and that these appeals can be tailored and refined to better suit the audience or better suit the product or idea at hand. In the late 1950s when psychoanalysis and behaviorism reigned supreme in the U.S. as the foci of psychological studies, Smith, Bruner, and White (1956) and Katz (1960) separately and independently developed typologies of human attitudes in relation to the functions to which they believed the attitudes served. The goal of these ‘functional attitude theories,’ (FAT) as they would come to be known, was to understand the effect of functional attitudinal states in relation cognition and behavior, and specifically, for Katz (1960), to increase the efficacy of persuasive communications by matching approaches or appeals to the function that the attitude served.
Smith et al. (1956) concentrated on the links between attitudinal states and personality and interviewed ten men regarding their attitude toward the Soviet Union (Carpenter et al., 2013). This logically inductive study was too small to make any binding conclusions, and the study's non-empirical nature meant that it would be dubious as a base for future research, but Smith and colleagues’ foundational theories would go on to inspire and guide future FAT research. Likewise, Katz's (1960) deductive findings did more to explain and define the general concepts of FAT than it did in guiding the methods of future research. In fact, the lack of earlier research on FAT has been linked to both studies’ failure to provide reproducible and falsifiable methods for future research on the theory (Harris & Toledo, 1997; Shavitt & Nelson, 2002). Despite this lack of methodology, both studies contributed to the basic concepts of FAT as it came of age in the 1980s and on.
Concepts
Within FAT, attitudes are considered qualitative variables in relation to the function that they serve. That is, attitudes are the independent variable of a set function (utilitarian, social-adjustive, etc.), which influence both cognition and behavior (dependent variables). Researchers posited that people develop attitudes to serve their goals, and that although any particular attitude might serve multiple functions, it would generally serve one more than the others (Katz, 1960; Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956 ). They theorized that although two people might have an attitude with exactly the same valence, that attitude might serve very different functions for each person. While different attitudes serve different psychological functions, it is imperative to note that they are not mutually exclusive of one another as similar attitudes may be developed for different reasons by different people; it is the aim of FAT to understand why these attitudes develop to better understand how to influence them (Harris & Toledo, 1997). Though different terminology was employed, both Katz (1960) and Smith et al. (1956) conceptualized similar attitude functions: utilitarian, social-adjustive, value-expressive, ego-defensive, and knowledge. These five traditional functional attitudes are defined briefly below, followed by a synthesis of recent "neofunctional" FAT studies, and a brief critique of FAT.
Utilitarian attitudes
Many attitudes serve a utilitarian function by serving to amplify rewards and minimize the punishments attained from objects in the environment (Katz 1960, Smith et al., 1956). The models of utilitarian attitudes are consequentialist theories: that which creates right acts is their consequences (Miller, 1990). It refers to theories of right action whereas the right act to choose in any situation is the one that will achieve the highest balance of pleasure over pain for all affected beings. When no act is available to which will produce net pleasure, the act which is right will produce the least net pain. As an example, one's attitude toward ice cream may serve a utilitarian function because it is likely to be based on the reward (e.g., enjoyable taste) and punishments (e.g., weight gain) associated with ice cream and to guide behavior that maxims benefits while minimizing costs (e.g., eating low-fat ice cream) (Shavitt & Nelson, 2002). Based in human beings' need to discriminate between objects that produce pleasure and increase task efficiency and those that produce pain and decrease task efficiency, utilitarian functions aid in increasing utility (Carpenter et al., 2013). An individual with a utilitarian attitude is concerned with how an object will assist in improving their quality of life. In terms of products, any T-shirt could be considered utilitarian in terms of its ability to provide comfort and some shelter for an individual.
