Soc-Psych Chap 4

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

An attitude is a person’s evaluation of a stimulus, which can range from positive to negative. It has three components: affective (emotional), cognitive (thoughts/beliefs), and behavioral (actions).

Question 2

Explain affectively-based attitudes.

Answer 2

Attitudes formed from our emotions. They are not necessarily logical.

Question 3

Explain cognitively-based attitudes.

Answer 3

Attitudes formed from facts.

Question 4

Explain behaviorally-based attitudes.

Answer 4

Attitudes formed by observing our own behaviors

Question 5

Can attitudes be inconsistent?

Answer 5

Yes, attitudes can sometimes be inconsistent or seemingly contradictory.

Question 6

What are explicit and implicit attitudes?

Answer 6

Explicit attitudes are consciously held and can be reported, while implicit attitudes are unconscious and may be involuntary. People may express non-racist beliefs consciously, but exhibit a negative unconscious bias on an implicit measure.

Question 7

What did Phelps et al. (2002) find about explicit and implicit racial attitudes?

Answer 7

White participants showed no explicit racism but exhibited an implicit negative bias toward Black faces on the IAT, which was correlated with amygdala activity.

Question 8

What was the key finding of Phelps et al., (2002) regarding inconsistent attitudes?

Answer 8

A bias in the response time on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was significantly correlated with activation in the amygdala, but there was no correlation between amygdala activity and the conscious measure of racial attitudes.

Question 9

How can introspection mislead us about our attitudes, according to Wilson et al. (1984)?

Answer 9

When asked to introspect, people may focus on easily articulated reasons for their attitudes, missing the real, underlying reasons, especially for affectively based attitudes.

Question 10

What are some factors that influence when attitudes predict behavior?

Answer 10

○ Attitude strength (importance, direct experience)
○ Attitude accessibility
○ Specificity

Question 11

What is the theory of planned behavior?

Answer 11

This theory states that behavior is predicted by behavioral intention, which is influenced by attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived control.

Question 12

What is cognitive dissonance?

Answer 12

Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort people feel when they engage in a behavior that conflicts with their attitudes or when they hold conflicting attitudes. To reduce this discomfort, they may change their attitudes

Question 13

What is self-perception theory?

Answer 13

Self-perception theory proposes that people infer their attitudes and feelings by observing their own behavior, especially when those attitudes are weak or ambiguous
- This self-perception works very similar to social perception ( we’re observing our own behaviour and making attributions for what we feel/think)

Question 14

How did Chaiken and Baldwin (1981) study self-perception?

Answer 14

They primed participants with questions about past pro-environmental or anti-environmental behaviors. This influenced the attitudes of those who had weak pre-existing attitudes toward the environment.

Participants pre-measured for their attitudes toward the environment were randomly assigned to fill out a questionnaire designed to highlight either past pro-ecology or anti-ecology behaviors. This manipulation impacted the participants with weak pre-existing attitudes, as hypothesized.

Question 15

How does self-perception relate to motivation?

Answer 15

When people are rewarded for engaging in an intrinsically rewarding activity, they perceive their behavior as being driven by the extrinsic reward, which leads to a decrease in intrinsic motivation.

Question 16

Contrast Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Self-Perception Theory.

Answer 16

Cognitive dissonance describes attitude change as a result of behavior that makes us feel negative emotions. Self-perception theory describes attitude change following behavior for which we don’t have a strong pre-existing attitude

Question 17

What happens when we engage in a behavior inconsistent with our attitudes?

Answer 17

If the attitude is important, it’s unlikely to change.
○ People might try to:
■ Change or undo the behavior

If the attitude is not that important, people might:
■ Change their attitude
■ Trivialize the attitude or behavior
■ Add new attitudes to counteract the inconsistency

Question 18

What is self-presentation?

Answer 18

Wanting to present a desired image both to others and to ourselves.

Question 19

What is impression management?

Answer 19

The deliberate control of one’s public behavior to create a certain impression. It’s not necessarily about deceiving others.

Question 20

What are the goals of self-presentation?

Answer 20

○ To be liked
○ To appear competent
○ To be feared

Question 21

How do people manage impressions? (methods)

Answer 21

○ Ingratiation: Behaving in ways to make someone like us (being polite, flattery, friendliness, favours, gifts)
- Downside- perceived of as deceitful

○ Self-promotion: Behaving in ways to earn respect (bragging, performing well, showing effort)
- Downside- full of yourself, conceded

○ Role-playing: Presenting ourselves differently depending on the situation (situationally appropriate behaviour) (smoothing out the interaction)

○ False Modesty: Managing the amount of credit we take
- Downside- people might perceive the falseness

Question 22

What did Gibson & Poposki (2010) find out about impression management?

