Chapter 4

Question 1

Affectively Based Attitudes are based on…

Answer 1

• feelings and emotions

Question 2

Behaviorally Based Attitudes are based on…

Answer 2

• activities

Question 3

Cognitively Based Attitudes are based on…

Answer 3

• thinking consciously and making choices

Question 4

Attitude Toward Snakes Example
Cognitive Component (belief) ———->
Affective Component (feeling) ———->
Behavioral Component (act) ————>

Answer 4

• belief: snakes are venomous
• feeling: snakes freak me out
• act: I stay away from snakes at all times

Question 5

Why don’t attitudes lead to behavior?

Answer 5

1.) the situation may effect reports of attitudes
2.) the situation may effect behavior
3.) attitudes and behaviors may be measured differently

Question 6

LaPiere (1934)

Answer 6

• studied how race and ethnicity impacted both social norms and social psychology; his observations led him to believe that how people talked among others regarding racial issues and how they actually behaved did not always mesh

Question 7

Wicker (1969)

Answer 7

• attitudes vs. actions: the relationship of verbal and overt behavioral response to attitude objects

Question 8

Do attitudes ever predict behavior?

Answer 8

• yes, when there are minimal influences reports of attitudes

Question 9

Bogus Pipeline

Answer 9

• based on the idea that people might give truer responses if they feared getting caught in the act of lying

Question 10

Bogus Pipeline has minimal influences on…

Answer 10

• attitudes

Question 11

Principle of Aggregation

Answer 11

• states that the sum of a set of multiple measurements is a more stable and representative estimator than any single measurement; effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look at a person’s average or “aggregated” behavior instead of isolated acts

Question 12

Principle of Aggregation has minimal influences on…

Answer 12

• behavior

Question 13

Zimbardo’s Prison Study is an example of…

Answer 13

• role playing

Question 14

Define Role Playing

Answer 14

• a set of norms that defines how people in a given social position ought to behave

Question 15

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo wanted to find out…

Answer 15

• Is prison brutality a product of evil prisoners and malicious guards? Or do the institutional roles of guard and prisoner embitter and harden even compassionate people? Do people make the place violent, or does the place make the people violent?

Question 16

Define Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

Answer 16

• when someone agrees to help with a small request, it is easier to get them to help with a larger one in the future

Question 17

Define Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 17

• tension that arises when our behaviors are inconsistent with our cognitions; goes and buys something you didn’t need (behavior) and then thinks why did I do that (cognition)

Question 18

Cognitive Dissonance- 3 ways to reduce this tension are…

Answer 18

1.) change the behavior
2.) change the cognition
3.) add new cognitions

Question 19

Define Selective Exposure

Answer 19

• the tendency to seek information and media that agree with one’s views and to avoid unsuitable information

Question 20

Define Counter-Attitudinal Advocacy

Answer 20

• a persuasive message that contradicts a person’s current attitude; sometimes people will state an opinion or otherwise support a point of view that is actually against their own beliefs

Question 21

Define Justification of Effort

Answer 21

• person’s tendency to attribute a value to an outcome, which they had to put effort into achieving, greater than the objective value of the outcome

Question 22

Define Post-Decision Dissonance

Answer 22

• refers to the distress that occurs after one makes a decision; after we’ve made a decision, we will feel dissonance regarding the possibility of it being wrong and will often change our perceptions to reduce this dissonance and make the decision seem more attractive

Question 23

Define Derogation of Victims

Answer 23

• the phenomenon in which innocent victims of suffering are perceived as having less positive traits

Question 24

Real World Dissonance Applications

Answer 24

• smokers adjusting their beliefs; justifying or rationalizing mistakes or bad decisions

Question 25

Define Self-Affirmation Theory

Answer 25

• proposes that people are motivated to maintain a positive self-view and that threats to perceived self-competence are met with resistance; motivated to maintain views of themselves as moral and competent

Question 26

Define Self-Perception Theory

Answer 26

• the theory that when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us; by looking at our behavior and the circumstances under which it occurs

Question 27

Laird (1974)

Answer 27

• induced frowning muscles, students felt more angry; induced smiling muscles, students felt more happy