Chapter 7: Attitudes and Behavior Flashcards
DEF What is attitude?
an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes 3 components
What are the three components of attitude?
- affect
- cognition
- behavior
DEF What is affect (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- ammount of pos or neg emotion associated with an object
DEF What is cognition (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- thoughts that reinforce a person’s feelings
- –knowledge or associated memories abou the object
DEF What is behavior (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- tendency to approach or avoid
How do we measure attitudes?
- accessibility
- response latency
- centrality
- implicit attitde measure
- physiological indicators
DEF What is accessibility (attitude)?
how readily and attitude comes to mind
DEF What is response latency?
- measure of attitude
- the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus
- less time = stronger attitude
DEF what is centrality (attitude)?
- measure of attitude
- how central an attitude is to one’s belief system
DEF What is implicit attitude measure?
- indirect measure
- something that is not self report
What are physiological indicators (attitude)?
increased heart rate, sweaty palms, etc.
Why are attitudes a poor predictor of behavior?
- attitudes conflict with other powerful determinants
- we introspect abou the reasons for our attitudes
- mismatch between general attitudes and specific targets
EDIE REEXAMINE #3 ABOVE
What is a stronger determinant of behavior than attitude?
prevailing social norms for apporpraite behavior
Introspection of attitudes Experiment
- participants asked to give an overall evaluation of relationship or reasons with overall evaluation
- those who had to give reasons gave less accurate evaluations because they were almost guessing how they really felt
What are differences in general attitude and specific targets?
- Highly specific attitudes may predict specific behavior
- Highly general attitudes may predict general behavior
DEF What are cognitive consistency theories?
Tendency to rationalize and justify our behavior to minimize inconsistences between attitudes and actions
(predicting attitudes form behavior)
DEF What is cognitive dissonance theory?
Inconsistency between a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissoance) that leads to effects to restore consistency
- changing our attitudes to maintain consistency
What are three applications of cognitive dissonance theory?
- hard decisions create some dissonance
- effort justification
- induced (forced) compliance
Hard Decisions and Dissonance Experiment
- participants asked to rate their chances before or after placing their bet
- those rating before said ‘fair’
- those rating after said ‘good’ or ‘excellent’
- irrevocable decision caused them to reevaluate their choice as more favorable and find fault in other choices in order to eliminate dissonance
What is effort justification?
reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be dissapointing
Effort Justification Experiment
- participants underwent a mild or servere test to participate in discussion
- discussion was horrible
- those who underwent mild test rated discussion lower
- those who underwent severe test rated discussion higher to justify their efforts
What is induced (forced) compliance?
subtely compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsisten with their beliegs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore a change in their original attitudes and values
Induced Compliance Experiment (boring task and money)
- participants performed a boring task
- asked to lie and say it was exciting (given $1 or $20)
- $20 was justification to lie, rate experiment low
- $1 was not justification to lie, so they rate experiment higher to accomodate for dissonance
When does inconsistency produce dissonance?
if it challenges our core concept of self
(1) behavior was freely chosen
(2) behavior wasn’t sufficiently justified
(3) behavior had negative consequences
(4) negative consequences were foreseeable
How does self affirmation relate to dissonance?
dissonance means our sense of self is under threat so we boast about other self consistent detail to discredit self inconsistent detail and removed dissonance
Self Affirmation and Dissonance Experiment
- participants who value confronting prejudice put in situtation and didn’t confront it
- reduced dissonance if they made a list of positive self affirmations before hand
Is dissonance universal?
NO
- japanese participants only demonstrated dissonance when they thought someone else was watching their decision
- americans showed less dissonance when they thought someone else was watching their decisions
What is self perception theory?
- counter to cognitive dissonance theory
- the theory that people come to know their own attitues by looking at their behavior and inferring what their attitudes must be.
- self perception works like social perception
How does self perception theory differ from cognitive dissonance theory?
- argues we don’t change our attitudes
- we infer our attitudes from our behavior
- similar to an outsider infering our attitude
How do we reconcile self perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory?
- dissonance comes from personal arousal at inconsistency
- self perception is a calm and logical evaluation of behavior (everyday normal social cognition)
Is their evidence of arousal to support cogintive dissonance theory?
YES
- hypothesized that CDT processing occurs when inconsistencies are obvious and important while SPT processing occurs when inconsistencies are vague and unimportant
When do we use CDT processing?
inconsistencies are OBVIOUS and IMPORTANT
When do we use SPT processing?
inconsistencies are VAGUE and UNIMPORTANT
What does the embodied nature of cognition and emotion mean?
we draw on cues from our body and behavior to aid in the processing of an emotion
ex nodding head makes you more agreeable
ex flexing arm = bring close = pos things
ex people with botox cannot interpret as many emotions well because they cannot express as many emotiosn well
- the brain likes to physically try on an idea to help understand
What is system justification theory?
to defend the prevailing sociopolitical system, people who are economically disadvantaged justify/defend their own disadvantage
- an attempt to avoid idealogical dissonance
- ex women reporting they deserve to be paid less than men for the same work
What is terror management theory?
people deal with the horrific knowledge of our mortailty by striving for symbolic immortality by living up to cultural standards
- living on in heaven
- living on through children, grandchildren
- living on by being connected to immortal culture
Terror Management Theory Experiment
MORTALITY SALIENCE ALSO INCREASES STRIVE FOR SELF-ESTEEM
- participants reminded of life after death or no life after death
- given pos feedback
- asked to rate reliability of feedback
- no life rated pos feedback as more reliable because they wanted to boost their self esteem
- life after rated lower reliability because they are given proof of immortaility and don’t need to boost self esteem
