Week 6

Question 1

What is an attitude?

Answer 1

• Evaluation of an object or behavior in a positive or negative way.

Question 2

What is the ABC of attitude?

Answer 2

• Affect: emotional reactions to an attitude object
• Behavior: knowledge about interactions with an attitude object
• CognitionL thoughts about the attitude object

Question 3

What are ways to measure attitudes?

Answer 3

• likert scales (self reports)

Question 4

What are the pros and cons of explicit methods

Answer 4

+:
Easy to write and tailor to a specific attitude object
Easy to administer

-:
Prone to social desirability bias
May not capture everything we want.

Question 5

Examples of implicit measure?

Answer 5

• Response latency
• IAT

Question 6

What is an implicit attitude measure?

Answer 6

• an indirect measure of attitudes that does not involve a self report

Question 7

When is implicit attitude measure used?

Answer 7

• when people may be unwilling or unable to report their true feelings or opinions.
• when you want to capture nonconcius attitudes

Question 8

What are nonconcious attitudes

Answer 8

• peoples immediate evaluative reaction they may or may not be aware of or that may conflict with their consciously endorsed attitudes.

Question 9

Define response latency

Answer 9

• the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, like an attitude question.

Question 10

Why would response latency be used?

Answer 10

Asses the accessibility of the attitude

Question 11

Define Centrality

Answer 11

• how central is an attitude to your belief system

Question 12

What are the pros and cons of implicit methods?

Answer 12

+:
Response time can indicate attitude accessibility
Less prone to social desirability bias.

-:
More difficult to administer, eg time intensive and requires a computer
Still dont tell the full story behind ones attitudes.

Question 13

How can we predict behavior from attitudes?

Answer 13

They dont always match —> may not always be a good predictor of behavior.

Question 14

Describe the study by LaPiere

Answer 14

• travelled across the US with a Chinese couple when anti-Chinese prejudice was high
• contact 250 restaurants to ask if they would serve Chinese customers, 90% said they would not
• But when they acc visited, only denied service at 1/250 restaurants.

Question 15

Attitude research has historically struggled to reliably predict behavior…Why?

Answer 15

• other powerful determinants
• introspecting about the reasons for our attitudes
• mismatch between specific and general

Question 16

Why is introspection misleading?

Answer 16

• focus on the easy-to-identify reasons for liking/disliking something at the expense of the real reasons
• when people are made to carefully think about product selection, more likely to regret
• “introspection contamination’ is most pronounced when attitudes are affectively based.

Question 17

What are cognitive consistency theories (umbrella term)

Answer 17

• idea that people are motivates to maintain consistency between their thoughts, feeling and behaviors to reduce the sense of discomfort

Question 18

Cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 18

• inconsistency between thoughts, feelings and actions creates an aversive state known as dissonance
• this feeling leads people to put effort into restoring consistency
• we will change whatever is easiest in order to reduce dissonance

Question 19

When does cognitive dissonance theory?

Answer 19

• decisions and dissonance: before/after decided between 2 or more alternatives
• effort justification: after undergoing a lot of effort to do something
• induced compliance: after being forced to engage in a behavior that does not match your attitude.

Question 20

Which of the following is NOT a reason why attitude research has historically struggled to reliably predict behavior?
a)Other powerful determinants
b)Because it focused on only personality characteristics
c)Introspecting about the reasons for our attitudes
d)Mismatch between specific and general

Answer 20

B

Question 21

When does cognitive dissonance usually occur

Answer 21

1 decisions - before/after deciding between alternatives
2. Effort justification: after undergoing a lot of effort to do something
3. Induced compliance: after being forced to engage in a behavior that does not match your attitude

Question 22

Describe the study by Aronson and Mills

Answer 22

• emale undergrads thought they were joining an ongoing discussion group about sex
• pps told that not everyone is good at speaking openly and freely about sex, so they would have to pass a test before joining.
• 3 conditions: mild, severe, control (describing embarrassing words, very very obsenece words from smut)
• crafted to be very boring
• then asked how interesting it was.

Question 23

Describe the study by Aronson and Mills (results)

Answer 23

• pps who were made th most uncomfortable rated the discussion group as most interesting in order to reduce their severe dissonance.

Question 24

Describe te Peg study

Answer 24

• pps asked to turn pegs on a board or an hour (very boring)
• asked to lie to the next pp that the study was interesting with a reward- either 1 or 20 bucks
• then they were asked how much they enjoyed the task
• pps in the 1$ condition rated the task as more enjoyable than the other control or 20$ conditions.

Question 25

Describe the Forbidden toy paradigm

Answer 25

• children asked to rank how much they liked each toy from some toys
• researcher said he was going to leave for a bit, but children could play with any of the toys while he was gone, except 1.
• There were 2 conditions: mild threat, severe threat
• no child played with the forbidden toy
• at the end, children reevaluated all toys.

Question 26

EXPLAIN the results of the forbidden toy paradigm

Answer 26

• in the severe threat condition: threat was sufficient justification for not playing with the toy
• mild threat: insufficient justification for not playing with the toy, so no dissonance.
• change attitudes to reduce the dissonance - eg ‘I didn’t even like the toy that much, so that’s why I didn’t play with it’

Question 27

When does attitude-behavior inconsistency cause dissonance?

Answer 27

• free choice
• insufficient justification
• negative consequences
• foreseeability

Question 28

Self perception theory

Answer 28

-the idea that people come to know their own attitudes by looking at their behavior and inferring what their attitudes must be.

Question 29

Describe how cognitive dissonance and Self perception theory differ in their view on the role of arousal

Answer 29

• Cognitive dissonance: aversive psychological state that involves arousal
• self perception theory’s no implied state of arousal state because people are merely observing their behaviors and inferring attitudes.

Question 30

When is Cognitive dissonance more likely to occur?

Answer 30

• when you have clear, pre-existing important ideas

Question 31

When is Self perception theory more likely to occur?

Answer 31

When we don’t have a clear, solidified attitude towards something, or when the attitude isn’t important

Question 32

Describe the Misattribution of arousal paradigm

Answer 32

• pps given a placebo and told that it would:
• have no effect, make them feel relaxed or tense
• pps wrote an essay that is against their attitude - free choice or no choice.
• researchers measured their attitude toward the position again.

Question 33

Describe the results of the Misattribution of arousal paradigm

Answer 33

• No effect group: more attitude change with free choice I
• Tense groups dissonance effect dissaperead, arousal misattributed to the drug
• relaxed group: even stronger dissonance effect, greatest attitude change.