Exam 2 Flashcards
What is the feeling of discomfort when confronted with information implying that we may have behaved in ways that are irrational, immoral, or stupid called?
Cognitive dissonance
What are the three basic ways we try to reduce our cognitive dissonance?
- Changing our behavior
- Changing one of the dissonant cognitions
- Adding new cognitions
What is the impact bias?
The tendency to overestimate the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to future negative events.
The process of reducing dissonance is largely _______?
Unconscious
What is post-decision dissonance?
Dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating the rejected alternatives.
The more important the decision, the greater the __________?
Dissonance
What is lowballing?
Salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a very low cost and subsequently claims it was an error, and then raises the price.
What is the justification of effort?
The tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain.
What is external justification?
A reason or an explanation for dissonant personal behavior that resides outside the individual.
What is internal justification?
The reduction of dissonance by changing something about oneself.
What is counter-attitudinal advocacy?
Stating an opinion or attitude that runs counter to one’s private belief or attitude.
What is insufficient punishment?
The dissonance aroused when individuals lack sufficient external justification for having resisted a desired activity or object, usually resulting in individuals devaluing the forbidden activity or object.
What is self-persuasion?
A long-lasting form of attitude change that results from attempts at self-justification.
What are attitudes?
Evaluations of people, objects, and ideas.
What are explicit attitudes?
Attitudes that we consciously endorse and can easily report.
What are implicit attitudes?
Attitudes that are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious.
What is cognitively based attitude?
An attitude based primarily on people’s beliefs about the properties of an attitude object.
What is affectively based attitude?
An attitude based more on people’s feelings and values than on their beliefs about the nature of an attitude object.
What is classical conditioning?
The phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus that does not until the neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus.
What is operant conditioning?
The phenomenon whereby behaviors that people freely choose to perform increase or decrease in frequency depending on whether they are followed by positive reinforcement or punishment.
What is behaviorally based attitude?
An attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an attitude object.
What is persuasive communication?
Communication advocating a particular side of an issue.
What is the Yale Attitude Chance Approach?
The study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages.
What is the central route to persuasion?
The case whereby people elaborate on a persuasive communication, listening carefully to and thinking about the arguments, as occurs when people have both the ability and the motivation to listen carefully to a communication.
What is the peripheral route to persuasion?
The case whereby people do not elaborate on the arguments in a persuasive communication but are instead swayed by peripheral cues.
What is the need for cognition?
A personality variable reflecting the extent to which people engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activities.
What are fear-arousing communications?
Persuasive messages that attempt to change people’s attitudes by arousing their fears.
What is attitude inoculation?
Making people immune to attempts to change their attitudes by initially exposing them to small doses of the arguments against their position.
What is the reactance theory?
The idea that when people feel their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened, an unpleasant state of reactance is aroused, which they can reduce by performing the threatened behavior.
What is attitude accessibility?
The strength of the association between an attitude object and a persons evaluation of that object, measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about the object.
What is theory of planned behavior?
The idea that the best predictors of a persons planned, deliberate behaviors are the person’s attitudes toward specific behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control.
What are subliminal messages?
Words or pictures that are not consciously perceived but may nevertheless influence peoples judgements.
What is conformity?
A change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other people.
What are the three types of conformity?
Obedience, compliance, and acceptance.
What is the informational social influence?
Seeing others as a source of information to guide our behavior.
What is private acceptance?
Conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what they are doing or saying is right.
What is public compliance?
Conforming to other people’s behavior publicly without necessarily believing in what we are doing or saying.
What is contagion?
The rapid spread of emotions or behaviors through a crowd.
What is mass psychogenic illness?
The occurrence, in a group of people, of similar physical symptoms with no known physical cause.
What are social norms?
The implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members.