A Multi-Method-Approach for Investigating Attitude Change of Emerging Technologies
Mon-B16-Talk II-02
Presented by: Julius Fenn
Emerging technologies will later only be applied if stakeholders, policymakers and/or the broader public accept them. Thus, it is important to understand the process of attitude formation towards emerging technologies to inform possible design decisions of technologies in the early process of development. To investigate the attitude formation towards a fictional technological implant we set up a mixed design (2x3) with a within factor “time” (two measurement time points) and a between factor “condition” (two experimental and one control condition). Within one-week participants draw two times a Cognitive-Affective Map (CAM). CAM is a relative novel quantitative and qualitative research tool, which allows to identify, visually represent and analyze existing belief structures. Within the experimental conditions participants who drew a CAM with positive connotations elaborated a negative CAM and vice versa while participants the control group elaborated their own CAM. Applying multivariate multilevel models, a significant change in attitude was found in the experimental groups. This significant change is further elaborated by means of additional quantitative and qualitative analysis, whereby we summarized the CAM by a recently developed five-step procedure to additionally investigate the attitude change on a content-wise level.
Keywords: Attitude formation, Attitude change, emerging technologies, prospective technology assessment, empirical ethics, Cognitive-Affective Map