Chapter 7: Attitudes and Behavior Flashcards

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1
Q

DEF What is attitude?

A

an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes 3 components

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2
Q

What are the three components of attitude?

A
  • affect
  • cognition
  • behavior
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3
Q

DEF What is affect (attitude)?

A
  • component of attitude

- ammount of pos or neg emotion associated with an object

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4
Q

DEF What is cognition (attitude)?

A
  • component of attitude
  • thoughts that reinforce a person’s feelings
  • –knowledge or associated memories abou the object
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5
Q

DEF What is behavior (attitude)?

A
  • component of attitude

- tendency to approach or avoid

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6
Q

How do we measure attitudes?

A
  • accessibility
  • response latency
  • centrality
  • implicit attitde measure
  • physiological indicators
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7
Q

DEF What is accessibility (attitude)?

A

how readily and attitude comes to mind

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8
Q

DEF What is response latency?

A
  • measure of attitude
  • the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus
  • less time = stronger attitude
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9
Q

DEF what is centrality (attitude)?

A
  • measure of attitude

- how central an attitude is to one’s belief system

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10
Q

DEF What is implicit attitude measure?

A
  • indirect measure

- something that is not self report

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11
Q

What are physiological indicators (attitude)?

A

increased heart rate, sweaty palms, etc.

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12
Q

Why are attitudes a poor predictor of behavior?

A
  • 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
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13
Q

What is a stronger determinant of behavior than attitude?

A

prevailing social norms for apporpraite behavior

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14
Q

Introspection of attitudes Experiment

A
  • 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
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15
Q

What are differences in general attitude and specific targets?

A
  • Highly specific attitudes may predict specific behavior

- Highly general attitudes may predict general behavior

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16
Q

DEF What are cognitive consistency theories?

A

Tendency to rationalize and justify our behavior to minimize inconsistences between attitudes and actions
(predicting attitudes form behavior)

17
Q

DEF What is cognitive dissonance theory?

A

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

18
Q

What are three applications of cognitive dissonance theory?

A
  • hard decisions create some dissonance
  • effort justification
  • induced (forced) compliance
19
Q

Hard Decisions and Dissonance Experiment

A
  • 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
20
Q

What is effort justification?

A

reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be dissapointing

21
Q

Effort Justification Experiment

A
  • 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
22
Q

What is induced (forced) compliance?

A

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

23
Q

Induced Compliance Experiment (boring task and money)

A
  • 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
24
Q

When does inconsistency produce dissonance?

A

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

25
Q

How does self affirmation relate to dissonance?

A

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

26
Q

Self Affirmation and Dissonance Experiment

A
  • 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
27
Q

Is dissonance universal?

A

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
28
Q

What is self perception theory?

A
  • 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
29
Q

How does self perception theory differ from cognitive dissonance theory?

A
  • argues we don’t change our attitudes
  • we infer our attitudes from our behavior
  • similar to an outsider infering our attitude
30
Q

How do we reconcile self perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory?

A
  • dissonance comes from personal arousal at inconsistency

- self perception is a calm and logical evaluation of behavior (everyday normal social cognition)

31
Q

Is their evidence of arousal to support cogintive dissonance theory?

A

YES
- hypothesized that CDT processing occurs when inconsistencies are obvious and important while SPT processing occurs when inconsistencies are vague and unimportant

32
Q

When do we use CDT processing?

A

inconsistencies are OBVIOUS and IMPORTANT

33
Q

When do we use SPT processing?

A

inconsistencies are VAGUE and UNIMPORTANT

34
Q

What does the embodied nature of cognition and emotion mean?

A

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

35
Q

What is system justification theory?

A

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
36
Q

What is terror management theory?

A

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
37
Q

Terror Management Theory Experiment

A

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