Chapter 3:

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

beliefs and feelings related to a person or an event

Question 2

Describe the three dimensions of attitudes?

Answer 2

ABCs of attitudes: Affect (feelings), Behavior tendency, and Cognition (thoughts)

Question 3

What is “moral hypocrisy” ?

Answer 3

The disjuncture between attitudes and actions

Question 4

Give an example of moral hypocrisy.

Answer 4

Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania provided a shocking example of the disconnect between stated attitudes and actual behavior. Stridently anti-abortion from the beginning of his political career, his behavior was different when an unintended pregnancy affected him. When the woman he was having an extramarital affair with believed she was pregnant, he asked her to get an abortion (Doubeck & Taylor, 2017). Murphy then resigned. “Pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the sheets,”

Question 5

Well-ingrained habits and practices __ __ ? (fill in the blank)

Answer 5

overide attitudes.

Question 6

when the attitude is __to the behavior, and when the attitude is potent. (fill in the blank)

Answer 6

specific.

- EX: For example, attitudes toward condoms strongly predict condom use

Question 7

why does our behavior and our expressed attitudes differ?

Answer 7

both attitude and behavior are subject to many other influences. One social psychologist counted 40 factors that complicate the relationship between attitudes and behavior.

Question 8

What is the implicit association test? (IAT)

Answer 8

uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013).
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- One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black faces than with White faces.

Question 9

How is behavior predicted best?

Answer 9

a combination of implicit and explicit measures.

Question 10

What part of the brain is active when we evaluate social situations?

Answer 10

amygdala
- For example, White people who show strong unconscious racial bias on the IAT also exhibit high amygdala activation when viewing unfamiliar Black faces

Question 11

How do the attitude and IAT tests differ?

Answer 11

The IAT is not reliable enough to assess and compare individuals.
- For example, the race IAT has low test-retest reliability—unlike most other personality or attitude tests, IAT scores often differ widely from one session to another

Question 12

What is dual processing?

Answer 12

The capacity for both automatic (effortless, habitual, implicit, System 1) and controlled (deliberate, conscious, explicit, System 2) thinking.

Question 13

How can situational factors influence behaviors?

Answer 13

situational influences can be enormous—enormous enough to induce people to violate their deepest convictions.

Question 14

How do you change ones habits through persuasion.?

Answer 14

we must alter people’s attitudes toward specific practices.

Question 15

Describe Ajzen and Fishbein’s “theory of planned behavior”?

Answer 15

to predict behavior is knowing people’s intended behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and control.

• EX: is knowing people’s intended behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and control

Question 16

Describe Ajzen and Fishbein’s “theory of planned behavior”?

Answer 16

to predict behavior is knowing people’s intended behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and control.

• EX: Ask people if they intend to floss their teeth in the next two weeks, and they will become more likely to do so.

Question 17

Describe the key components to the theory of planned behavior while using the example: physical fitness.

Answer 17

• Attitude toward the behavior: Im for physical fitness.
• Subjective norms: my neighbor runs and goes to the gym.
• Perceived control: I could do this easily.
  {————————————————————–}
• these all contribute to…
  ——-> Behavior intention: Im going to start next week.
  {—————————————————————}
  —————->
  (which contributes to…
  —————-> Behavior: exercising.

Question 18

What conditions lead to attitude predicting behavior?

Answer 18

(1) when we minimize other influences upon our attitude statements and on our behavior.
(2) when the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behavior.
(3) An attitude predicts behavior better when the attitude is potent.

Question 19

(T/F): Our attitudes become potent if we think about them?

Answer 19

True, think of the example involving affirmative actions.

Ex: a study noted that nearly all college students say that cheating is morally wrong. But will they follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Polonius, “To thine own self be true”? Diener and Wallbom had University of Washington students work on an IQ test and told them to stop when a bell in the room sounded. Left alone, 71% cheated by working past the bell. Among students made self-aware—by working in front of a mirror while hearing their own tape-recorded voices—only 7% cheated.

Question 20

Give an example of attitudes following behavior?

