PSY220 - 7. Attitudes & Persuasion Flashcards

Question

Source variable #2: personal involvement

Answer 1

3.V#2: good, well-reasoned arguments and hard evidence vs. poor weak message. 4.V#3: exams might be instituted that year or in ten years. 5.DV: attitude change. Results: Personal involvement determined relative impact of source expertise and speech quality.

Answer 2

Directly affected S’s - central Unaffected S’s -peripheral Attitudes based on quality Attitudes based on who saying arguments it starting this year – focused on quality, not persuaded if bad 10 years – endorsed if advocated by prof, rejected if high school

Answer 3

depends on whether you think subjects will process centrally or peripherally peripheral route – more info = more valid central route – more info could mean more valid argument or it could backfire focus on quality over quantity – so either no effect or gets annoyed

Answer 4

Does early material make more of an impact or does later material? (Age-old dilemma in politics: Is it better to have your political convention earlier in the summer or later in the summer?) The effect of order depends on the exact timing

Answer 5

1. Subjects read summary of plaintiff’s case, summary of defendant’s case 2. Subjects made their decision. What was manipulated/varied by the experimenters: (a) amount of time between the two message, (b) amount of time between 2nd message and making decision.

Answer 6

1. Message 1→ Message 2→ One week→ Decision: Primacy 2. Message 1→ One week→ Message 2→ Decision: Recency forgetting has to occur in order to have the primacy effect primacy effect is default when delay is after message 1: no opportunity for forgetting for message 2 so it is more influential

Answer 7

3. Message 1 → Message 2 → Decision: Null 4. Message 1 → One week → Message 2 → One week: Null 3. no opportunity for forgetting – no bias 4. close to 0% memory for both so no advantage

Answer 8

Research supports the latter. The most attitude change occurs at moderate amounts of discrepancy (between audience’s original attitude and the advocated attitude). Exercise causion, don’t wanna turn off audience + lose credibility with them. Normal curve. Gradual incremental approach better than swinging for the home run.

Answer 9

Emotional content Are fear appeals effective? – effects are spotty. Can work if increases attention to content. Often includes solution. What is needed to make fear appeals work? Reassurance and a course of action. (Otherwise audience may feel hopelessness or panic.)

Answer 10

``` Leon Festinger (1957): A fundamental human motivation is to maintain a state of cognitive consistency, that is: one’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours do not contradict one another. Mental gymnastics to maintain consistency A fundamental and powerful motivation. ```

Answer 11

I am pro-choice. vs. I gave a pro-life speech. | I am on a diet. vs. I just ate a chocolate cake.

Answer 12

“two elements are in a dissonant relation if the obverse of one would follow from the other.” [obverse, n., a proposition inferred immediately from another by denying the opposite of what the given proposition affirms: “The obverse of "all A is B" is "no A is not B".”]

Answer 13

appearance of dissonant cognitions arouses an aversive state of tension. Change attitude or change behaviour Cognitive dissonance only within head of 1 person

Answer 14

1. Subject is greeted by experimenter who says that they are interested in various measures of human performance. 2. Experimenter gives subject a wooden board containing 48 square pegs in square holes. Subject is asked to turn each peg a quarter turn to the left, then a quarter turn back to the right, then back to the left, then back to the right. The routine is EXTREMELY MONOTONOUS, and it’s meant to be.

Answer 15

3. After 60 ENDLESS, EXCRUCIATING minutes the experimenter returns. Says, “You were in the control group. To test the effects of motivation on performance, other participants are being told that the experiment will be fun and exciting. Would you be willing to tell the next participant that the experiment was enjoyable?” 4. To make it more attractive, the experimenter offers the subject money:

Answer 16

Either $1 or $20 (a lot of money in 1959-$80 by today’s standards!). 5. After telling the lie, subjects asked to rate how much they liked the peg-board task. Did subjects experience dissonance? Subjects’ rating depended on how much they were paid (-5 to 5 scale). No lie (control) $1 lie $20 lie -.45 1.35 -.05

Answer 17

Subjects’ rating of their willingness to participate in similar experiment in the future. No lie (control) $1 lie $20 lie -0.62 1.20 -.25 well paid + control subjects did not experience dissonance

Answer 18

In F & C’s language, $20 subjects had “sufficient justification” (for lying)…$1 subjects had “insufficient justification.” Problem that needs fixing Know they are willing to throw integrity out the window – not experiencing dissonance Didn’t need to reduce dissonance by changing attitudes (raise rating)

Answer 19

“I am a good person.” Vs. “I said the task was fun.” (a lie) To resolve, you could change “I am a good person” to “I am a bad person” but that’s probably less likely than: “I am a good person.” Vs. “I said the task was fun, and it wasn’t too bad.” Bring dissonance back into harmony

Answer 20

