attitudes and social cognition

Question 1

what is an attitude?

Answer 1

persons evaluate of various aspects of their social world

attitudes are preferences regarding an attitude object (what an attitude is about)

Question 2

what are ambivalent attitudes?

Answer 2

mixed, being both positive and negative

Question 3

what are values?

Answer 3

more broad than attitudes, influence behaviour through influence on attitudes

enduring, evaluative beliefs about general aspects of life

Question 4

what are ideologies

Answer 4

interrelated and widely shared sets of beliefs that typically relate to social or political contexts

more general than attitudes

Question 5

tripartite model of attitudes (ABC)

Answer 5

affect - emotional reaction

behaviour - behavioural tendencies

cognition - beliefs

Question 6

criticisms of ABC model

Answer 6

only defines behaviour as inherent part of attitude

does not look at how behaviour is related to how people think and feel about attitude objects

Question 7

what is attitude complexity

Answer 7

number of dimensions along which an attitude object is evaluated

Question 8

attitude formation - Katz (1960)

Answer 8

1) knowledge function
2) utilitarian function
3) value expression function
4) ego defensive function

Question 9

what is the knowledge function

Answer 9

attitudes function as schemas to help us make sense of complex world

focus on important characteristics of attitude object

Question 10

utilitarian function

Answer 10

attitudes help us obtain rewards and avoid punishment

Question 11

value expressive function

Answer 11

allow people to express their deep seated values

Question 12

ego defensive function

Answer 12

can protect us from psychological threats

Question 13

what is the mere exposure effect

Answer 13

being exposed repeatedly to a person or object can cause people to form more positive attitudes towards them

however, prolonged exposure ceases to have an effect and can have opposite effect

Question 14

factors affecting attitude formation

Answer 14

innate factors
- genetic factors play a role in development (twin studies)
- diverse attitudes tend to be organised by political conservatism, which seems to be heritable

attitude consistency and balance
- when attitudes are consistent with each other, they are in a state of balance and form a coherent whole or unit
- if we have a positive attitude to an object, we will form positive attitudes to objects positively related to it

Question 15

social representations - the social formation of attitudes

Answer 15

theory that beliefs about social world are formed through social interaction

Question 16

criticism of social representation theory

Answer 16

provides theory but not account of how this works

confirmation bias

Question 17

implicit and explicit attitudes

Answer 17

implicit - unconscious

explicit - conscious

Question 18

what are the direct measures of attitudes

Answer 18

attitude scales - series of questions to gauge someone’s attitudes (quick, inexpensive, online, rely on honesty)

observational studies - can show actual behaviour in real life situations (high effort, complicated ethically)

Question 19

indirect measures of attitudes

Answer 19

bogus pipeline procedure - person attached to bogus pipeline, told it can detect true attitudes, people are afraid so are more honest

electromyography (EMG) - measures electrical activity of muscles in face, allows examination of subtle movements not noticeable with naked eye

ERPs observed using EEG - well suited to capturing rapid and short term neural responses to stimuli

implicit association test (IAT) - PPs asked to press different key to match concept during series of trials, tests people’s implicit preferences for some stimuli

Question 20

what is the APE model

Answer 20

theoretical account of implicit-explicit duality

implicit and explicit attitudes are the behavioural outcomes of separate mental processes

implicit evaluations are outcomes of associative processes (activation of mental associations on basis of feature similarity and spatiotemporal contiguity)

explicit evaluations are outcomes of propositional processes (validation of activated information based on logical consistency)

Question 21

to what extent do attitudes predict behaviour

Answer 21

predicted by a variety of factors

situational factors - e.g., expressing political attitudes at a rally

attitudinal factors - stronger the attitude, the more likely it will influence behaviour

Question 22

what is the theory of planned behaviour

Answer 22

several factors determine behavioural intentions concerning behaviour

factors:
- subjective norms
- attitudes towards the behaviour
- perceived behavioural control

people decide to behave in a particular way because of a sequence of rational thought processes

Question 23

what is the theory of reasoned action

Answer 23

predecessor to theory of planned behaviour, so is very similar

key difference - did not take perceived behavioural control into account as predictor of intentions

Question 24

what is cognitive dissonance

Answer 24

unpleasant psychological state which occurs when people notice that their attitudes and behaviours are inconsistent with each other

to deal with dissonance, Festinger argued that people change the way they think rather than their behaviour

Question 25

what did Cooper and Fazio argue? (conditions for cognitive dissonance)

Answer 25

individual has to:

1) realise the inconsistency has negative effects
2) take responsibility for the action
3) experience psychological arousal
4) attribute the above feeling to the action

Question 26

how does hypocrisy tie in with cognitive dissonance? (Aronson et al)

Answer 26

if people are aware they are publicly advocating an attitude by behaving inconsistently, they can experience strong dissonance

Question 27

what is embodied social cognition?

Answer 27

a research area that broadly shows that bodily states influence attitudes, social perception and emotion

proprioception (perception of bodily position) plays fundamental role in thoughts, feelings and actions

Question 28

what is the social perception theory

Answer 28

• people become aware of their own attitudes by looking at what they do (look at own behaviour and infer own attitudes from that behaviour)
• relates to situations in which individual’s attitude/cognitive dissonance is weak