Attitudes and Social Cognition Flashcards
What is an attitude
An attitude is an association between an act or object and an evaluation.
Describe attitude strength, importance, accessibility, and implicit attitudes
Attitude strength refers to the durability and impact of an attitude and behaviour. It is influenced by both attitude importance and attitude access ability or the ease with which an attitude comes to mind. Attitudes can also be either explicit or implicit. Implicit attitudes regulate thoughts and behaviour unconsciously and automatically
Describe attitudinal ambivalence and attitudinal coherence
Attitudes vary in the degree of cognitive complexity as well as the extent to which the attitude object is associated with conflicting evaluative responses (attitudinal ambivalence). Attitudinal coherence refers to the extent to which an attitude is internally consistent
What are the three components of attitudes
- Affect (emotional evaluation; example, pleasure, joy)
- Behavioural dispositions (approach or avoid)
- Cognition (cognitive evaluation; example, importance, benefits)
Explain attitude formation
- Experience/’mere exposure’
- Operant conditioning:
- Rewards vs. Punishment
- Classical conditioning:
- Association
- Modelling and Learning
- Self perception theory - infer our attitudes from our behaviour
What is the Yale model
YALE MODEL
- Four Factors
- Source/communicator
- Recipient/audience
- Message
- Channel
Explain persuasion
Persuasion refers to deliver efforts to change in attitude. Characteristics of the source, message, channel, Contacts and receiver all affect the effectiveness of persuasive appeals.
Explain that to route to persuasion can take
Persuasion can occur through central route, inducing the message recipient to think about the argument, or peripheral route, appealing to less thoughtful processes
Explain the elaboration likelihood model
The central route to attitude persuasion is more effective when the person is both motivated and able to think about the arguments where is the proof of rule is more effective than the likelihood of the person will engage in high effort cognitive processing as low
Explain cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person experiences a discrepancy between an attitude and behaviour or between an attitude and a new piece of information.
Explain self perception theory
According to self perception theory attitudes change in dissonance experiments as people observe their own behaviour
Explain social cognition
Social cognition refers to the processes by which people make a sense of themselves other social interactions and relationships. Changing concepts of representation in cognitive psychology are beginning to lead to a similar changes in study of social cognition, such as the increasing use of connectionist models, which he representations as patterns of activation of networks of neurons operating in parallel
Explain identity
Identity refers to a sense of who we are and what are values beliefs and experiences and roles are in relation to our personal individual self
What is the fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute behaviours to people’s personalities into ignore possible situational causes
Explain the self-serving bias
The self-serving bias is the tendency to see oneself in a more positive light and deserved. Bryce is in social cognition reflect both cognitive factors and motivational factors
Explain schemas
Schemas are cognitive structures that represent knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus. Formed on the basis of past experience. Schemas are like theories
List the different types of schemas
Self schema, person schema, role schema, social groups gamers, event schemas/groups
Explain impression formation
The process through which people observe other people, interpret information about them, draw inferences, and develop representations of them
Explain order effects relating to information formation bias
Primacy, information presented first disproportionately influences impression. Recency, sometimes information presented last has more impact to the earlier information (when distracted)
Explain the results of studies testing positive impressions and order effects
Positive presented first resulted in more positive impressions, negative presented first resulted in more negative impressions
Explain valance affects
Positive impressions are typically formed in absence of any negative information. Negative impressions formed when there is any sign of negative information
Explain stereotypes
We often prejudge others who belong to certain groups
Explain heuristics
They are cognitive shortcuts to provide accurate inferences for most of us most of the time. Representative heuristic, judging the likelihood of an event by how much it resembles a prototype. Availability heuristic, judging the likelihood of an event by how quickly or easily instance has come to mind
Explain Attribution
The process by which people infer the causes of their own and others behaviour. Attribute behaviour to either; internal (individual personality characteristics) external (environment influences and context).
Explain Attribution Kelley’s Covariation Model
We are tribute behaviour to the cause with which it Coveri’s over time. We make Person and target and situation attributions based on three types of info.
- Consistency
- Distinctiveness
- Consensus
Explain attribution error
Errors that are often made include correspondence buyers/fundamental attribution error, actor observer bias, self-serving bias
