Weeks 5-6 Flashcards
Define ‘attitude’
Enduring organisation of beliefs, feelings and behavioural tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events, symbols.
Or a general feeling or evaluation about something.
What are the three proposed components of an attitude?
Cognitive
Affective
Behavioural
List the major functions of attitudes.
Saves energy - we don’t have to figure out from scratch how we should relate
Object appraisal - whether the object has positive or negative valence
What are the basic propositions of cognitive theories?
People try to maintain internal consistencies, order, and agreement among their various cognitions - avoid dissonance
Describe Heider’s balance theory.
People prefer attitudes that are consistent with each other
Focuses on P-O-X
P - person
O - another person
X - attitude, object, topic
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How do the following concepts explain attitude formation:
- Mere exposure effect
- Conditioning
- Social learning theory
- Self-perception theory
- Repeated exposure to something results in greater attraction to it
- Behaviour with positive consequences is reinforced, vice versa for behaviour with negative consequences.
- Individuals learn new responses not by direct experience but by observing what happens to others.
- People gain knowledge of ourselves by making self-attributions - we infer our own attitudes from our behaviour
Describe some of the major differences between the cognitive and behavioural approaches to attitude to formation.
???
What might contribute to attitude development other than parents and media?
Friends
Education
Religion
Social movements
Describe and note the key advantages and disadvantages of each of the following methods of measuring attitudes:
- Self-report
- Physiological measure
- Unobtrusive (observational) measures
- Bogus pipeline technique
- + Can unearth substructures underlying a set of items, such as sexism or racism
- Questionnaire must be designed effectively
2.
+ People may not realise they are being assessed
- Sensitive to variables other than attitudes
- + Neither intrude on the processes being studied nor cause people to behave unnaturally
- Less reliable than self-report
4.
+ Usually causes to participants to respond truthfully and accurately
Define priming.
How has it been used to measure attitudes?
Activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new information
What is the implicit association test (IAT)?
Reaction time test to measure attitudes, particularly unpopular attitudes that people might try to conceal
Describe the classic study by LaPierre.
Why is this study considered to be a classic?
Travelled through America with a Chinese couple etc…
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The link between attitudes and behaviour depends upon a number of factors. Describe how each of these factors affects the attitude-behaviour relationship. Provide examples to illustrate: attitude strength; attitude accessibility; and moderator variables, such as situation and personality variables.
Strength
More accessible, more likely to be acted upon
Accessibility
Highly accessible will exert more influence over behaviour
Moderator variables
Direct experience will make the attitude more accessible and increase its effect on behaviour
Describe Ajzen and Fishbein’s theory of reasoned action. Identify the main components of the theory and explain how they relate to behaviour.
The best way to predict a behaviour is to ask whether the person intends to do it.
Composed of:
Subjective norm - what the individual thinks others believe
Attitude towards the behaviour - an attitude towards an act (taking the pill) not the object (the pill itself)
Behavioural intention - internal declaration to act
Behaviour - the action performed
Describe how the theory of planned behaviour modified the theory of reasoned action. Illustrate this theory with a flow diagram.
Predicting a behaviour from an attitude measure is improved if people believe that have control over that behaviour
What is the central hypothesis of Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance?
People are motivated to reduce tensions caused by holding two opposing cognitions simultaneously, often by rejecting or changing one of the cognitions.
What is effort justification? Describe the general model of the effort justification paradigm using one of your own experiences as an example.
Inconsistency is experienced when a person makes a considerable effort to achieve a modest goal
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Define induced compliance. Describe Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) classic study and use dissonance theory to explain why their findings.
When a person is persuaded to behave in a way that is contrary to an attitude - voluntarily.
Student volunteers performed an extremely boring task believe that they were contributing to research.
Describe the role of free choice in reducing dissonance.
Once a person has made a decision between alternatives, they become more confident in the outcome.
Consider the research findings detailed in this section of the text and describe what is meant by (a) the source; (b) the message; (c) audience factors, you should consider when developing a persuasive communication.
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Choose a factor related to each and provide a research finding on what has been found.
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Explain the role of fear in persuasive communications. When and why are fearful messages effective? (You should draw upon the protection motivation theory in your explanation).
Fear appeals work when they include an effective presentation of how to cope with the danger
Explain what is meant by heuristics.
Cognitive shortcut that helps us make decisions and solve problems quickly
Explain the difference between the elaboration-likelihood and heuristic-systematic models of persuasion.
Elaboration-likelihood
People use a central method of processing when closely attending to a message.
Otherwise they use a peripheral route.
Heuristic-systematic
When people attend closely to a message, they use systematic processing.
Otherwise they use heuristics.
What are reactance, forewarning and the inoculation effect?
Reactance
People try to protect their freedom to act and will act to regain it if they feel it has been curtailed - a kind of stubbornness!
Forewarning
Prior knowledge of a persuasive intent produces resistance to persuasion
Inoculation
Being equipped with a supportive defense makes you less likely to be persuaded
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Cognitive miser
People use the least complex and demanding cognitions that are able to produce generally adaptive behaviours
Norms
Shared beliefs about what is the appropriate conduct for a group member
Ethnomethodology
Method of detecting norms through violation of hidden norms to reveal their presence
Define ‘norms’ and identify how norms are relevant to the topic of social influence.
