Attitudes - class Oct14,2015

Question 1

What are attitudes as evaluations?

Answer 1

Learned predispositions to respond in (un)favourable ways to a certain person, object, or idea.

Question 2

When a person thinks or responds favourably or unfavourably towards someone, or an object, or even an idea, what are they using?

Answer 2

Attitudes as evaluations.

Question 3

Attitudes as Memories are…?

Answer 3

Attitudes as memories are attitudes related to interconnected memories that pertain to certain people, objects, or ideas.

Question 4

Attitudes as evaluations are different from attitudes as memories because…?

Answer 4

Attitudes as evaluations use learned predispositions while attitudes as memories use memories to create attitudes toward a person, object, or idea.

Question 5

ABC Tripartite Model believes that a person’s attitudes, behaviours, and cognitive functions and beliefs are all interconnected but are not always consistent with each other. True or False?

Answer 5

True

Question 6

ABC tripartite model believes that
A) attitudes cannot be in isolation from each other as they all, as a whole, shape our behaviour.
OR
B) Attitudes can be separate from each other as they each are created through different processes such as memory or education, and because they come from different places, they can be used individually.

Answer 6

A

Question 7

What does the “ABC” stand for and mean in the ABC tripartite model?

Answer 7

A= Affect (emotion toward) B= Behavioural (how you act toward) C= Cognitive (what you think toward)

Question 8

Define the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes.

Answer 8

Explicit: conscious attitudes about things because of importance, or recent recency/recall.
Implicit: unconscious, may not be controlled (a lot of them learned in childhood).

Question 9

Pavlov, using his dog and a bell, is an example of what?

Answer 9

Classical Conditioning.

Question 10

Who’s theory is Operant conditioning and what is important about it?

Answer 10

Skinner: Believe that we get reward/punishment for certain behaviours. (Associating smoking with acceptance from peers)
Positive/Negative rewards/punishments.

Question 11

What is social learning?

Answer 11

learning attitudes by watching parents, peers, family, community, etc. RESPECT=EMULATE.

Question 12

Give an example of genetic factors contributing to attitudes.

Answer 12

Twin Studies:

identical twins separated at birth show extremely similar attitudes compared to normal siblings/fraternal twins.

Question 13

What are the four functions of attitudes?

Answer 13

1) Instrumental: earn rewards, acceptance, and approval from others.
2) Knowledge: makes sense out of the world.
3) Ego-defensive: help promote positive self concept and protect our/others’ self esteem/image.
4) Value expressive: show other people who you are, help define yourself and your values.

Question 14

There are three direct ways to measuring attitudes: The Likert scale, the Semantic Differential Scale, and the Guttman scale. What are they?

Answer 14

Likert scale: survey where you are asked to choose from strongly agree, to strongly disagree.
Semantic Differential scale: slash a vertical line along a continuum that is similar to strongly agree/disagree, and that line placement is transferred into a number.
Guttman scale: Hierarchical scale starting with minor questions and progressively getting more and more intense until you hit a point where you disagree.

Question 15

what could be a possible problem to trying to measure attitudes directly?

Answer 15

Could be changing the opinion to be socially agreeable with the psychologist.

Question 16

Indirect (covert/implicit) ways to measure attitudes are what?

Answer 16

Facial muscles and brain waves using an EEG

Question 17

define the difference between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain

Answer 17

left: logic/analytic reasoning
right: emotion

Question 18

There are 7 major muscles in the face that can measure micro-expressions that convey attitudes, what and where are they?

Answer 18

frontalis and corrugator (forehead)
messetor and depressor (cheek)
zygomatic, orbicularis oris, and mentalis (mouth)

Question 19

What is Role theory?

Answer 19

We develop attitudes based on the roles that we play, and the people we are.
(ex. student as a role: study, do homework, class, etc)
Specific attitudes consistent to roles we play, like having education as a value is consistent with being a student.

Question 20

Cognitive dissonance theory was created by who?

Answer 20

Leon Festinger

Question 21

what is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 21

The state of discomfort that comes when attitudes/behaviours/roles aren’t consistent with each other.

Question 22

The experiment where when someone does a boring task for one dollar, they are more likely to convince themselves that they found the task fun than if someone was paid 20 dollars to do the same task, refers to what cognitive consistency approach?

Answer 22

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Question 23

Cognitive dissonance theory starts with two contradictory cognitions like (I smoke) and (Smoking gives you cancer) Dissonance will create one (or more) changes to your thought processes, what are they?