``` These results are highly counterintuitive: Most people tend to believe: “The more reward, the more you like it.” CDT predicts (and the data shows): “The less reward, the more you like it.” Big reward, don’t need to persuade yourself it’s good – reward is justification enough ```

Answer 21

Small Reward insufficient justification for doing it Hazing rituals – increase identity identification + love for group – willing to do disagreeable things for the group so I must love them

Answer 22

Exaggerating positive reasons for choice + negative reasons for alternative 1. subjects evaluated various consumer products (ostensibly a marketing research study). 2. After rating a toaster, coffee pot, radio, stopwatch, etc. subjects told they could take one thing home as a gift.

Answer 23

3. In high dissonance condition: offered the difficult choice between two items that were equally attractive. In low dissonance condition: offered easy choice between one attractive item (radio) and one unattractive item (toilet plunger). 4. After receiving the gift, subjects were given a distraction for a minutes (to read some research reports). 5. Then reevaluated all the products

Answer 24

Pre-gift rating → Lo diss or Hi diss →Post-gift rating Results: In lo diss group, post-gift ratings were the same as their pre-gift ratings. In hi diss group, post-gift ratings were significantly higher for chosen item and lower for unchosen item. Subjects seemed to try to reassure themselves that they had made the right choice. Think candidate more likely to win when interviewed after the vote CHALLENGES AND REVISIONS TO FESTINGER’S ORIGINAL FORMULATION

Answer 25

1) One’s attitude-discrepant behavior must produce unwanted negative consequences. – more about consequences than consistency 2) A feeling of personal responsibility. – feel like they had a choice 3) Physiological arousal. ***** - controversial. Only subjects who wrote counter attitude arguments with a choise increased in arousal. 4) Attribution of arousal to the dissonance.

Answer 26

1. Typical dissonance paradigm 2. All subjects given a pill to ingest. 1/3 of subjects told pill makes you relax, 1/3 told pill makes you aroused, 1/3 told it was a sugar pill placebo (which it was for everyone). WHAT RESULTS WOULD YOU PREDICT? Relaxation pill Placebo Arousal pill Most attitude change = least attitude change

Answer 27

Jumped at opportunity to do discounting in arousal pill condition Relaxation condition using augmentation – must be because I’m guilty – fix this by rationalizing

Answer 28

1. Subjects drank Kool-Aid. For ½, Kool-Aid mixed with sugar, for ½, mixed with vinegar. As you can imagine…extremely unexpected and intensely unpleasant. 2. Subjects either told to (no choice) or asked to (high choice) state in writing that they liked the beverage. 3. Subjects then could toss what they wrote in the garbage.

Answer 29

4. Then, rated how much they liked the Kool-Aid. In other words…similar to original F & C study except that their counterattitudinal claims did not affect anyone! Did these people experience dissonance anyway and overrate the foul-tasting Kool-Aid?

Answer 30

The very fact of inconsistency is enough to trigger cognitive dissonance Telling a lie has a purnicious side effect of making it more true – commited to false state of affairs Inconsistency betw feeling and written behaviour No one can be harmed by inconsistency – throw it in the garbage Sugar Kool-Aid Vinegar Kool-Aid No choice 6.2 1.5 Hi choice 7.7 5.5

Answer 31

Few firm attitudes, more flexible attitudes due to situational cues When we need to form a clear attitude – we work backwards

Answer 32

we work backwards -- we look at our behavior (which may be shaped in a large part by the situation) and infer backwards what our attitude must be based on our behavior. ("I like get coffee from mom ' pop coffee shops rather than Starbucks…therefore I must be anti-big business.")