Answer 20

George has electrodes temporarily implanted in the brain region that controls his head movements. When neurosurgeon José Delgado (1973) stimulates the electrodes by remote control, George always turns his head. Unaware of the remote stimulation, he offers a reasonable explanation for his head turning: “I’m looking for my slipper.” “I heard a noise.” “I’m restless.” “I was looking under the bed.”

Question 21

How does role playing have an effect on attitudes following behavior?

Answer 21

• It concerns how what is unreal (an artificial role) can subtly morph into what is real.

When stepping into a new social situation, like the first week at college, there is some unease with the person you have tried to become. Your new observed speech and actions aren’t natural to you but all of a sudden… pseudo-intellectual talk no longer felt forced. The role began to fit as comfortably as your old jeans and T-shirt.

Question 22

Describe how saying becomes beliving?

Answer 22

• In short, people tend to adjust their messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to believe the altered message.

EX: They had university students read a personality description of someone (let’s call her Emily) and then summarize it for someone else (Helen), whom they believed either liked or disliked Emily. The students wrote a more positive description when Helen liked Emily.

Question 23

(T/F) The attitudes-follow-behavior principle also occurs for immoral acts.

Answer 23

True,
EX: it is not as difficult to find a person who has never succumbed to a given temptation as to find a person who has succumbed only once. After telling a “white lie” and thinking, “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” the person may go on to tell a bigger lie.
- people tend to justify their actions so they can in turn feel less responsible for the guilt.

Question 24

(T/F) Attitudes also follow behavior in peacetime?

Answer 24

True,
- EX: positive behavior fosters liking for the person. Doing a favor for an experimenter or another participant, or tutoring a student, usually increases liking of the person helped

Question 25

Moral action effects moral thinking when?

Answer 25

• when actions are chosen rather than coerced.

- Ex:

Question 26

If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interactions between people of different races reduce racial prejudice—much as mandatory seat belt use has produced more favorable seat belt attitudes?

Answer 26

In the case of the United States yes.

Question 27

If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interactions between people of different races reduce racial prejudice—much as mandatory seat belt use has produced more favorable seat belt attitudes?

Answer 27

In the case of the United States, yes.

• similar to how many Germans uncomfortable with the rise of Hitler experienced discomfort at the contradiction between their words and their feelings. Prevented from saying what they believed, they tried to establish their psychic equilibrium by consciously making themselves believe what they said”

Question 28

What three theories explain why behavior affects attitude?

Answer 28

(1) Self-presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that make us appear consistent.
(2) Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our actions to ourselves.
(3) Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing: when uncertain about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behavior, much as anyone else would.

Question 29

Why do many individuals value making a good impression?

Answer 29

we see it as a way to gain social and material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to become more secure in our social identities

Question 30

No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent. To avoid seeming so…

Answer 30

We express attitudes that match our actions. To appear consistent to others, we may automatically pretend we hold attitudes consistent with our behaviors

Question 31

What two theories explain why people sometimes internalize their self-presentations as genuine attitude changes?

Answer 31

• Self Justification or cognitive dissonance theory

- Self perception theory

Question 32

What does the cognitive dissonance theory attempt to explain?

Answer 32

• It assumes that we feel tension, or “dissonance,” when two of our thoughts or beliefs (“cognitions”) are inconsistent.
• so…
• Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal caused by inconsistency, we often adjust our thinking.
• EX: alien cult form chapter.
  “ When in doubt shout”

Question 33

How do you reduce cognitive dissonance via selective exposure?

Answer 33

• with agreeable information.
• EX: Studies have asked people about their views on various topics, and then invited them to choose whether they wanted to view information supporting or opposing their viewpoint. Twice as many preferred supporting rather than challenging information

Question 34

What is “identity-protective cognition”?

Answer 34

Your beliefs steer their reasoning and their evaluation of data.

Question 35

Describe a common scenario that uses cognitive dissonance.

