Attitudes

Question 1

Attitude definition

Answer 1

(1) a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols
(2) a general feeling or evaluation- positive or negative- about some person, object or issue

Question 2

One-component attitude model

Answer 2

an attitude consists of affect towards or evaluation of the object

Question 3

Two-component attitude model

Answer 3

an attitude consists of a mental readiness to act.

It also guides evaluative (judgmental) responses

Question 4

Three-component attitude model

Answer 4

an attitude consists of cognitive, affective and behavioral components.
This threefold division has an ancient heritage, stressing thought, feeling and action as basic to human experience mmmm

Question 5

Cognitive consistency theories

Answer 5

a group of attitude theories stressing that people try to maintain internal consistency (Ordnung) , order and agreement among their various cognitions

Question 6

Balance theory

Answer 6

can be either balanced or unbalanced

• focuses on the P-O-X unit
• people prefer attitudes that are consistent with each other over those that are inconsistent

Question 7

What are attitudes based on?

Answer 7

• Learning theories
• Balance theory (Heider 1946)
• Cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger 1957)

Question 8

Sociocognitive model

Answer 8

defines attitude as ,, a persons evaluation of an object of thought’’
Knowledge of an object is represented in memory along with a summary of how to appraise (einschätzen) it

Question 9

Information integration theory

Answer 9

idea that a person’s attitude can be estimated (geschätzt) by averaging across across the positive and negative ratings of the object

Question 10

Cognitive algebra

Answer 10

approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attributes that have valence (wertigkeit) into an overall positive or negative impression

Question 11

multiple-act criterion

Answer 11

general attitudes can sometimes predict behavior much better than a specific single behavior.
Single behaviors are usually affected by many factors

Question 12

theory of reasoned action

Answer 12

theory of the relationship between attitudes and behavior.

a specific attitude that has normative support predicts an intention to act, which than predicts actual behavior

Question 13

theory of planned behavior

Answer 13

predicting a behavior from an attitude measure is improved if people believe that they have control over that behavior

Question 14

Protection- motivation theory

Answer 14

adopting a healthy behavior requires cognitive balancing between the perceived (wahrgenommen) threat of illness and ones capacity to cope with the health regimen (Zustand)

Question 15

Accessible attitudes

Answer 15

they are the ones that can be recalled from memory more easily and can be expressed therefore more quickly
- the stronger the attitude the more influence it has on our behavior

Question 16

Moderator variable

Answer 16

a variable that qualifies an otherwise simple hypothesis with a view to improving its predictive power (e.g. A causes B , but only when C (the operator) is present

Question 17

two types of attitudes

Answer 17

1 belief based attitudes (reasoned)

2 cue driven attitudes (automatic)

Question 18

possible way to change attitudes

Answer 18

you have to be aware of them, to understand them and how we process information

Question 19

Elaboration- Likelihood Model

Answer 19

model that explains how attitudes are formed and how they can be changed

Question 20

Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 20

• people does not feel comfortable if cognition do not fit together or stands in contradiction to one another
• this is why we try to defend our own standing point we are looking for supportive defendings
• if we start to questioning our behavior that others are criticizng we might notice that we are not always right

Question 21

Self perception theory

Answer 21

if we are uncertain or ambitious of our own attitudes and feelings we infer this states by observing ourselves