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52 Cards in this Set
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The current view of attitudes is that they are positive or negative evaluations of an object. What are the 3 distinct components of an attitude?
Are all 3 necessary for an attitude to exist? |
1) AFFECTIVE: feelings toward an object
2) BEHAVIORAL: behavior towards an object 3) COGNITIVE: beliefs about an object **An attitude does NOT have to have all three. |
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What is the difference between implicit and explicit attitudes?
What are dual attitudes? |
IMPLICIT ATTITUDE: attitudes that are you don't acknowledge or are unaware of.
EXPLICIT ATTITUDE: consciously held attitude. DUAL ATTITUDE: when implicit and explicit attitudes are in conflict with each other. |
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What is a reference group?
Describe the Bennington College Study and the relevance of reference groups. |
REFERENCE GROUP: group to which people orient themselves, using its standards to judge themselves and the world.
Bennington College Study: - Students all came from upper-class, conservative families but faculty was all very liberal. - Wanted to see if students' attitudes would be influenced by changes in their reference groups. - Found that students became increasingly liberal as time passed. |
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What is classical conditioning?
Describe how attitudes can be formed through classical conditioning. |
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: learning through association
(CS → US → UR; CS → CR)) A previously neutral attitude object (CS) can come to evoke an attitude response (CR) simply by being paired with some other object (US) that naturally evokes the attitude response (UR). |
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Describe the LaPierre study (1934).
What did the researchers find and why was this study important? What criticisms do you have of the study? How is this related to Wicker’s critical review of the attitude-behavior literature (aka. what did he find?) |
LAPIERRE STUDY:
- Wanted to see whether attitudes predict behavior. - Had a bunch of restaurants/hotels fill out surveys (would you serve an Asian person?) and 90% said no. - Sent Asian couple around to those restaurants/hotels to see whether people would serve them or turn them away and 249/250 places served them. - Showed that attitudes do not always predict behavior. - Criticisms: norm of politeness and was person who completed survey the same person who served couple? WICKER: found that there is practically no correlation between attitudes and behavior. |
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Why might attitudes NOT predict behavior?
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Very context specific (abstract vs. actual)
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There are times when attitudes predict or influence our behavior, and times when they don’t.
Examples of this include: - Single vs. multiple-act criterion - Time between measuring the attitude and performing the behavior - The generality/specificity of the attitude & behavior - Behavioral intentions Describe each of these and give examples. |
SINGLE VS. MULTIPLE-ACT CRITERION
- Single-act: specific behavior at one point in time - Multiple-act: an index of behavior (ex. candy preference activity) TIME BETWEEN MEASURING ATTITUDE AND PERFORMING BEHAVIOR - Short time: attitude is more predictive of behavior - Longer amount of time: more can change (ex. ?) GENERALITY/SPECIFICITY OF ATTITUDE AND BEHAVIOR - A general attitude may not predict a specific behavior. - When specificity of attitude and behavior match, attitude is more likely to predict behavior. (ex. birth control?) BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS - Extent to which people intend to act on their attitude. - Attitudes influence intentions, which influence behavior. (ex. ?) |
Examples??
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What is the theory of planned behavior?
Explain the 3 components that make up the behavioral intention. |
THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR: people's decisions to engage in certain actions (behavioral intention) are determined by the following components:
1) SUBJECTIVE NORM: perceptions of whether other people approve of behavior 2) ATTITUDE TOWARD BEHAVIOR: belief that behavior will result in certain consequence x evaluation of the consequence. 3) PERCEIVED BEHAVIORAL CONTROL: belief about how easy/hard it is to perform behavior (PBC ↓ = behavioral intentions ↓) |
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Attitudes can predict/influence behavior but behaviors can also influence attitudes. One theory that supports this is cognitive dissonance theory. Describe this theory and the major laboratory study that Festinger conducted to test it.
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COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY: people are motivated to maintain consistency among their behaviors and attitudes (= relationship between behavior causing attitude)
FESTINGER'S STUDY: - 2 groups participate in extremely boring activity - At the end, the experimenters ask participants to lie to other people about how fun the activity was: one group is offered $20 to lie and the other is offered $1. - After participants tell their lie, they are interviewed about how fun the activity was. - People who got $1 to lie came to believe that activity was actually fun to a much higher degree than people who got $20 because they experienced a greater amount of cognitive dissonance ($1 to lie was insufficient justification vs. $20) |
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Why was cognitive dissonance theory so revolutionary at the time it was introduced?
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At the time this study was done, operant conditioning (external incentives shape attitudes) was the predominant theoretical view.
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An example of cognitive dissonance in the “real world” is the story that inspired the book “When Prophecy Fails.” Describe how this story is an example of cognitive dissonance and how the dissonance was resolved.
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Guardian Cult
- Believed their leader was receiving messages from another planet. - Aliens warned that a great flood was coming that would kill everyone and they were sending a spaceship to rescue the followers. - Cult waited for spaceship to come but it and the flood never came. - Instead of disconfirming their belief, they believed in it more strongly (God had spared the world because followers were so good) |
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Describe the three approaches that have been taken in cognitive dissonance theory (insufficient justification, free choice, and effort justification).