Answer 23

1) Modify one or both conditions (“I really don’t smoke that much”)
2) Changing perceived importance of one cognition (“the evidence that smoking causes cancer is weak”)
3) Adding additional cognitions (“no one in my family has ever gotten cancer”)
4) Denying that cognitions are related (“there is no believable evidence that smoking gives you cancer”)

Question 24

Self perception theory Is what?

Answer 24

when you are unclear about your situation, so how you behave in that situation tells you what you’re attitudes are.

Question 25

When a person disregards thinking shitty things about themselves, and instead think about something good instead, what theory do they fall under?

Answer 25

Self Affirmation Theory

Question 26

What were Richard Lapierre’s initial findings with regards to links between attitudes and behaviours?
what are the flaws with his findings?

Answer 26

He found that what people say and what people do isn’t always consistent.
Took two Asians cross country eating at restaurants, and only 1 out of 250 refused to serve them. When sending out a questionnaire afterwards asking if those restaurants would serve Asians, 92% said no.
Flaws: Could have been someone different serving vs answering the questionnaire, maybe they were served but not served well, and attitudes could have changed.

Question 27

there are 5 influential factors towards attitudes and behaviours, what are they?

Answer 27

1) Relevance of attitude to behaviour: with Lapierre’s example, if the owners of a restaurant would have accepted polite, well dressed Asians.
2) Personal experience: makes attitude stronger
3) Strength, importance, and stability: high consistency and high influence
4) Situational influences: may have situational attitudes towards technology when in the classroom.
5) Attitudes without awareness: IMPLICIT

Question 28

Underneath Situational influences towards attitudes, what is the Theory of Planned Behaviour?

Answer 28

Find out someone’s intentions, and you will find the best predictor for their behaviour:
Take into consideration attitudes, subjective norms, the perceived social pressure to act a certain way, perceived behavioural control, ease and difficulty in performing the behaviour.

Question 29

Central route processing is the same as _________?

and peripheral route processing is identical to _____?

Answer 29

central route processing = systematic processing
(think about it, takes effort, and brain power, what is it? is it any good? what is the quality?)

peripheral route processing = heuristic processing
(Don’t put a lot of effort into it. Using heuristics, does it look good, is the person on the ad famous and attractive)

Question 30

Elaboration likelihood model and heuristic systematic persuasion model are the exact same except which terms refer to which model?

Answer 30

Elaboration likelihood model = Central route processing and peripheral route processing
Systematic persuasion model = systematic processing and heuristic processing

Question 31

Sources of persuasion can come from what?

Answer 31

credibility (expert) and attractiveness and likeability

Question 32

Crafting a good persuasive message includes what 5 things?

Answer 32

1) amount and type of info: tailoring that info
2) Repetition (w/ variation)
3) Fear appeals (mild to moderate, doesn’t work if too strong)
4) Emotional consistency: figure out what mood they are in, good=easy, bad=they think into it a lot, cynical.
5) Time factor: recency effect: lawyers for example what to go first if the recess is short, and last if the recess is long.

Question 33

Targeting someone, wanting to persuade them you can focus on the need for cognition and the need for affect, what are the differences between the two?

Answer 33

Cognition: always central route, focus on the strength of the argument.
Affect: emotionally related.

Question 34

what are the characteristics of targets of persuasion?

Answer 34

1. Need for cognition vs need for affect
2. Mood
3. Age
4. Intelligence
5. Self esteem

Question 35

at what age are people most easily persuaded?

Answer 35

18-25

Question 36

when trying to persuade someone of something when they are in a good mood, they’ll usually base their judgment on what?

Answer 36

Heuristics

Question 37

True or false, the more intelligent you are, the more likely you are to be easily persuaded.

Answer 37

false

Question 38

having low, high, or moderate self esteem will make you less easily persuaded on average?

Answer 38

moderate

Question 39

explain the differences in persuasion with self confidence, distractibility, and sex differences.

Answer 39

higher the self confidence the less likely, higher the distractibility the more likely, and no sex difference.

Question 40

How would you be able to resist persuasion?

3 ways

Answer 40

1) Inoculation: make sure that you are aware of everything that’s happening.
2) Play Devil’s Advocate
3) Forewarning: if you can see it coming, it’s not going to work as well. Look for it and it won’t affect you.