Chapter 6 Lecture: Attitudes Flashcards
explain the antichinese attitudes studied by lapierre
- he studied the strong anti-chinese attitudes in US on behalf of white americans.
- had an elegant well dressed chinese couple attend a number of restaurants and hotels
- even though there was prejudice against asians at that time, they were being treated well by the restaurant hotel staff
- afterwards, lapierre handed out a questionaire to the restaurant “would you ever serve an asian person’
- 91% of restaurants said they would not serve chinese people
- study revealed a GAP BETWEEN ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR.
- attitudes and behavior do not add up.
3 factors that lead to attitudes and behavior aligning
1) origin of attitudes: experience ourselves. when an attitude is formed by your own experience, your behavior is more likely to align. discrepancy seen more if attitude was learned vicariously
2) importance of attitude: does this topic matter to you, when issue is important to us, we are more likely to behave in line with that attitude
3) recently thought about it. PRIMING PHENOMENON. just recently giving though to an idea can lead to you acting in that specific manner. ex/ changing your political opinion in light of recent events that you just read about
how does priming affect our behavior and attitudes lining up?
recently thought about it. PRIMING PHENOMENON. just recently giving though to an idea can lead to you acting in that specific manner. ex/ changing your political opinion in light of recent events that you just read about
T/F: when an attitude is formed by your own experience, your behavior is more likely to align. discrepancy seen more if attitude was learned vicariously
TRUE
cognitive dissonance
when there is discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, an uncomfortable feeling/state will be created internally. Creates a state of tension.
we tend to get rid of cognitive dissonance by ____ or ___, and shifting it in line with our behavior
CHANGING OUR ATTITUDE\
ex/ texting and driving is thought of as bad, but if we do it, we try and make justifications
4 conditions that must be met in order to change our attitude to meet our behavior
1) the behavior thats inconsistent with our attitude must have negative consequences (ex/ texting and driving)
2) we must INTERNALLY ATTRIBUTE the behavior to our own faults - if we can say “well I was acting like that becase someone was making me mad” then we won’t think it’s our fault and we’ll place the blame on the other person
3) physiological arousal - discomfort because of our dissonance
4) attribute your own arousal to your behavior, not because of your surroundings.
explain the block turning test (boring task) experiment conducted by festinger
- participants had to do a boring task
- asked participants if theyd be willing to be an experimenter in the future,” in fact, we need someone to be an exeperimenter for the upcoming session,” we’d like you to tell the next person coming inot the lab that this experiment was very fun (LIE)
participants knew task was boring (ATTITUDES), but they were telling the others that it was fun (DISSONANCE)
-participants were told theyd be paid either 20 or 1 dollar if they agreed to the experiment
the 1$ cohort had LOW EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION. there fore, they’d have to make an INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION as to why they lied. The ppl with large reward had an external attribution that drove the lying behavior (the external attribution- no dissonance)
the people with the small reward would have felt the dissonance, and TRIED TO CHANGE THEIR ATTITUDE and say it really wasn’t as boring as they thought (CHANGE THEIR ATTITUDE TO MAKE THEMSELVES BELIEVE IT WAS FUN)
how do you start a state of dissonance in the lab
using a COUNTER ATTITUDINAL ESSAY.
- write an essay that is OPPOSITE to your true attitudes or true beliefs.
explain how cooper and fazio used a counter attitudinal essay to test the fact that attitude change required internal attributions
they used a counter attitudinal essay about free speech. 3 conditions:
1) group asked to write a counter attitudinal essay on beliefs about free speech
2) group was told that the experiment REQUIRED THEM to write the essay
3) the group was promised a LARGE REWARD if they were to write a counter attitudinal essay.
hypothesized that group 1 SHOULD FEEL DISSONANCE BECAUSE THEY HAD A CHOICE TO ENGAGE IN THEIR BEHAVIOR TO WRITE A CONFLICTING PAPER THAT GOES AGAINST THEIR ATTITUDE. groups 2 and 3 could attribute their behaviors to external factors and wouldn’t change their attitudes– “ i mean I don’t agree with it but I get money so whatever”
how did cooper and fazio test to see if physiological arousal necessary for attitude to align with behavior
- attached electrodes to pt fingers to measure SKIN CONDUCTANCE
- used counter attitudinal essay about tuition increases (CAE)/
group 1: asked to write an consistent with true beliefs
group 2: asked to write a CAE
group 3: TOLD to write an essay consistent with true belifs
group 4: TOLD to write a CAE
- group 2 should feel the most dissonance and that group 2 had the most physiological arousal while writing the essay; bc they still agreed to write the CAE.
- group 4 wouldn’t experience as much CAE because they were TOLD to write the essay and don’t make an internal attribution to themselves. — they don’t take personal responsibility for their actions.
why won’t you experience dissonance when you are ORDERED to do something rather than just asked to do something
if youre told to do something, you arne’t doing any internal attributions and thus no attitude changes.
discuss the study done by cooper, zara and tayes with drugs and cognitive dissonance
were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions. All subjects were led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate experiment, was a placebo.
In reality, subjects were given a pill that contained either phenobarbital (tranquilizer condition), amphetamine (amphetamine condition), or milk powder (placebo condition).
In this last condition, the results yielded the usual dissonance effect: High choice produced more attitude change in the direction of the essay than low choice.
When subjects were given a tranquilizer, this effect was virtually eliminated;
when subjects were given amphetamine, attitude change increased under high choice and was exhibited for the first time under low choice.
These results are consistent with the notion that attitude change is in the service of reducing arousal and with the idea that arousal from other sources can be misattributed to attitude-discrepant behavior.
T/F: if you can attribute your arousal to another factor, you will not feel dissonance
true.
ex/ texting and driving, but there is a very urgent situation. You may attribute your stress to your urgent situation and not to the fact that you are texting and driving
2 broad ways of getting rid of your dissonance
1) change your attitude
2) intervene at any of the 4 steps.
ex/ intervening in step 1: minimize how negative the true conseuqneces of your inconsistent behavior truly is
intervene at step 2: try and come up for an external attribution to your behavior
intervnee at step 3: dampen physiological arousal. try to get rid of physiological arousal.
ex/ people drink alcohol to reduce cognitive dissonance
intervene at step 4: attribute your arousal to an external setting rather than to your inconsistent behavior/internal attribution.
