Attitudes and behaviour Flashcards
What are social comparisons?
comparing ourselves to others and social norms.
What is attitudes shaped by?
Social norms.
What are the genetic factors to attitude?
Inherited gene dispositions, infants can be more sensitive to the environment than others.
Heritable attitudes or gut level preferences. E.g. whether a child likes loud noises or not.
How can attitudes be aquired?
- Classical conditioning
- Social conditioning
- Social learning
- Subliminal conditioning
- Observational learning
What is the golden triad to understanding attitudes?
Behaviour (conative) Affect (affective) and cognition (cognitive)
How come attitudes do not always equal behaviour?
A person can hold an attitude but behave differently.
What did LaPiere 1934 discover?
The majority of restaurant owners when asked said they would not like to serve Chinese customers, but when they were faced with serving them did with happily.
Can environment affect attitude?
Yes, for example someone can be against drinking but drink loads on Christmas. And in the case that hiding the attitude will spare someones feelings.
What else can influence an attitude (apart from environment)?
Knowledge functions and organisations
Self-expression and personal identity
Self esteem maintaining and building.
What is balance theory?
People like to maintain balance between cognitive and affective component of their attitude.
What is cognitive dissonance?
When there is an imbalance between the cognitive and affective components. Leading to a change in beliefs, feelings or behaviour.
What are ways to reduce cognitive dissonance?
Change attitudes with consistency, supportive information, trivialise the subject, distractions.
What are the three main factors of persuasion?
The communicator (source)
What they said (the message)
Who was listening (audience).
What is the peripheral route in the elaboration likelihood model?
Can persuade someone to change attitude if the topic is not particularly important, just a simple preference. e.g. business advertisements.
What is the message unimportant factor of the elaboration likelihood model?
Heuristic processing, non verbal cues important and argument strength unimportant.