Attitudes & Social Cognition

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

An association between an act or object and an evaluation. Involves positive and negative impressions and 3 components (cognitive, emotional, behavioural)

Question 2

What is attitude strength?

Answer 2

The durability and impact of an attitude

Question 3

What two variables affect attitude strength?

Answer 3

Attitude importance (personal relevance/psychological significance) and attitude accessibly (ease at which an attitude comes to mind)

Question 4

What are implicit attitudes?

Answer 4

Associations between attitude objects and feelings about them that regulate thought and behaviour unconsciously and automatically

Question 5

What is cognitive complexity?

Answer 5

The intricacy of thoughts about difference attitude objects

Question 6

What does attitude ambivalence refer to?

Answer 6

Positive and negative feelings

Question 7

What is attitudinal coherence?

Answer 7

Internal consistency

Question 8

When are attitudes likely to predict behaviour?

Answer 8

• When attitude and behaviour are specific
• Environmental reinforcement matches attitude
• Important others share the attitude
• Attitudes are implicit (unconscious)
• Attitude is strong
• Attitude has developed from personal experience

Question 9

What are attitudes shaped by?

Answer 9

Experiences, the messenger and personality characteristics

Question 10

What does persuasion refer to?

Answer 10

Deliberate efforts to change an attitude held by another

Question 11

What are the components of effective persuasion?

Answer 11

The source, message, channel, context and receiver

Question 12

What does the Elaboration Likelihood model suggest?

Answer 12

There are two routes through which people can be persuaded (central and peripheral)

Question 13

What does the central route of persuasion involve?

Answer 13

Considering persuasive arguments carefully

Question 14

What does the peripheral route of persuasion involve?

Answer 14

Responding to persuasive arguments with snap judgements

Question 15

What does the foot-in-door technique of persuasion involve?

Answer 15

Starting with a small request and then making a bigger one

Question 16

What does the door-in-face technique of persuasion involve?

Answer 16

Starting with a large request and moving to a smaller one when that is refused

Question 17

What is an example of the low-ball technique of persuasion?

Answer 17

Sales people offering to sell a product below normal asking price, then mentioning all the additional necessary items after payment has been agreed

Question 18

What does the cognitive dissonance theory suggest?

Answer 18

Attitudes/cognitions are changed after experiencing tension between two or more conflicting thoughts (i.e. A & B conflict, so choosing C)

Question 19

What does the self perception theory suggest?

Answer 19

People infer their attitudes from their behaviour

Question 20

What is social cognition?

Answer 20

The process by which people make sense of themselves, others, social interactions and relationships

Question 21

What are perceptions of other people influenced by?

Answer 21

Physical appearance, nonverbal communication, environments, behaviours and frequency of encounters

Question 22

What is the halo effect of social cognition?

Answer 22

The tendency to assume that positive qualities cluster together

Question 23

What are four types of schemas formed in regards to social cognition?

Answer 23

Person, situation, role and relationship schemas

Question 24

What is the authoritarian personality characterised by?

Answer 24

A tendency to hate people who are different or downtrodden

Question 25

What does prejudice reflect?

Answer 25

Socialisation processes from parent to child

Question 26

What are attributions?

Answer 26

Ways of explaining the behaviour of others

Question 27

What are the two types of attributions?

Answer 27

Internal (explain behaviour in terms of personal characteristics) and external (explain behaviour in terms of the situation/environment)

Question 28

What do attributions depend on?

Answer 28

Consensus, consistency and distinctiveness

Question 29

When are external attributions likely to be made?

Answer 29

When many people behave the same way (consensus) or if a behaviour is distinctive

Question 30

When are internal attributions likely to be made?

Answer 30

When a behaviour is consistent

Question 31

What processes modulate attribution?

Answer 31

Discounting, augmentation and attributional style

Question 32

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 32

When people overestimate the impact of internal factors and underestimate the impact of situation factors while evaluating the behaviour of others

Question 33

What does the self serving bias suggest?

Answer 33

People attribute success to personal factors and failures to situational factors

Question 34

What is self concept?

Answer 34

A schema that guides thinking and memory relevant to the self

Question 35

How do collectivist cultures (e.g. Asian cultures) view the self?

Answer 35

As interdependent and defined in terms of social relationships

Question 36

How do individualist cultures (e.g. Australia) view the self?

Answer 36

As independent, defined in terms of personal attributes

Question 37

What is self consistency?

Answer 37

The motive to interpret information to fit the way people already see themselves