Answer 33

This sort of self-persuasion is not fueled by the need to reduce tension or justify our actions. Instead it is a "cold" rational process in which people's interpretations of their ambiguous feelings is tipped in one direction or another by their own behavior.

Answer 34

1) Described procedure of F & C experiment to subjects. 2) Before showing the results, asked subjects to predict the attitudes of original people in the study. 3) 1/3 told about the $1 condition, 1/3 told about the $20 condition, 1/3 told about control condition.

Answer 35

If passive, detached observers generated the same results as the “real” subjects, this would show that dissonance arousal, a "warm" motivated mechanism, is not necessary for the resulting change in attitudes.

Answer 36

closely paralleled original study. – perhaps not motivational phenomenon $1 inferring their behaviours

Answer 37

a) when our behavior is highly discrepant from our attitude, we do experience the unnerving discomfort and arousal of dissonance and we are highly motivated to reduce it. b) when our behavior is only somewhat discrepant from our attitude, especially when it's not clear what our attitude is in the first place, then we infer backwards in a purely cognitive, nonmotivated manner as predicted by Bem's self-perception theory.

Answer 38

the motivation to enhance, maintain and affirm a sense of the self as a worthy individual.

Answer 39

People diagnosed with mild-to-moderate depression: 1. make fewer self-serving attributions to account for their success or failure. 2. are less likely to exaggerate their control over uncontrollable events (e.g., roulette wheel). 3. make more realistic predictions about the future. Positive illusions actually promote happiness and good mental health.

Answer 40

1. Even if positive illusions offer temporary good effects on mood and self-esteem, the long-term effects are unclear. 2. Baumeister and Scher: such illusions can give rise to self-defeating behavior such as self-handicapping (below) and denial of real problems with health or their current situation (e.g., abusive relationship). – tempting fate (gambling)

Answer 41

Adding an additional plausible cause for poor performance (e.g., drinking the night before an exam). Give themselves a way out. Self handicapping takes advantage of the discounting principle. Adding aditional possible causes decreases confidence. Some traits are more flexible than others.

Answer 42

People can intentionally create attributional ambiguity and intentionally take advantage of the discounting principle to decrease the likelihood that others will make dispositional attributions about their failure.

Answer 43

1. subjects recruited for study supposedly on relationship between certain drugs and performance 2. subjects worked on test of intellectual performance (for 1/2, the test was easy, for 1/2, the test was hard). 3. Then, subjects told that they will take a second test. But beforehand, they could choose which of two drugs they would take: either Actavil (which was said to improve performance) or Pandocrin (said to impair performance).

Answer 44

NO DRUGS ACTUALLY ADMINISTERED. But, those who did well on the first test (boosted s-e), tended to choose Actavil (performance-improving drug), whereas those who did poorly tended to choose Pandocrin (performance-impairing drug). By handicapping themselves, set up a convenient excuse for failure.

Answer 45

[INTERESTING NOTE: EFFECT MUCH STRONGER FOR MEN…MEN MORE LIKELY TO SELF-HANDICAP THAN WOMEN? Why might that be?] – depends on domain Pitting the motivation for consistency vs. the motivation for self-enhancement. In some cases motivation for subverification more important than self enhancement

Answer 46

1. questionnaire to assess high self-esteem and low self-esteem subjects. 2. Filled out a questionnaire regarding their opinion on several controversial topics. 3. Told that their responses showed to another subject (who will be your conversation partner in part 2 of this study. 4. 1/2 told that this other subject likes you, 1/2 told that other subject doesn't like you (based on questionnaire responses, although actually random).

Answer 47

5. All told that partner wrote down a series of statements about them. Statements presented on at a time on computer screen and subject could self-pace through the statements. (unbeknownst to them, computer recorded how much time spent reading each sentence).

