exam 2 Flashcards
opening paragraphs of chapter 4
expressed attitudes?
not good predictors of behavior
Allan Wicker
“It may be desirable to abandon the attitude concept.”
looked at studies and found that there was rarely over a 30% correlation
more recent studies on attitude and behavior
attitude does predict behavior, formulas that can do it
use both implicit (unconscious) and explicit attitude to predict behavior
when does attitude predict behavior?
when attitude is very specific to the behavior
when attitudes are very strong, people tend to behave accordingly
prejudiced attitudes predict discriminatory behavior (affect and cognition)
implicit attitudes predict implicit behavior (same for explicit attitudes)
How do we measure attitudes?
implicit attitude test:
bogus pipelines
reaction time measures
physiological measures
bogus pipelines
fooling people into disclosing their attitude by convincing them that a machine can be used to gauge their private attitudes
physiological measures for attitudes
EEG, fMRI, heart rate
The Theory of Planned Behavior
Factor 1: attitude toward the behavior (“I’m for physical fitness”
Factor 2: subjective norms (“My neighbors seem to be jogging and going to the gym”)
Factor 3: perceived control (“I could easily do this”)—self-efficacy scale
All three factors lead to behavior intention (“I’m going to start next week”)
…leads to behavior
roleplaying
Stanford Prison Experiment
Higgins study
roleplay influences attitude
Higgins study
Person A was asked to write a personal description of Person B and then report it to the authority figure. If Person A knows that the authority figure likes Person B, they tend to write a more positive description of Person B. Person A tends to begin to like Person B more
foot-in-the-door phenomenon
people are more willing to comply with a larger request when they have first complied with a smaller request
low-ball technique
tactics for getting people to agree to something first—people who agree to an initial request will often still comply later
evil and moral acts
Study about killing bugs: the people who believed that they killed 5 bugs are more willing to kill more bugs (as opposed to the group that only killed 1)
main effect
people who believed that they killed bugs tended to go farther with killing than people that believed it was just a simulation
interracial and racial attitudes
after segregation ended, people’s attitudes changed dramatically
self-presentation
impression management—ego protection
self-justification
cognitive dissonance theory
cognitive dissonance theory
People have a fundamental cognitive drive to reduce dissonance by modifying an existing belief
Leon Festinger experiment: the people paid the least changed their actual opinion of the task so they didn’t have to lie; the people paid the most just lied and didn’t need to change their opinion because it was worth it to lie
Iraq war: we got into the war because we thought there were weapons of mass destruction—there weren’t any, so we changed our objective
self-perception
we develop our attitude by observing our own behavior and then conclude what attitude must have caused the behavior (ex: I’m behaving this way, so I must have this attitude)
over-justification
The result of bringing people to do what they already like doing. They may then see their action as externally controlled if they get some incentive, rather than just internally appealing.
Lukaszewski and Roney study
preference for dominance in a partner was highest when estrogen is highest (when you are fertile)
norms
expected behavior
universal friendship norms
people think that friendship is important, respect your friends, don’t divulge their secrets
