Unit 4 Topic 3 Flashcards
What are attitudes and what are the two types?
A learnt, stable and relatively enduring evaluation of a person, object, event or idea that can affect an individual’s behaviour.
Explicit Attitudes – attitudes individuals are open about and align with behaviours.
Implicit Attitudes – involuntary, uncontrolled or unconscious attitudes that individuals are often unaware of even if it may influence behaviour.
What are some reasons that attitudes and behaviours may or may not align
Attitude specificity – more likely to be congruent when attitude is highly specific to behaviour
Attitude Information – attitude confirmed by information is more likely to relate to behaviour.
Situation – expectations in situation can cause behaviours to deviate from attitudes.
What is cognitive dissonance?
theory that emphasises a person will feel uncomfortable and try to maintain an internal consistency between beliefs and behaviours by altering beliefs to match behaviours.
Effort justification is special case of this where person goes to considerable lengths to justify achievement of a relatively modest goal.
What is the social identity theory, the three processes in this, and details?
groups are part of our identity and self-esteem, shown through three processes.
1. social categorisation
- in group and out group
- social identification
- process where people modify behaviour attitudes and beliefs to match group they belong to - social comparison
- comparing in group with others to affirm identity.
What is attribution?
Inferences we make about causes of events or behaviours in order to understand social experiences.
What is the attribution theory?
theory that humans need to understand why people behave in certain ways. There are two ways to explain behaviour – dispositional (internal or personal) factors and situational (environmental or external) attributes.
What is actor-observer bias?
tendency to explain own actions by external factors, and explain actions of others by internal factors.
What is fundamental attribution error?
When people place too much emphasis on dispositional attribution, and too little emphasis on situational attribution.
What is bias?
An opinion or belief held about a thing or person.
What is self-serving bias?
A tendency to view ourselves more favourably than others in the same position. It is a cognitive or perceptual process that is a result of the need to maintain self-esteem.
What is confirmation bias?
Tendency to search for, recall and interpret information to suit already held beliefs. Information remembered selectively, only used to confirm beliefs
What is implicit bias?
Discriminatory bias that lies outside conscious awareness or control.
What are stereotypes?
Generalised and simplified beliefs about a group or people or person based on their membership to a group.
What are the purposes of stereotypes?
- helps organise knowledge of people quickly
What are the limitations of stereotypes?
- leads to overgeneralisation
What is the tri-component model of attitudes?
Theory that an attitude consists of ABC elements.
Affective component – how an individual feels about an object (emotional)
Behavioural component – how a person behaves towards the object
Cognitive component – how a person thinks about object
not all attitudes contain all three components (can be selective towards elements)
How can the tri-component model of attitudes be applied to stereotypes?
Affective – feelings are either friendly or hostile towards others based on assumption
Behavioural – behaviour towards group influenced by assumption
Cognitive – assumptions made about group or person
What is prejudice?
unfavourable attitude towards group of people
What is discrimination?
prejudice expressed through behaviour
What are some examples of prejudice?
Sexism
Ageism
Racism
What are some examples of discrimination?
Reluctance to help – don’t want to help minority groups improve in society.
Tokenism – trivial assistance to minority group to avoid accusations of discrimination
Reverse discrimination – prejudice in favour of minority group to deflect accusations of discrimination
What is scapegoating and how does it occur?
Blaming a person or group for negative action event or result.
Often the result of challenging experience, people seek to explain failures, misfortunes or poor behaviour blaming it on others.
What are the characteristics of prejudiced groups?
- Believe they are superior to minority group who prejudice is directed to.
- majority see minority as different
- Majority see themselves as more powerful
- Majority are fearful of minority becoming more powerful.
