Lecture 5 Chapter 6 Flashcards
What is an attitude
A positive, negative or mixed reaction to a person or object and idea
what is self esteem?
an attitude we hold about ourselves
what is attraction
a positive attitude towards another person
what is prejudice
a negative attitude often directed
against certain groups
what are some terms that people use to describe their attitudes
- Like
- love
- dislike,
- hate
- admire
- detest
how are attitudes formed?
The attitude formation process is quick and automatic, it kind of is like a reflex
what are the main 4 reaction affects that “makes” an attitude and how can our attitudes vary in strength?
we can react to something with
1) positive affect
2) negative affect
3) ambivalence (mixed emotions),
4) apathy and indifference
at times, people have both positive and negative reactions
to the same attitude object without feeling conflict because they are conscious of one reaction but not the other.
What two ways do people differ that showcase how our attitudes reveal a lot about us as individuals?
- The difference of peoples tendency in general to like or dislike things.
- people differ in the extent to which
how quickly and how strongly they react.
how is having an attitude adaptive but a downside too?
- Over the years, researchers have found that attitudes serve important functions—such as enabling us to judge quickly and without much
thought whether something we first encounter is good or bad, helpful or hurtful,
and to be sought or avoided
-The downside is that having
preexisting attitudes can lead us to be closed-minded, bias how we interpret new
information, and make us more resistant to change
how can you measure attitudes?
1) self reports
2) covert measures
3) Implicit Association Test
(IAT)
what are self reports?
easiest way to assess a person’s attitude about something
is to ask. involves attitdue scales and bogus pipelines
what are attitude scales?
A multiple-item
questionnaire designed to measure a
person’s attitude toward some object.
what is Bogus pipeline?
Phony lie-detector device designed to get truthful answers to sensitive questions
* Improves honesty
what are covert measures
A second general approach to the self-report problem is to
collect indirect, covert measures of attitudes that cannot be controlled.
includes Facial electromyograph
(EMG) and Brain imaging
what Facial electromyograph
(EMG)?
An electronic instrument that records
facial muscle activity associated with
emotions and attitudes. certain muscles in
the face contract when we are happy, and different facial muscles contract when
we are sad. Some of the muscular changes cannot be seen with the naked eye,
however, so the facial EMG is used
what are two ways of seeing Brain imaging
- EEG (brain waves)
- fMRI (brain activity)
whats the Implicit Association Test
(IAT)
is based on the notion that each of us has
all sorts of implicit attitudes that we cannot self-report in questionnaires because
we are not even aware of having these attitudes. the IAT measures the sheer speed—in fractions of a second—with which people
associate pairs of concepts
- Through a sequence of tasks, the IAT measures implicit racial attitudes toward, for
example, African Americans by measuring how quickly people respond to black-bad/
white-good word pairings relative to black-good/white-bad pairings. Most white
Americans are quicker to respond to the first type of pairings than to the second, which
suggests that they do not as readily connect black-good and white-bad.
can implicit attittudes change? what does the Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019 tsudy say?
Research has tracked recent changes over time in various U.S.-based tests of implicit and explicit
attitudes. On some topics, such as people’s tolerance for obesity, survey results suggested lessening
negativity, but IAT scores did not confirm this change. On other topics, however, most notably attitudes
about sexual orientation, people exhibited less negativity toward gays on both explicit measures and
the IAT. Based on these changes, researchers estimate that Americans will exhibit zero preference on
explicit measures in 5 years and on the IAT in 9 years
what are some Scrutiny of IAT
- Explicit attitudes better predict behavior than IAT
- But IAT predicts socially sensitive behaviors better than
explicit attitudes - E.g., Suicide attempts
How Attitudes are Formed?
- Genetic makeup (nature)
- Learning (nurture):
explain how genetic makeup contributes to how attitudes are formed
- Research shows that on some issues the attitudes of identical twins are more similar than those of fraternal twins and that twins raised apart are as similar to each other as
those who are raised in the same home. - this suggests that people
may be predisposed to hold certain attitudes. - Tesser found that when
asked about attitudes for which there seems to be a predisposition (such as attitudes
toward sexual promiscuity, religion, and the death penalty), research participants
were quicker to respond and less likely to alter their views toward social norms
explain how learning contributes to how attittudes are formed
- Exposure to attitude objects
- Rewards and punishments
- Attitudes that our parents, friends, and enemies express
- The social and cultural context
- Evaluative conditioning: Forming attitudes toward a
neutral stimulus because of its association with a
positive or negative person, place, or thing