Answer 48

``` Self-view Partner likes you Partner doesn't Positive 16.73 12.93 Negative 12.00 16.27 Crossover interaction Powerful effect of self verification Relishing in positive reviews ```

Answer 49

But for negative self views – acted more rudely to person that liked them Created a self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 50

self-enhance. Why? Simpler, more primitive, more emotional, requires fewer cognitive resources…simply identify the feedback as positive or negative and then approach or avoid as appropriate.

Answer 51

self-verify. Why? more sophisticated, more "cognitive," requires more cog resources…requires an additional comparison step. ID + comparison. Self verification knocked out. High cognitive load: in low self esteem condition, results switch and perform more self-enhancement.

Answer 52

Self-enhancement Self-verification (affective) → (cognitive) time + cognitive resources necessary

Answer 53

The Self is not a simple, static snapshot taken at one moment in time. Instead, we are continually comparing our present self to a better, desired self.

Answer 54

Ideal self – the kind of person I wish and aspire to be. Ought self – the kind of person I should be based on my duties and obligations. The same task (e.g., “getting an A in Social Psych”) can be represented as an ideal by one person, but an ought by a second person.

Answer 55

When there is a discrepancy between my actual self and either my ideal or ought self, I experience negative feelings and immediately engage in behavior aimed at closing the gap. When gap is closed I feel positive feelings.

Answer 56

SDT predicts what type of “feeling bad” and “feeling good” you will experience. Ought Discrepancy = anxiety, agitation Congruency = relaxation, relief (“quiescence”) Ideal Discrepancy = sadness, dejection Congruency = joy, happiness

Answer 57

Why is the Ought System associated with the anxiety---relief dimension? Oughts are “minimal goals” (the presence or absence of negatives). Anxiety separate from sadness. Presence of negative = anxiety. Absence of positives = sadness Why is the Ideal System associated with the sadness---joy dimension? Ideals are “maximal goals” (the presence or absence of positives).

Answer 58

1. Asked subjects to list the attributes associated with their actual self, ideal self, and ought self). (Instructions were de-jargonified) 2. Tabulated the number of ideal and ought matches/discrepancies per person. Able to divide subjects into two groups: ideal discrepancy group and ought discrepancy group (high in one type of discrepancy and low in the other).

Answer 59

3. Several weeks later, subjects asked to imagine a negative event (e.g., being rejected by a lover) and a positive event (e.g., spending an evening with someone you admire). 4. Before and after the imagination exercise, subjects filled out an emotions questionnaire that assessed their current level of anxiety and depression. 5. DV: post-imagining affect.

Answer 60

``` Results: Neg. event Pos. event Type of discrepancy Dej Agit Dej Agit Actual-ideal .24 .00 .03 .03 Actual-ought .04 .11 .06 .04 (note: These are correlations, i.e. the greater the actual-ideal discrepancy, the greater the feelings of dejection; the greater the actual-ought discrepancy, the greater the feelings of agitation.) ```

Answer 61

[note: boldfaced figures are significantly greater than zero.] diff type of discrepancy results in diff types of negative emotions Self-discrepancies affect more than just what emotions you feel!! They also influence the way you take in and process information about your world.

Answer 62

1. subjects identified as having ideal discrepancies and ought discrepancies (using same questionnaire as before). 2. read essay describing 20 events in the life of a student. 3. 8 events focused on the presence or absence of positive outcomes (e.g., “Yesterday I found a $20 bill on the sidewalk.”-presence; “A movie I really wanted to see is no longer playing.”-absence)

Answer 63

4. 8 events focused on the presence or absence of negative outcomes (e.g., “The subway I was in got stuck for 20 minutes.”-presence ; “Tuesdays are the day when all my difficult classes occur, but the big blizzard cancelled classes.” –absence) remaining sentences: neutral fillers 5. distracter task 6. surprise recall task

Answer 64

Results: Type of Focus Pos outcomes Neg Outcomes Ideal 6.2 4.5 Ought 5.1 6.0 Ideal: remember absense/presence of positive over negative Ought: better memory for presence/absence of negative over positive Either positive or negative outcomes Same systematic variable that underlie emotional states

Answer 65

Ideal-focused aka “promotion focused” Ought-focused aka “prevention focused” Promotion: moving forward toward aspirations Prevention: removing bad stuff These types of regulatory focus can be chronic or situational variables. “Accessibility doesn’t care where it comes from!”

Answer 66

Accessibility – promotion/prevention can be measured as chronic stable individual differences, but each focus can be stituationally primed in a laboratory Promotion: eagerness, insure against errors of omission. “don’t miss any opportunities!” Prevention: vigilance, insure against errors of commission. “no false alarms!”

