Attitudes

Question 1

Three parts of attitudes?

Answer 1

affective (emotion)
behavioural (action)
cognitive (thought)

Question 2

origin of attitude?

Answer 2

• some genetic
• social learning
• personality
• recognition heuristic: more likely to believe something we’ve heard many times

Question 3

do attitudes always predict behaviour?

Answer 3

No - eg. LaPiere Chinese restaurant visitors

Question 4

when do attitudes commonly predict behaviour

Answer 4

when the attitude is accesible (comes to mind easily) or person is a low self monitor (actions = thoughts)

Question 5

describe dual processing model routes

Answer 5

• Central route: focus on merits of arguments, process arguments deeply
• Peripheral route: focus on snap judgements, process arguments shallowly

Question 6

define: cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 6

rationalising inconsistencies (dissonance) between attitudes and beliefs to reduce psychological discomfort

Question 7

describe $1 and $20 experiment (Festinger, 1950)

Answer 7

 Participants paid $1 or $20 to do the same simple task; then asked to go outside, told other “participants” whether the task was interesting or not
 $1 people said it was more interesting due to cognitive dissonance of not getting much money

Question 8

strategies for reducing dissonance?

Answer 8

 Changing attitudes to make them consistent
 Forming a new attitude which reconciles the inconsistent attitudes
 Get new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs
 Reduce the importance of cognitions

Question 9

describe self perception theory (Bem, 1967)

Answer 9

when people are unsure about their feelings and motivations, they will use their own behaviour to infer what they feel

Eg. If we help people (behaviour), we might start liking them (inferred feelings)

Question 10

describe impression management theory

Answer 10

we don’t really change our attitudes in cognitive dissonance theories; we only tell the experimenters we have.