Social Psychology Flashcards
What is a brief history of attitudes in social psychology? (What are the different perspectives?)
Two major perspectives in social psychology - Quantitative and qualitative
Social psych = Started as the study of attitudes
1920s to 1930s - Focus on how we measure attitudes
1950s to 1960s - How we change attitudes
1980s to 1990s - What are attitudes and what are they useful for
What is an attitude?
An attitude = A positive or negative feeling towards an “object”
Object/attitude object
Nouns (kitten) & Verbs (running)
Sensory qualities (colours, odours, textures)
Concrete objects (animals, places,food)
Abstract concepts (personality traits, emotions)
Actions (drinking alcohol)
Attitudes towards attitudes (prejudice) → meta-attitudes
Why study attitudes?
Pervasive (hard to think of something that we don’t evaluate)
Predict our behaviour
Shape how we see the world
What are the three main explanations for attitudes?
Behaviour, Society & social environment (modelling) and Cognitions
How does behaviour (direct experience, mere exposure) explain attitudes through direct experience?
Powerful way to learn new attitudes = interaction with the attitude object and see whether it is positive or negative
E.g. Attitude towards food - most readily acquired through classical conditioning
Garcia et al. (1955)
Gave rats sugar water before giving a dose of radiation - they developed food aversions
Bernstein & Webster (1980) - Examined attitudes towards two ice cream flavours
Participants given nauseating drug (chemo) with one flavour, developed preference for other flavour
How does behaviour (direct experience, mere exposure) explain attitudes through mere exposure?
Goetzinger, 1968 - Person with blackhood in classroom, as classes went on, other students accept it and have friendlier attitudes towards the person
Novel, non-aversive stimuli → liked
Zajonc (1968) - PPT were exposed to arbitrary stimuli (words, pictures) & manipulated the frequency at which stimuli was presented
PPT liked the arbitrary stimuli more when exposed to them at a greater frequency
This is the same with photographs of strangers
Can the effect of mere exposure be applied to real life
Cook (1971) - When white people high in prejudice, put in work group with POC, were less prejudiced after one month and more likely to endorse racial equality
How does society and our social environment (modelling) explain attitudes?
Modelling:
Beyond direct experience & mere exposure
Our attitudes develop from watching what others say and do
SLT - Bandura (1961) - People learn through modelling, watching what others do and engaging in the behaviour
Bobo doll experiment - Children exposed to aggressive condition - more likely to be aggressive towards bobo doll
How does cognition (internally through changes in our thinking) explain attitudes?
Internally:
People have a desire for cognitive consistency
Motivated to change our attitudes (or behaviour) so they’re consistent - cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger et al, 1959)
What are the two types of attitudes?
Explicit attitudes
Stored in memory and constructed after an experience
Conscious of explicit attitudes
Complex and cognitively demanding
Have “truth values”
Easy to lie about
Implicit attitudes
Long-term associations
Aren’t consciously aware of implicit attitudes
Simple and not cognitively demanding
Independent of “truth values”
Hard to lie about
What is the dual-process model?
Dual-process model are common in cognitive psychology (e.g. attention, memory and motor behaviour)
Type 1 - Fast, easy, automatic, un/non-conscious
Type 2 - Slow, difficult, deliberate, conscious
Nothing unique or distinct about attitudes (same cognitive architecture as other cognitive processes)
Basic assumption of social cognitive approach in social psychology
What is the cognitive structure of implicit attitudes?
Built from long-term associations within a semantic network
Not just for associations with ideas but whether they are positive of negative
How to measure explicit and implicit attitudes?
Measuring explicit
Aware of explicit attitudes = Use self-report
Measuring implicit
Cognitive and neuroscientific approaches
Cognitive → Reaction timing (as well as matching, memory tasks) → Implicit association test (IAT)
Measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., Flowers, Insects) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., safe, dangerous)
Limitations → Does it show implicit, explicit or reflection of wider social contexts?, desirability issue, Diagnostic - can it be used in court?, Greenwald: it is not a measure of implicit prejudice
Neuroscientific → Scan brain (limbic system because we’re interested in affective responses) for evidence of attitudes
What is the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes? Do they work together?
Nosek & Smyth (2007) examined participants’ explicit and implicit attitudes for a range of different topics (58 studies)
Attitudes towards coke or pepsi, attitudes towards rich or poor people
Median correlation between explicit and implicit attitudes r = .48
How they work together
EA and IA attitudes towards same object can co-exist independently
Attitude object encountered → IA automatically activated (but EA requires effort to be activated)
If EA are activated they can override the IA
IA influences automatic behaviours, EA influences deliberate behaviours (MODE model)
EA are relatively easy to change but IA are highly resistant to change
How do attitudes predict behaviour?
Theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980)
The Theory of Planned Behavior assumes that individuals act rationally, according to their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control
Widely used and applied theory for predicting behaviour
Armitage & Conner (2001) - conducted meta-analysis of 185 independent studies
Theory of planned behaviour predicted 27-38% of all variance in behaviour
Perceived behavioural control was the best predictor of behaviour
Attitudes better than norms and perceived behavioural control at predicting intentions
What is the issue with planned behaviour?