Answer 67

Study 1- 1. rated a series of tasks on how much they would like / would not like to do them (e.g., solitaire, playing a video game, proofreading, alphabetizing). 2. ¼ subjects told, “if you do better than the 60th percentile on the following tasks, you will get to do (participant’s favorite task).” [promotion working] ¼ told “if you don’t do well on the exercises I’m about to give you, you won’t get to do (participant’s favorite task).” [promotion not working]

Answer 68

¼ told “as long as you don’t do poorly on the exercises I’m about to give you, you won’t have to do (participant’s most disliked task).” [prevention working] ¼ told “if you do poorly on the exercises I’m about to give you you will have to do (participant’s most disliked task).” [prevention not working] same outcome, diff framing

Answer 69

first 2 is promotion based – gain/non-gain. Last 2 is prevention based – loss/non-loss. About the mental representation of the objective outcome 3. Think of as many creative uses as you can for the following eight objects: desk, couch, bookcase, table, cabinet, bed, chair, mirror. 1 ½ minutes per object.

Answer 70

4. Solve the following anagrams: cleets, tisrnp, tohcass, wderra. (unbeknownst to subjects, third one is unsolvable). How well did people perform, how long did they persist (in seconds) on fourth anagram? (Remember the Dweck paradigm?)

Answer 71

Promotion better, longer. Although: no difference between prom and prev on first two words (so you can’t say there’s any a priori differences). Besides, prom and prev was manipulated, rather than measured as a personality variable! Promotion tends to induce creativity. Don’t care so much about duds, more about the good ideas. In prevention system the duds matter. Hampers creativity In anagram task, prevention state gave up faster. Promotion people enegrized by challenge by pursuing gain, they can face it longer.

Answer 72

Study 2- 1. First two steps same as study 1. 2. Computer presented 20 nonsense words on the screen one at a time for 2 seconds each (e.g., “decip,” “kawax”) 3. 30 second filler task (indicated whether each letter presented is a vowel or consonant) 4. 20 nonsense words from before presented with 20 nonsense words not previously presented. Subjects’ task was to distinguish “old” from “new” words. (Recognition memory test.)

Answer 73

5. DV: not interested in performance/accuracy as much as response bias. Crowe and Higgins predicted that a promotion focus should lead to a “risky bias” (a tendency to make errors of comission, an inclination to say “yes). Want to catch all the list 1 words, and don’t care about false alarms. A prevention focus should lead to a “conservative bias” (a tendency to make errors of omission, an inclination to say “no”). Want to make correct rejections and preoccupied with avoiding false alarms. Results: promotion focus-riskier, prevention focus-more conservative.

Answer 74

Important: no value judgment!! Sometimes, and on some tasks it’s far better to be prevention focused than promotion focused (e.g., Air traffic controller? Artist?) Parenting should contain a healthy mixture of both. Constant Prevention = anxious child Constant Promotion = depressed child Friendship: How do people go about making and maintaining positive close relationships with others?

Answer 75

Important: no value judgment!! Sometimes, and on some tasks it’s far better to be prevention focused than promotion focused (e.g., Air traffic controller? Artist?) Parenting should contain a healthy mixture of both. Constant Prevention = anxious child Constant Promotion = depressed child Friendship: How do people go about making and maintaining positive close relationships with others?

Answer 76

1. used questionnaire to assess subjects’ ideal vs. ought focus. 2. Subjects given a list of strategies for friendship: three were about seeking positive outcomes (being generous, supportive, loving), three were about avoiding negative outcomes (not losing contact, not neglecting them, not gossiping about them).

Answer 77

Results: Who chose which strategies? Prom chose prom strategies and prev chose prev strategies. Cultural differences: some have more prevention, others have more promotion NA: most promotion strategries Motivational states can change within an individual

Answer 78

Results: Who chose which strategies? Prom chose prom strategies and prev chose prev strategies. Cultural differences: some have more prevention, others have more promotion NA: most promotion strategries Motivational states can change within an individual

Answer 79

People approach pleasure and avoid pain. | Regulatory focus: People approach pleasure and avoid pain in different ways.

Answer 80

``` Pleasure Pain Promotion focus Accomplishment Nonfulfillment (presence of +) (absence of +) Prevention focus Safety Danger (absence of -) (presence of -) ```