Week 3; Social Cognition and Attitudes Flashcards
Stages of Mental Processing
- Attention
- Memory
- Affect
-Product Selection
Priming
- A procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered, frequently activated or inter-related are more likely to come to mind and thus will influence your judgements, decisions, attitudes and actions
- May influence if you “like” someone
- I.e. you may be primed to view someone that likes rock climbing and solitary martial arts as independent and adventurous or reckless and aloof
Judgmental Heuristics
Mental shortcuts that people use to make judgements quickly and efficiently
- May be misapplied which can lead to bias
Availability Heuristics
-A mental rule of thumb whereby people base a judgement on the ease with which they can bring something to mind
-i.e. the assumption that there are more words in English beginning with ‘r’ than words with the letter ‘r’ as the 3rd letter as letters beginning with ‘r’ comes to mind quicker
Representative Heuristics
- Can be applied to scripts i.e. “Steve is shy and withdrawn who needs order and is invariably helpful. Is he more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?”
- These heuristics may lead us to believe a librarian despite farmers being far more common
Attributions
People’s explanations for why events/ actions occur
Personal Attributions
Explanations of people’s behaviour that refer to their internal characteristics i.e. abilities, traits, moods etc.
Situational Attributions
- Explanations of peoples that refer to external events i.e. weather, luck or other people’s actions
Fundamental Attribution Error
In explaining other people’s behaviour, the tendency to overemphasise personality traits and underestimate situational factors
Correspondence Bias
Focusing on the beliefs and dispositions that correspond with a behaviour while neglecting other factors
Actor/ Observer Discrepancy
The tendency to focus on situations to explain one’s own behaviour but to focus on dispositions to explain other people’s behaviour
Attitudes
People’s evaluations of objects, events, people and ideas
Explicit Attitudes
Attitudes that an individual can report upon because they are aware of them i.e. I like running
Implicit Attitudes
- Attitudes that influence a person’s feelings and behaviour at an unconscious level
- Functions like implicit memories
Implicit Association Test
-A reaction time task that researchers use to assess implicit attitudes
- When a person has to press the same button when they hear a female name and a word indicating a bad object; if they score highly, they may have the implicit attitude that women are bad
Mere Exposure Effect
- The idea that greater exposure to a stimulus leads to greater liking for it
- People ten to treat new things with caution but through repeated exposure we come to like it
- I.e. Glasses Photo
One Sided Arguments
- Gullible Audience or when the audience is on the speakers side
Balanced Argument
- When the audience is skeptical, a speaker who acknowledges both sides of the argument but argues that one side is superior tends to be ore persuasive
Classical Conditioning in Attitude Formation
- Celebrity Endorsements
Operant Conditioning in Attitude Formation
- Rewarding yourself with a treat for studying
Specific Attitude
- More effective i.e. attitudes towards recycling in opposed to merely the environment when predicting whether one will recycle
Direct Experience
Stronger Attitude
Attitude Accessibility
- The ease or difficulty that a person has in retrieving the attitude from memory
- Attitudes that are easily brought to mind are more stable, predictive and resistant to change
Cognitive Dissonance
An uncomfortable mental state resulting from a contradiction between attitudes or between an attitude and a behaviour i.e. people smoking despite knowing that it is bad for them
Insufficient Justification
- One can change one’s attitudes by first changing their behaviour by providing as few incentives as possible
- In study, those that were paid $1 to convince the people in the waiting room of the task reported enjoying it more due to their cognitive dissonance convincing themselves that they wouldn’t lie for 1 dollar
Justifying Effort
- When people put themselves through pain, embarrassment or discomfort to join a group, they experience a great deal of dissonance
- Thus, they will often inflate the importance of the group and their commitment to it
- I.e. why some people in cults won’t leave after they have turned their back on their families to join
Post-decisional Dissonance
-Motivates a person to subsequently focus on the positive aspects of the option that they have chosen and the negative aspects of the option that they have not chose i.e. university courses
Persuasion
-The active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message
Factors that influence the persuasiveness of a message
- Source
- Content
- Receiver
Elaboration Likelihood Model
The idea that persuasive messages lead to attitude changes in either of two ways via the central route or via the peripheral route
Central Route
- When people are paying attention to the arguments, considering all of the info and using rational cognitive processes
- This route leads to the strong attitudes that last over time and that people actively defend
Peripheral Route
- When people are either not motivated to process info or are unable to process it
- This route leads to more impulsive action i.e. buying a celebrity endorsed product
Info provided on the face
- Emotional State
- Interest
- Competence
- Trustworthiness
Nonverbal Behaviour
The facial expressions, mannerisms, gestures and movements by which one communicates with others
Thin Slices of Behaviour
Quick views formed by only a few seconds of observation
Compliance
The tendency to agree to do things requested by others
Factors Influencing Compliance
- If individual is in a good mood
- If a reason is given
How does a reason influence Compliance
- People fail to pay attention and aim to avoid causing conflict so follow a standard mental shortcut to follow a request justified by a reason, however benign that it is
Foot in the Door Technique
- If people agree to a small request, they become more likely to comply with a large and undesirable request
- i.e. people who signed the petition were 30% more likely to put sign outside house
Principle behind the Foot in Door Technique
Commitment
Door in Face Technique
- People are more likely to agree to a small request after refusing a larger one
- i.e. more likely to give five minutes of your time to complete a survey after refusing a two hour interview
Principle behind Door in the Face Technique
Reciprocity
Low Balling
If an individual agrees to buy a product for a certain price, they are likely to comply with a request to pay more for a product
