Attitudes & Social Cognition Flashcards
What is an attitude?
An association between an act or object and an evaluation. Involves positive and negative impressions and 3 components (cognitive, emotional, behavioural)
What is attitude strength?
The durability and impact of an attitude
What two variables affect attitude strength?
Attitude importance (personal relevance/psychological significance) and attitude accessibly (ease at which an attitude comes to mind)
What are implicit attitudes?
Associations between attitude objects and feelings about them that regulate thought and behaviour unconsciously and automatically
What is cognitive complexity?
The intricacy of thoughts about difference attitude objects
What does attitude ambivalence refer to?
Positive and negative feelings
What is attitudinal coherence?
Internal consistency
When are attitudes likely to predict behaviour?
- 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
What are attitudes shaped by?
Experiences, the messenger and personality characteristics
What does persuasion refer to?
Deliberate efforts to change an attitude held by another
What are the components of effective persuasion?
The source, message, channel, context and receiver
What does the Elaboration Likelihood model suggest?
There are two routes through which people can be persuaded (central and peripheral)
What does the central route of persuasion involve?
Considering persuasive arguments carefully
What does the peripheral route of persuasion involve?
Responding to persuasive arguments with snap judgements
What does the foot-in-door technique of persuasion involve?
Starting with a small request and then making a bigger one
What does the door-in-face technique of persuasion involve?
Starting with a large request and moving to a smaller one when that is refused
What is an example of the low-ball technique of persuasion?
Sales people offering to sell a product below normal asking price, then mentioning all the additional necessary items after payment has been agreed
What does the cognitive dissonance theory suggest?
Attitudes/cognitions are changed after experiencing tension between two or more conflicting thoughts (i.e. A & B conflict, so choosing C)
What does the self perception theory suggest?
People infer their attitudes from their behaviour
What is social cognition?
The process by which people make sense of themselves, others, social interactions and relationships
What are perceptions of other people influenced by?
Physical appearance, nonverbal communication, environments, behaviours and frequency of encounters
What is the halo effect of social cognition?
The tendency to assume that positive qualities cluster together
What are four types of schemas formed in regards to social cognition?
Person, situation, role and relationship schemas
What is the authoritarian personality characterised by?
A tendency to hate people who are different or downtrodden
What does prejudice reflect?
Socialisation processes from parent to child
What are attributions?
Ways of explaining the behaviour of others
What are the two types of attributions?
Internal (explain behaviour in terms of personal characteristics) and external (explain behaviour in terms of the situation/environment)
What do attributions depend on?
Consensus, consistency and distinctiveness
When are external attributions likely to be made?
When many people behave the same way (consensus) or if a behaviour is distinctive
When are internal attributions likely to be made?
When a behaviour is consistent
What processes modulate attribution?
Discounting, augmentation and attributional style
What is the fundamental attribution error?
When people overestimate the impact of internal factors and underestimate the impact of situation factors while evaluating the behaviour of others
What does the self serving bias suggest?
People attribute success to personal factors and failures to situational factors
What is self concept?
A schema that guides thinking and memory relevant to the self
How do collectivist cultures (e.g. Asian cultures) view the self?
As interdependent and defined in terms of social relationships
How do individualist cultures (e.g. Australia) view the self?
As independent, defined in terms of personal attributes
What is self consistency?
The motive to interpret information to fit the way people already see themselves
