Test 2 Lecture Material

Question 1

What are causes of attitudes?

Answer 1

information, operant and classical conditioning, modeling, and out own behavior (less obvious cause of attitudes).

Question 2

What are the three big factors of socialization?

Answer 2

parent, peers, and media.

Question 3

When does our own behavior effect our attitudes?

Answer 3

foot-in-the-door effect: agreeing to a smaller request initially makes you more likely to agree to a larger request later.
Role playing causes us to adopt attitudes consistent with the role we are playing (Stanford Prison Study).

Question 4

What is a great example of how role play affects attitude?

Answer 4

The Stanford Prison Study

Question 5

BUTS… of Stanford Prison Study

Answer 5

volunteers for the study scored higher on aggression, authoritarian, and narcissism, and scored lower on empathy and altruism. So the volunteers we already aggressive to begin with.

Question 6

What type of interaction was there in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Answer 6

a person-situation interaction RATHER than a strict situationist account.

Question 7

Can hurting someone cause us to dislike that individual?

Answer 7

Yes.
Procedure: participant insulted by confederates.
IV: participants given an opportunity to shock the insulter or not.
DV: degree of like of the “insulter.”
Results: liked the “insulter” less in the shock condition.
Interpretations: dissonance overe hurting someone can be reduced by finding reasons to dislike him/her/

Question 8

What are 3 mentally healthy dissonance reducing behaviors?

Answer 8

Victim blaming, reduce stress, and feel more in control.

Question 9

Real life examples of cognitive dissonance theory with attitudes vs. behaviors.

Answer 9

Pro environment - throw cans in garbage. 
pro religion - cheat on your spouse
racism (asia) - buy asian products
law abiding - break speed limit
pro clean - pigsty at home

Question 10

main strategies (8) for dissonance reduction

Answer 10

externally justify behavior and change one of the dissonant elements (unconscious attitude, behavior, and perception of attitude).
trivialize behavior, self affirmation (saying or thinking nice things about yourself), socially compare, and wait out the feelings of dissonance.

Question 11

Research example of dissonance.

Answer 11

Festinger and Carlsmith: shock experiment
participants paid to lie about boring task
IV: paid $1 or $20
DV: rating how interesting the task was
those paid $1 like the task (attitude change)
those paid $20 were better able to externally justify

Question 12

What is the number 1 way to reduce dissonance?

Answer 12

External justification

Question 13

Applications for dissonance

Answer 13

increase recycling, increase water conservation, increase condom use, and decrease prejudice. ALL THROUGH HYPOCRISY INDUCTION.

Question 14

Hypocrisy Induction

Answer 14

1) reminding people of past failures to live up to the ideals being discussed.
2) when people fail to practice what they preach, their act of hypocrisy can induce cognitive dissonance and the motivation to change their behavior.
3) as opposed to other forms of dissonance reduction as attitude change.
4) people should publicly advocate the importance of the target course of action and are then privately reminded of their own recent personal failures to perform the target task.

Question 15

How are gender differenced socially influenced?

Answer 15

gender roles.

Question 16

Why are women WAY more nurturing on average?

Answer 16

nature and nurture. It is both learned and the environment makes it so.

Question 17

The possible WHY’s for gender differences

Answer 17

evolutionary premise: we behave and think in ways that have helped our genes’ survival (fight-or-flight response because freezing is not adaptable).

Question 18

Dating and Mating

Answer 18

attractiveness/youth: cues to reproductive health (unconsciously men say they need to have babies, instinct and genetic drive).
money and age: cues to offspring survival.

Question 19

EMPIRICAL support for evolutionary side

Answer 19

1) cross-cultural research: around the world research says that man care more about attractiveness
2) bar studies

Question 20

EMPIRICAL criticism of evolutionary side

Answer 20

empirical: there are not gender differences in preferences for attractiveness in short-term relationships and preference for money/support in particular cultures doesn’t hold up.

Question 21

What is crucial to remember about the evolutionary view?

Answer 21

it is essentially a cause-effect view, that genes (gender based) cause the observed gender differences (hindsight bias).

Question 22

Milgram’s Obedience Study

Answer 22

main implications: you don’t know how a study will turn out until you run it. prediction was <1% would go through with it; >65% did go through. he concluded that the nazis weren’t inherently evil. RECALL explaining doesn’t equal excusing!

Question 23

What does every behavior have?

Answer 23

personal and situational causes.

Question 24

ethical issues of milgram’s study

Answer 24

participants were under extreme stress (less obvious cause), participants’ self-concepts may have been dramatically altered.

Question 25

Conformity and Politics

Answer 25

visiting sights that support your viewpoint (Selective exposure, confirmation bias). sharing news that only supports your group (fake news is more likely to get shared).
Even if your own personal views are contradicted.

Question 26

Who conforms more?

Answer 26

teens in drug use. more antisocial than prosocial.

Question 27

Reactance

Answer 27

motive to protect your sense of freedom. Bugs vs. Daffy.

Question 28

Straightforwards findings about persuasion

Answer 28

persuaders are more successful when they are physically attractive and an expert in their field.

Question 29

4 causes of attitudes

Answer 29

conditioning, information availability, own behavior, modeling.

Question 30

Resisting persuasion

Answer 30

attitude inoculation: a strategy to help kids resist peer pressure “just-say-no” is not enough.

Question 31

3 steps to attitude inoculation

Answer 31

1) raise your child has smart/positive attitude from you
2) mild attacks on your child’s attitude at home
3) your child becomes better at defending against real attacks from peers

Question 32

knowledge of persuasion techniques can help…

Answer 32

foot-in-the-door technique, door-in-the-face (start with large request, get denied, retreat to smaller request).

Question 33

lowballing

Answer 33

start with good deal, get acceptance, change part of the deal.

Question 34

6 types of group influence

Answer 34

1) social scaffolding
2) social loafing
3) deindividuation
4) group polarization
5) groupthink
6) minority influence

Question 35

deindividuation definitions

Answer 35

becoming dumb animal in a large group, loss of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension, if one’s self standard is not to loot/vandalize, but one is swept away in a crowd.

Question 36

deindividuation background

Answer 36

mob behaviors: rioting after athletic events, lynching of blacks in the US

Question 37

deindividuation common elements

Answer 37

really large groups >50 people, aggressive, destructive, cruel behavior, otherwise good citizens who sometimes sincerely wonder later what got into them.

Question 38

deindividuation can be good and bad

Answer 38

true

Question 39

group polarization

Answer 39

a group-produced enhancement of preexisting tendencies

Question 40

example of group polarization with attitudes

Answer 40

you think a politician is corrupt. you have discussion with 5-6 likeminded others. you exit discussion with same, stronger feelings (echo chambers).

Question 41

Social Facilitation

Answer 41

triplett (1898): kids reeled fishing line in faster when other kids were around. performance improvement in the presence of others. sometimes presence of others impairs performance (improvement for simple tasks and impairment for difficult tasks).

Question 42

hypocrisy induction can…

Answer 42

decreases the risk of eating disorders.

Question 43

is evolution of physical attributes accepted by scientists?

Answer 43

YESSS

Question 44

LOGICAL criticism of evolutionary premise.

Answer 44

logical: human evolutionary research doesn’t equal experimental because gender isn’t a proper IV!

Question 45

LOGICAL support for evolutionary premise.

Answer 45

there is research support for the evolution of physical attributes in humans and behaviors in creatures (this is experimental research). It would be logical to generalize those behaviors to humans.