Shared beliefs about what is the appropriate conduct for a group member
What is the difference between implicit and explicit norms?
Explicit - rules and laws
Implicit - social guidelines, situational behaviours…
What did Sherif (1936) argue? Now study ‘Research Classic 5.1 on page 148. Describe Sheriff’s classic experiment and explain its implications. You should also make sure that you can define ‘frame of reference’.
When people made perceptual judgements alone, they relied on their own estimates as a reference frame; however, when they were in a group, they used the group’s range of judgements to converge quickly on the group mean.
Frame of reference
People use the behaviour of others to establish the range of possible behaviour - average or middle positions in such frames are perceived to be more correct than fringe positions, thus people tend to adopt them.
What did Asch (1952) argue and how did this differ from Sherif? Describe his classic experiment and experimental results. You should also make sure that you can define ‘conformity’.
If the object of judgement was clear-cut, then the views of others would have no effect on the behaviour; an individual should remain entirely independent of group influence.
What individual or group characteristics have been found to affect conformity? What ‘situational factors’ have been found to affect conformity?
Conformity - deep seated, private and enduring change in behaviour and attitudes due to peer pressure
Define and differentiate between ‘informational influence’, ‘normative influence’, and ‘referent informational influence’.
Informational influence
Our tendency to accept the views of others as evidence about reality
Normative influence
Tendency to conform to the positive expectations of others - need for social approval and acceptance leads us to go along with the group to avoid censure or disapproval.
Referent informational influence
Pressure to conform to a group norm that defines oneself as a group member
How do Vaughan and Hogg define compliance? How does compliance differ from conformity?
Behavioural response to a request by another individual - superficial and transitory change in behaviour only.
Conformity refers to the influence of a group upon an individual - more enduring.
What are the different types of strategies that people can adopt to maximise the chances of compliance to a direct request?
Can you provide an example from your own experiences?
Make sure that you can define the terms ‘ingratiation’ and ‘reciprocity principle’
Ingratiation
Strategic attempt to get someone to like you in order to obtain compliance with a request - can backfire when transparent
Reciprocity principle / norm
Principle that we should treat others the way they treat us
What are multiple request tactics?
tactics for gaining compliance using a two-step procedure: the first request functions as a set-up for the second, real request
Describe the 3 classic techniques for inducing compliance and note the research findings for each.
Foot-in-the-door tactic
Door-in-the-face
Low-ball
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Read Research Classic 5.2 on page 160. Describe Milgram’s famous obedience experiment.
Shock experiment
Milgram conducted a series of studies to explore different contributing factors that influence obedience. What factors did he identify and what were their effects?
Immediacy of the victim
Immediacy of the authority
Legitimacy of the authority figure
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What are the main principles of ethical research?
Is the research important?
Is the participant free to terminate the experiment at any time?
Does the participant freely consent to being in the experiment?
Participation must be based on fully informed consent.
Participants must be told that they can withdraw without penalty at any stage of the study
Participants must be fully and honestly brief at the end of the study.
What ethical issues are raised by Milgram’s study?
Participants were persuaded to remain - not really free to leave
Participants did not give fully informed consent - they were deceived
How might we carry out research connected to Milgram’s while still conforming to ethical guidelines?
.
Would Milgram’s experiments yield the same results if they were repeated today? Why or why not?
.
What is minority influence? List two examples. What does minority influence help to explain?
Social influence processes whereby numerical or power minorities change the attitudes of the majority.
E.g. Greenpeace
Suffragettes
Anti-war rallies for Vietnam
What alternative explanation for Asch’s results was provided by Moscovici and Faucheux (1972)?
Conformity bias
Tendency for social psychology to
According to Moscovici, what are the 3 ways that define how people respond to social conflict?
Conforming
Normalising
Innovating
According to Moscovici and his colleagues, what is the most important behavioural style that can be used by minority groups to influence a majority? Why?
Consistency
- Disrupts majority norm and produces uncertainty
- Draws attention to itself as an entity
- Conveys that there is an alternative coherent POV
- Demonstrates certainty and commitment to its POV
- Shows that the only solution to the conflict is the minority POV
Describe and note the major findings of the classic ‘blue-green studies’.
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According to Moscovici, what are the different sorts of change brought about by majority and minority influence?
What is a ‘conversion effect’?
Majority
Direct public compliance for reasons of normative or informational dependence.
Accepted without much thought.
Minority
Indirect, often laten, private change in opinoin due to the cognitive conflict and restructuring that deviant ideas produce.
Conversion effect
When minority influence brings about a sudden and dramatic internal and private change in the attitudes of the majority.
What is the main argument of ‘social impact theory’ and to what extent can this explain minority influence?
The effect that other people have on our attitudes and behaviour, usually as a consequence of factors such as group size, and temporal and physical immediacy. As the cumulative source of influence gets larger, the impact of each additional source is reduce - a single source has enormous impact, the addition of a second source increases impact slightly less, etc, etc.
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Although a minority influence has little influence compared to a majority, it has not yet reached a plateau - additional members or ‘bits’ of minority influence have a relatively large impact.