Planned behaviour assumes people are rationally, make systematic use of the information available to them, and considers the implications of their behaviour before they decide to engage in the behaviour
How do attitudes work when behaviour is unplanned or poorly planned?
Assumes attitudes are monolithic, single cognitive construct
Because implicit and explicit attitudes can co-exist independently of each other they may predict different types of behaviours
The Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants (MODE) model seeks to explain how and when implicit and explicit attitudes shape behaviour
What is the MODE model?
Cognitively demanding to engage in explicit attitudes
Need something to make it worth engaging with the cost & time to engage with cognition
Without motivation or time, only implicit attitudes can influence behaviour
Motivation:
When are people motivated to think about their attitudes? - When they need to be accurate
Applying the wrong attitude to an object can be costly because it can cause you to act sub-optimally (e.g. miss out on good opportunities)
Time:
Deliberate cognitive processes are slow and need time to complete
Difficult to engage with when people are cognitively depleted (distracted, intoxicated or fatigued)
Example of the MODE model
Sanbonmatsu & Fazio (1990) asked participants to form broad, automatic attitudes towards two stores (one positive, one negative)
Given contradicting information about the camera department
Asked to choose a store for where to buy a camera
Store A - automatic response (generally good condition)
How do explicit and implicit attitudes manifest as behaviours?
Explicit attitudes → Behaviours
Attitudes towards complex objects (affirmative action)
Deliberative judgements about people (attractiveness to white/black faces)
Controlled interactions (e.g. speech)
Implicit attitudes → Behaviours
Non-verbal behaviours like eye blinks, gaze, smiling
Behaviours we don’t think reflect our attitudes: Handling object, physical proximity
What is the APE model of attitude? (What are the two processes in the model?)
Alternative model to the MODE model
APE = Associate and Propositional processes in evaluation model
Similarities between MODE & APE
Implicit attitudes are automatic and relatively effortless
Explicit attitudes are deliberate and slow
Associative Processes -
Associative processes rely on activation in memory (specifically pattern activation)
Long-term co-activation and external input stimuli (e.g. context)
Propositional Processes -
For, propositional processes - evaluative responses affects the evaluation (attitude) only when consistent with other propositions
Automatic affective response (implicit attitude): “I don’t like Jews”. Gives some information to form an evaluation
Automatic affect response exists alongside other propositions: Jewish people are subject to millennia of prejudice, anti-semitism is morally wrong
Final evaluation (explicit attitude) = implicit attitude + additional propositions
What are the two types of attitude change?
Changing our own attitudes (change over time, cognitive dissonance)
Changing attitudes of other (persuasion)
How can implicit attitudes be changed by changing the semantic network?
Olson & Fazio, 2001
Implicit attitudes are derived from automatic associations in semantic networks
Can change the structure of those networks by “forcing” associations
Participants viewed several hundred word-image pairs
In amongst them, some neutral stimuli were repeated
Does this change in the real world?
Also possible to change implicitly (present conditioning stimuli below awareness; less than 50 ms)
For the self (increase implicit self-esteem by pairing self with positive stimuli)
Long-lasting because the structure of the semantic network has changed
How can you change implicit attitudes by changing the activation of the attitude?
Many attitude objects we are interested in are multifaceted
By making one aspect of that complex objective active, we can change the relevant reference point for the implicit attitude
Dasgupta and Greenwald (2003)
Measured participants implicit prejudice using IAT
Control - No exemplars, Conditions - High profile white people and high profile black people
Activation change = Increases salience of association to reduce negative implicit attitudes
Does not change the structure of implicit attitude
Effects are short-lived
How do we change explicit attitudes?
Explicit attitudes are accessible to introspection, propositional and more easily operated on by consciousness
Therefore = Generally faster and easier to change than implicit attitudes
Simplest way would be state that the attitude is not correct
Can experience conflict between attitudes, and attitudes and behaviour
Sometimes our attitudes come in conflict with one another
Sometimes come in conflict with our behaviour (e.g. against sweat shops but buy from fast-fashion brands that use child labour)
We don’t activate our explicit attitudes (MODE model)
Our behaviours is determined by things beyond our attitudes (theory of planned behaviour)
What is cognitive dissonance?
When our attitudes are at odds with each other, or at odds with our behaviour - experience a negative emotional tension (Cognitive Dissonance - Festinger, 1957)
Motivated not experience this tension
One way in which can reduce cognitive dissonance is by changing our attitude so it aligns with behaviour
Festinger et al., 1959
Had PPT complete extremely boring task, designed to induce negative attitude towards task - e,g, ordering pegs
Experimenter paid PPT $1 or $20 to tell next participant that the task was fun
$1 - I dislike the task which is conflict with my behaviour (telling the next participant that the task was fun) = cognitive dissonance
Resolve dissonance by reporting more positive attitudes towards the task
When does cognitive dissonance change attitudes?
When the behaviour is visible to others (e.g. can’t pretend it didn’t happen)
When we have freely chosen the action (forced to do something against our attitude = no cognitive dissonance = $20)
When our behaviour is costly and we have expended a lot of effort (motivated to improve attitude to make sacrifice more worthwhile)