Answer 35

• many political situations call involve elements of cognitive dissonance.
• When a politician makes a wrong decision or a questionable one this is quite common.
• George W. Bush after the war in Iraq, which was started on the grounds that the Terrorist group lead by Sedum Hossain had weapons of mass destruction.
• After the war it was confirmed they didn’t have any but Bush back his decision: “t “knowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again” (2005), that “I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions” (2006), and that “this war has . . . come at a high cost in lives and treasure, but those costs are necessary”

Question 36

insufficient justification leads to what?

Answer 36

Individuals that would experience more discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more motivated to believe in what they had done.

Question 37

What does cognitive dissonance theory focus on?

Answer 37

what induces a desired action.

“ The principle is this: Attitudes follow behaviors for which we feel some responsibility.”

Question 38

After making an important dissonance how can you can you reduce dissonance?

Answer 38

By upgrading the chosen alternative and downgrading the unchosen option.

• Ex: Minnesota lab experiment that allowed women to rate eight wedding gifts and then choose which between two items they rated similarly. After they chose their gift, they were ask to re rank the items, and shockingly enough their selected item became the new top ranked item.
  “ seems that after we have made our choices, the grass does not then grow greener on the other side of the fence”

Question 39

“anxiety-justifying “theory ?

Answer 39

cognitions that would justify their lingering fears.

Question 40

Give an example of how inferences affect peoples attitudes?

Answer 40

If we see parents coercing 10-year-old Jaden into saying, “I’m sorry,” we attribute Jaden’s apology to the situation, not to his personal regret. If we see Jaden apologizing with no coercion, we attribute the apology to Jaden himself

Question 41

Give an example of how smoking can be applied to the three theories of how attitude effects behavior.

Answer 41

1. ) Self presentation (impersonation management):
   * I look like a cool smoker.
2. ) Self justification (cognitive dissonance):
   * Ah, i’ve been waiting for this all day.
   * I know smoking is bad for me.
   * Oh well.. the stats aren’t as bad as they say. I’m healthy too, I won’t get sick.
3. )Self perception ( self-observation):
   * Here I am smoking again, I must like smoking.

Question 42

Give anther example of self perception proving that attitude can follow behavior.

Answer 42

A stimulus such as a growling bear confronts a woman in the forest. She tenses, her heartbeat increases, adrenaline flows, and she runs away. Observing all this, she then experiences fear.

Question 43

What is the facial feedback effect?

Answer 43

Paralyzing the frowning muscles with Botox slows activity in people’s emotion-related brain circuits and slows their reading of sadness- or anger-related sentences.

Question 44

Motions trigger….

Answer 44

emotions

Question 45

T/F mirroring someone’s expressions can help you better empathize with them?

Answer 45

True, Dartmouth study in chapter.

Question 46

What does emotional contagion explain?

Answer 46

why it is more enjoyable to be around happy people then sad people.

Question 47

What is the over-justification effect?

Answer 47

• When people do something they enjoy, without reward or coercion, they attribute their behavior to their love of the activity. External rewards undermine intrinsic motivation by leading people to attribute their behavior to the incentive.

EX: Pay people for playing with puzzles, and they will later play with the puzzles less than will those who play for no pay. Promise children a reward for doing what they intrinsically enjoy (for example, playing with markers), and you will turn their play into work

Question 48

What does self perception theory imply about and unanticipated reward?

Answer 48

• It does not diminish intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute their actions to their own motivation.

Question 49

T/F: Many life tasks combine intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

Answer 49

T

Question 50

When does overjustification effect occur?

Answer 50

When someone offers an unnecessary reward beforehand in an obvious effort to control behavior.

Question 51

Rewards and praises regarding achievement boost ____what?

Answer 51

intrinsic motivation

Question 52

Rewards that seek to control people and lead them to believe it was the reward that caused their effort diminishes _ ?

Answer 52

intrinsic motivation

Question 53

What is the self affirmation theory?

Answer 53

• doing undesirable acts makes many of us feel foolish, and also makes us lack confidence and competency.
• This sense of dissonance causes our left frontal lobe to buzz with arousal, and generates a feeling of uncomfortability.
• But if we justify our ACTIONS, we can get a returned sense of integrity and self worth.