Social-adjustive attitudes
Social-adjustive functions are those which regulate relationships and enable individuals to climb the social ladder through outward displays of status which are theorized to make the individual more attractive or popular in the eyes of valued groups. An individual with a social-adjustive attitude is concerned with status, popularity, and how they are viewed by others and will seek objects that assist in developing their desired social image (Carpenter et al., 2013). An example of a product with social-adjustive function would be a designer T-shirt, such as one with an embroidered horse or a couture-brand logo that communicates its worth to viewers. Attitudes serving a social-adjustive function promote the capability to connect with appropriate social group members or to impress attractive others. Snyder and DeBono (1985) have suggested that attitudes may often serve contrasting functions for people who differ in self-monitoring. High self-monitoring individuals typically attempt to tailor their behavior to the social/interpersonal requirement of the situations they encounter, to fit in with others, thus implying that they may often hold attitudes that serve a social-adjustive function. In a series of studies assessing participants' responses to advertisements, Snyder and DeBono (1985) found that high self-monitoring individuals were influenced more by image-oriented "soft-sell" ads that implied a product's utility at helping its users to fit in with others (i.e., social-adjustive concerns), whereas low self-monitoring individuals were much more responsive to "hard-sell" ads that focused on the intrinsic quality and value of the products (said to reflect value-expressive concerns) (Bazzini & Shaffer 1995). Advertising studies have shown that participants form more favorable attitudes toward a variety of consumer goods when the ads highlight functionally relevant rather than functionally irrelevant concerns (Shavitt, 1989; Snyder & DeBono, 1985). Persuasive appeals are most effective at influencing attitudes when they in some way address the underlying motives that such attitudes serve (DeBono & Harnish, 1988).
Value-expressive attitudes
Perhaps the most difficult to conceptualize and affect, value-expressive functions assist in the outward expression of innate values. Some attitudes are meaningful to a person because they articulate beliefs that are intrinsic to that person's self-concept (i.e. their ideas about who they are). The attitude is, consequently, "part of who they are" and the expression of that attitude communicates important things about that person to others (Carpenter et al., 2013). Hullett (2002) used value-relevance as an indication of the perceived utility of an attitude to achieve a desired end-state. It is a direct measure of the relationship between a value and an attitude, rather than a measure of the expression of attitudes that are linked to personal values. Concentrating on value-expressive communication of an attitude rather than value-relevance allows communication behavior to take center stage in considering the relationship between values, attitudes, and behaviors (Carpenter et al., 2013). Value-expressive attitudes serve no direct outward purpose, and can be best understood as existing to satisfy an individual's need to feel unique and true-to-self. Individuals with value-expressive attitudes are not concerned with much other than being true to themselves (Carpenter et al., 2013). Product-wise, a concert T-shirt that was passed down from father to son due to their shared value of the musical stylings of that artist would be value-expressive in that the son feels the T-shirt, no matter how dingy, is an extension of his true self.
Ego-defensive attitudes
Ego-defensive functions serve to protect the individual from both internal and external unpleasantness. Ego-defensive attitudes allow people to avoid accepting unpalatable or objectionable aspects of self or of the external world. Ego-defensive attitudes can advocate conserving one's own self-esteem. An ego-defensive function, in which one's attitude is held to protect oneself from threatening or undesirable truths (Bazzini & Shaffer 1995). Threats to self-esteem can include personal failings or poor behavior. Katz (1960) and Shavitt and Nelson (2002) posit that ego-defensive attitudes aid in self-esteem maintenance through multiple processes. Cialdini et al. (1976) propose that a product serving an ego-defensive function would be a T-shirt with the logo of a championship-winning sports team to boost one's own ego through what they term "basking in reflected glory". That is, the recognition of a sports team's greatness serves to boost one's own self-esteem through general association.
Knowledge attitudes
The fifth function, that of knowledge, aids individuals in comprehending the world around them. Individuals with a knowledge attitude seek to understand occurrences out of the desire to know, not because it is immediately relevant to their needs, but because they simply want to understand (Carpenter et al., 2013). Attitudes that serve a knowledge function help people gain greater understanding of the structure and operation of their world (Katz, 1960). The world that people inhabit is extremely complex, and that attitudes might facilitate making sense of that world without serving needs other than understanding. Other scholars propose that the knowledge function drives attitudes that serve for no purpose other than learning about the world as an end in itself, predicated on a basic need to know (Locander & Spivey, 1978).
Contemporary research