Attitudes Key Words

Question 1

Attitude

Answer 1

A relatively enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects groups or symbols - OR - A general feeling of evaluation 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 and guides evaluative responses

Question 4

Three component attitude model

Answer 4

An attitude consists of cognitive, affective and behavioural components.

Question 5

Schema

Answer 5

Cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes

Question 6

Stereotype

Answer 6

Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members

Question 7

Cognitive consistency theories

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Cognition

Answer 8

The knowledge, beliefs, thoughts and ideas that people have about themselves and their environment.
May also refer to mental processes through which knowledge is acquired

Question 9

Balance theory

Answer 9

People prefer attitudes that are inconsistent with each other those that are inconsistent.
People try to maintain consistency in attitudes to and relationships with other people and elements of their environment

Question 10

Sociocognitive model

Answer 10

Attitude theory highlighting an evaluative component.
Knowledge of an object is represented in memory along with a summary of how to appraise it

Question 11

Information processing

Answer 11

The evaluation of information, in relation to attitudes, the means by which people acquire knowledge and form and change attitudes

Question 12

Information integration theory

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Cognitive algebra

Answer 13

Approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attitudes that have valence into an overall positive or ngativ impression

Question 14

Cognitive algebra

Answer 14

Approach to the study of impression formation that focuses on how people combine attitudes that have valence into an overall positive or negative impression

Question 15

Multiple-act criterion

Answer 15

Term for a general behaviour index based on an average or combination of several specific behaviours

Question 16

Theory of planned behaviour

Answer 16

Modification of the theory of reasoned action.
Suggests that predicting a behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if people believe they have control over that behaviour

Question 17

Protection motivation theory

Answer 17

Adopting a healthy behaviour requires cognitive balancing between the perceived threat of illness and one’s capacity to cope with the health regimen

Question 18

Automatic activation

Answer 18

Attitudes that have a strong evaluative link to situational cues are more likely to come automatically to mind from memory

Question 19

Moderator variable

Answer 19

A variable that qualifies an otherwise simple hypothesis with a view of improving its predictive power

Question 20

Attitude formation

Answer 20

The process of forming our attitudes, mainly from our own experiences, influences of others and our emotional reactions

Question 21

Mere exposure effect

Answer 21

Repeated exposure than an object results in greater attraction to the object

Question 22

Evaluative conditioning

Answer 22

A stimulus will become more or less liked when its consistently paired with stimuli that are either positive or negative

Question 23

Spreading attiude effect

Answer 23

A liked or disliked person or object may affect not only the evaluation of a second person directly associated but also others merely associated with the second person

Question 24

Modelling

Answer 24

Tendency for a person to reproduce the actions, attitudes and emotional responses exhibited by real life or symbolic model

Question 25

Values

Answer 25

A high order concept thought to provide a structure for organising attitudes

Question 26

Ideology

Answer 26

A systematically interrelated set of beliefs whose primary function is explanation.
circumscribes thinking making it difficult for the holder to escape from its mould

Question 27

Terror management theory

Answer 27

The notion that most fundamental human motivation is to reduce the terror of the inevitability of death.
Self esteem may be centrally implicated in effective terror management.

Question 28

Social representation

Answer 28

Collectively elaborated explanations of unfamiliar and complex phenomena that transform them into a familiar and simple form

Question 29

Expectancy value model

Answer 29

Direct experience with an attitude object informs a person how much that object should be liked or disliked in the future

Question 30

Semantic differential

Answer 30

An attitude measure that asks for a rating on a scale composed of bipolar objectives

Question 31

Thurstone scale

Answer 31

An 11 point scale with 22 items.
Each item has a value ranging from very unfavourable to very favourable.
Respondents check the items with which they agree and their attitude is an average scale value of these items

Question 32

Likert scale

Answer 32

Scale that evaluates how strongly people agree or disagree with favourable or unfavourable statements about an attitude object.
Initially many items are tested and after item analysis only those items that correlate with each other are required

Question 33

Acquiescent response set

Answer 33

Tendency to agree with items in an attitude questionnaire.
Leads to ambiguity in interpolation if a high score on an attitude questionnaire can be obtained only by agreement with all or most items

Question 34

Unidimensionality

Answer 34

A guttman scale consists of single dimension and is cumulative, that is agreement with the highest scoring item implies agreement with all lower scoring items.

Question 35

Guttman Scale

Answer 35

A scale that contains either favourable or unfavourable statements arranged hierarchically. Agreement with a strong statement implies agreement with weaker one.

Question 36

Social Neuroscience

Answer 36

Exploration of brain activity associated with social cognition and social psychological processes and phenomena

Question 37

Relative homogeneity effect

Answer 37

Tendency to see outgroup members as all the same and ingroup members as more differential

Question 38

Unobtrusive measures

Answer 38

observational approaches that neither attitude on the processes being studies nor cause people to behave unnaturally.

Question 39

Bogus pipeline technique

Answer 39

A measurement technique that leads people to believe that a lie detector can monitor their emotional responses and therefore their true attitudes

Question 40

Priming

Answer 40

Activation of accessible categories in schemas in memory that influence how we process new information

Question 41

Implicit association test

Answer 41

Reaction time test to measure attitudes, particularly unpopular attitudes that people might conceal

Question 42

Impression management

Answer 42

People’s use of various strategies to get other people to view them in a positive light