4-5 Flashcards
Beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event
Attitude
Affect (feelings), behavior, and cognition (thoughts)
Three dimensions (ABCs) of attitudes
We want to look good to others
Social desirability
Make individual more self-aware which then increases attitude potency
Increase self-awareness
Role playing, interracial interaction and racial attitudes, saying leads to believing, evil and moral acts and attitudes
All related to behavior affecting attitudes
Tendency for people who have agreed to small request to comply with a larger on later
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
Self-presentation theory , cognitive, self-perception theory
Three theories for why behavior affects attitudes
We want to be consistent (personal norms) and we worry what others think of us (group norms)
Self-presentation theory
Being attuned to the way one presents oneself in social situations and adjusting one’s performance to create desired impression
Self-monitoring
Feelings of tension that arise when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions
Cognitive dissonance theory
Reductions of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behavior when external justification is “insufficient”
Insufficient justification effect
•Negative consequences
•personal responsibility
-Free choice
-foreseeable negative consequences
•Physiological arousal
•Attribution: arousal to behavior links
Revised cognitive dissonance
When we are unsure of our attitudes we infer them by observing ourselves
Self-perception theory
Bribing people to do things that they already like tends to make them like the activity less
Over-justification effect
Seems to affect expressed attitude
Self-presentation theory
Explains attitude change
Cognitive dissonance theory
Explains attitude information
Self-perception
Attitudes are stable when a person’s feelings and beliefs about an object/ idea are consistent with each other
Balance theory
-We try to stabilize the imbalance through change
-Ultimate goal is to re-attain attitude stability
When imbalanced
Enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
Culture
•Diversity suggests that much of our behavior is socially programmed
•Increasingly, diverse groups interact together
Culture diversity
Standards for accepted and expected behavior
Examples:
Individual choices, expressiveness, punctuality, role breaking, and personal space
Norms
Buffer one we like to maintain around our bodies
Personal space
Body contact to 18 inches
Intimacy
Personal distance
18 inches to 4 feet
Social distance
4 feet to 12 feet
Public distance
12 feet or greater
biologically or socially influenced, by which people define male & female
Gender
With animals, a sexually exhausted male will demonstrate renewed vigor if presented with a succession of females
Coolidge effect
Age, intelligence, resources
Mate selection criteria
A set of behavior expectations (norms) for males & females
Gender roles
