11. Attitudes and social cognition Flashcards
what are the levels of social behaviour>
intra-individual processes (social cognition, attitude formation) interpersonal processes (between individuals e.g. helping behaviours) group processes (e.g. nations, ethic groups, interest groups, political groups)
attitude
association between an act or object and evaluation
what are the 3 components of attitude?
cognitive, emotional and behavioural
what are the different dimensions of attitude?
strength, implicitness, complexity, ambivalence, coherence
strength of attiude
durability and impact of an attitude. Made up of attitude importance and accessibility
measured by the stability of attitudes over time and as affected by other dimensions
strength - importance
personal relevance significance of an attitude for a particular person
measured by -> asking people how personally important their attitude is OR how concerned they are about something
strength - accessibility
ease with which an attitude comes to mind
measured by -> length of time it takes for people to report their attitude about something, OR by people’s reports of how often they discuss with something with friends and family OR how often they think about the object
implicitness of an attitude
degree to which we are aware of the attitude
sometimes so implicit they regulate behaviour unconsciously or automatically
complexity of attitude
degree of reasoning that forms the attitude
intricacy of thoughts about different attitudes is their cognitive complexity
ambivalence of attitudes
extends to which an attitude object is associated with conflicting feelings / conflicting evaluates responses (positive and negative)
low positive or negative = no impact on behaviour (dont care)
high positive or negative = impacts behaviour
coherence of attitude
extent to which an attitude (particularly cognitive and evaluative) is internally consistent
do e like things we believe have positive consequences for us?
what is the theory of planned behaviour?
behavioural beliefs = attitudes toward behaviour
normative beliefs = subjective norms
control beliefs = perceived behavioural control
all of ^^ together = intention which leads to behaviour
attitude toward the behaviour -
the degree to which performance of the behaviour is positive or negatively valued
behavioural belief
evaluation of the outcomes of performing the behaviour (e.g. costs or benefits of facebook?
what did the Yale Studies show?
conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages.
manipulates aspects of a persuasive situation and looked at effects on attitude change in people
- communicator (yale)
message source
credibility (trust worthy) attractiveness (looks) likeable powerful similar to recipient
- message (yale)
fear = common tool
appeal to values
- channel (yale)
think about difference between TV, internet & radio
e.g photos of starving children
- contet (yale)
soft music in the background
smell of baking when buying house
attitude inoculation
attitude inoculation
building up the receiver / audience resistance to a persuasive message by producing arguments for it OR to forearm against opposing messages
- receiver / audience factors
strong attitude to begin with?
individual difference with regard to some people easier to persuade than others
what is the elaboration likeihood model?
two routes through which receiver may process messages content
central rout and peripheral rout
central rout (elaboration likelihood model)
message recipient highly attentive and processes information through careful thought and rational thinking
peripheral rout (elaboration likelihood model)
bypasses rational process and appeals to other processes such as heart or stomach
cognitive dissonance theory
changes in behaviour often changes attitudes.
when behaviour is inconsistent with attitude or we receive information that is inconstant with out attitude experience cognitive dissonance - lead to attitudinal change
dissonance
inconsistency between cognitions result in an aversive psychological state called dissonance
(i love chocolate v chocolate is damaging health)
how to reduce dissonance?
- changing one of cognitions
- reducing the importance of one of the cognitions
- adding additional justifying cognitions
what does reducing dissonance do?
changes attitudes
behaviour –> attitude
schemas
our collection of terms of specific things; move away from fact and can be incorrect; how we try understand the world
mental structures that organise our knowledge about the social world (about people, ourselves, social roles, specific events?
event schemas
associated with particular situation, they tell us waht to expect
person schemas
knowledge of structures about specific people / types of people
stereotypes, implicit personality theories
implicit personality theories
what characteristics go together to form a particular personality type
self-schema
self-concept
future orientated schemas - what we would like to become
prejudice
judging people based on stereotype
requires distinction between in-groups and out-groups
Jane-Elliot experiment (eye colour experiment)
stereotype
characteristics attributed to people based upon their membership in groups
social identity theory
social identity refers to the way that our group members affect our self-concept
Deriving a sense of self or identity fro membership of a particulat group
why does categorisation produce bias?
we have personal and social identities
we have fundamental need to feel good about ourselves
we are motivated to think our group is better than other groups
so we display in-group preferential behaviour to increase the positivity of the intergroup comparison
how do reduce bias and hostility?
contact between groups and finding common ground (common goals, interests)
attributions
process of inferring the causes of one’s own and other’s mental states and behaviour
attribution process is deciding if behaviour is internally or externally caused
internal and external causes
stable and unstable cuases
what are attribution style
some of us have more of a tendency to attribute behaviours / experiences in a particular way. It is a person’s habitual manner of assigning causes to behaviours or events
fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias)
tendency to attribute another person’s behaviour to his r her own dispositional qualities, rather than to the situation.
Development of negative stereotypes of disadvantaged groups
Actor-observer Bias
tendency to attribute our own behaviour to external factors and others’ behaviours to dispositional causes
why does actor-observer bias occur?
posses more information about ourselves than others (distinctiveness and consistency info)
in considering our own behaviour, focus is on the external environment not ourselves
self-serving bias
tendency for attributes success to stable internal factors and failures to temporary external factors
why does self-serving bias occur
self-presentation (make us look better than others)
enhance self-esteem (make us feel better about ourselves)