Answer 22

Trying to manage impressions can bias our ability to accurately perceive the other person in an interaction. Participants given an impression management goal perceived lower levels of the specific quality they were trying to project in their interaction partner.

Question 23

Define norms.

Answer 23

Shared expectations about how all group members ought to behave. Implicit rules - often inferred from the behaviour of group members.

○ Descriptive Norm- describe what people generally do
○ Prescriptive/Injunctive Norm- what you ought to do

Question 24

How do norms arise?

Answer 24

○ Institutional norms: Mandated by group leaders or external authorities
○ Voluntary norms: Negotiated among group members
○ Evolutionary norms: Arise when behaviors that satisfy one group member are imitated, leading to the development of expectations.

Question 25

Define roles.

Answer 25

Shared expectations about how particular people in a group are supposed to behave.

○ Can be formal (e.g., leader - therapist, doctor) or informal (e.g., “listener” in a group).
○ Roles can be assigned by the group (selecting a leader, treasurer, secretary), or individuals within the group can gradually acquire their roles over time.

Question 26

Explain the Stanford Prison Study.

Answer 26

Participants assigned to roles as prison guards or prisoners and exhibited behaviors aligned with those roles. The study, intended to run for two weeks, was stopped early due to the guards’ cruelty and the prisoners’ rebellion. Note: This study has been criticized for ethical and methodological problems

Question 27

What alternative explanation did Haslam et al., (2019) propose for the Stanford Prison Study?

Answer 27

They suggest the guards’ cruelty stemmed from following the experimenters’ leadership and demand characteristics rather than purely from social roles. Replication studies without these characteristics did not observe guard cruelty.

Question 28

What is compliance?

Answer 28

Changing behavior in response to a direct request (can be spoken or written).

Question 29

List the six principles of compliance.

Answer 29

1. Commitment & Consistency: People prefer to be consistent with previous commitments.
   - once we agree to do something, we don’t want to change our minds
2. Scarcity: We desire things more when they are limited.
   - if something is limited in amount, or time of availability, we will want it more
3. Reciprocity: We feel obligated to return favors.
   - if someone does something for us, we want to return the favour
4. Liking: We comply more with people we like.
   - we are more likely to accept something coming from someone we like
5. Authority: We are more likely to comply with requests from authority figures
   - if someone in authority tells us it’s good, we will like it
6. Social Proof: We look to others’ behavior to guide our actions.
   - Social validation: We are generally more willing to comply with a request for some action if this action is consistent with what we believe people similar to ourselves are doing (or thinking). We want to be correct, and one way to do so is to act and think like others.

Question 30

Explain the Door-in-the-Face technique.

Answer 30

A two-step technique where the influencer starts with a large, unreasonable request that is likely to be rejected, followed by the real, smaller request. (e.g., offering to sell a box of chocolates for $20, then just one for $1)

Question 31

Explain the Foot-in-the-Door technique.

Answer 31

A two-step technique where the influencer asks for a small favor followed by the real, larger request. The target feels obligated to be consistent with their initial voluntary behavior. (e.g., signing a petition followed by asking for a donation).

Question 32

Explain the Lowballing technique

Answer 32

Getting someone to agree to a low-cost request, then increasing the cost (e.g., agreeing to buy a car, then discovering additional fees).

Question 33

Reciprocity:

Answer 33

Doing an unsolicited favor leads people to reciprocate (e.g., restaurant servers giving candy to increase tips).

Question 34

Scarcity Technique:

Answer 34

Making something seem rare or temporary increases its desirability (e.g., “Sale ends Monday!”).

Question 35

That’s-Not-All Technique:

Answer 35

An initial inflated offer is followed by a discount or bonus (e.g., cupcakes sold for $1, then immediately reduced to 75¢).

Question 36

Liking Technique:

Answer 36

People are more likely to comply with someone they like or share similarities with.

Question 37

Explain the findings of Strohmetz, Rind, Fisher, & Lynn (2002) regarding the Norm of Reciprocity.

Answer 37

Customers gave larger tips when servers wrote “Thank you!” on their bills or added candy. This reciprocity effect was amplified when the server gave two pieces of candy or appeared to be extra generous by offering a second piece.