Why did we do the candy bar experiment in class and what did it demonstrate? What was the sex discussion group study about and what does it provide evidence for? |
INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION: people perform behavior inconsistent with their attitude; if there's no good reason for behavior and action can't be undone, attitudes will change so they are consistent with behavior.
FREE CHOICE: when you freely choose to engage in counter-attitudinal behavior, dissonance results. EFFORT JUSTIFICATION: if you work hard at something, you will like it more than if you didn't work hard. Candy bar experiment: - Two groups: group 1 got choice between candy they loved and candy they hated; group 2 got choice between two candies they liked equally. - Group 1: no change in ratings of candy - Group 2: chosen candy gets higher ratings than previously - Demonstrates free choice in cognitive dissonance. Sex discussion group study: - 2 groups of women take screening test; group 1 hears very graphic sexual things while group 2 hears mildly graphic sexual things. - Group 1 enjoyed it more. - Demonstrates effort justification in cognitive dissonance. |
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What are strategies people use to resolve dissonance?
Provide an example of a situation involving dissonance and how someone would resolve it (e.g., I smoke but smoking causes cancer). |
STRATEGIES
1) Add consonant cognitions—thoughts that make behavior not seem as bad (ex. smoking keeps my weight down) 2) Change attitudes and beliefs (ex. convince yourself that smoking isn't that bad for you) 3) Change behavior (ex. stop smoking) 4) Rationalize it (ex. at least I'm not smoking crack) 5) Self-affirmation (ex. I smoke but I'm a good person) |
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Describe Bem’s self-perception theory.
Why did it challenge dissonance theory? How was Bem’s study conducted? |
SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY: people infer their attitudes from observing their own behavior.
Challenged CDT because it downplays importance of introspection and self-reflection. CDT = attitudes cause behavior SPT = behaviors cause attitude ? |
How was study conducted??
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What is elaboration likelihood?
What does it mean to elaborate? What does elaboration influence? What did we do in class to illustrate this? |
ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD: probability that recipient of a persuasive message will elaborate the info contained within that message.
ELABORATE: to carefully analyze and comprehend. Influences the extent to which a message changes attitudes and the persistence of the attitude change. IN CLASS: looked at two ads (abortion vs. condoms) ?? |
In class activity??
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Describe the two routes of processing in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
Which route is more effective (i.e., lasts longer) and why? What is the role of ability and motivation in the ELM? |
1) CENTRAL ROUTE: persuasion that occurs when people think carefully (high elaboration) about a communication and are persuaded by the strength of the arguments contained in it.
2) PERIPHERAL ROUTE: persuasion occurs when people do not think carefully (low elaboration) about a communication and instead are influenced by peripheral cues that are irrelevant to content or quality of communication. CENTRAL is more effective/lasts longer because you elaborate more, causing it to stick with you. MOTIVATION: are you motivated to process the message carefully? ABILITY: are you able to process the message carefully? |
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If you were an advertising executive, how would you use what we have learned so far to sell your product?
Describe your product and how an ad in a magazine might look. Explain the strategies you would use to sell the product. |
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How is persuasion research done?
How are arguments manipulated? How are peripheral cues used? |
RESEARCH
1) Manipulating argument strength 2) Manipulating peripheral cues |
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If you wanted to be more persuasive or avoid being persuaded, you need to consider who is communicating the message. What are source characteristics that influence persuasion?
Know these and be able to recognize examples. |
1) CREDIBILITY (↑ credibility = ↑ persuasion)
- Expertise: ability to provide accurate/true information - Trustworthiness: motivation of a source to lie or speak the truth 2) SOURCE ATTRACTIVENESS (↑ attractive = ↑ persuasion) 3) LIKEABILITY (↑ likeability = ↑ persuasion) 4) COMMUNICATOR SIMILARITY (↑ similarity to recipient = ↑ persuasion) 5) PERSUASIVE INTENT: less likely to be persuaded if you think someone is trying to persuade you. |
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What is the sleeper effect and how does it work?
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The delayed effectiveness of a persuasive message from a non-credible source.
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One determinant of attractiveness is similarity. What are some of the ways communicators can be similar to their audience?
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- APPEARANCE (ex. blue eyes)
- ATTITUDES AND VALUES (ex. republican) - BACKGROUNDS (ex. Indian) |
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How do the following characteristics influence the effectiveness of a particular message?
- Message comprehensibility - Having a conclusion - Number of arguments - One-sided vs. two-sided arguments - Fear appeals - Personal examples - Humor - Repetition (inc. mere exposure effect, wear out effects, and variation) |
1) MESSAGE COMPREHENSIBILITY: in order for message to be persuasive, it must first be attended to and comprehended (ex. if the message was in Chinese, it couldn't be persuasive unless the recipient could read/understand Chinese)
2) HAVING A CONCLUSION: generally, message is more persuasive if it has a conclusion (except for when it's obvious) 3) NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS: quality counts, not quantity. 4) ONE-SIDED VS. TWO-SIDED ARGUMENTS: does the communicator know both sides of an issue (more persuasive if the message is two-sided) 5) FEAR APPEALS: using scare tactics is sometimes successful (usually more successful with issues not of major concern to recipients and if it offers a solution) 6) PERSONAL EXAMPLES: more persuasive than statistics. 7) HUMOR: ↑ persuasion if humor is relevant to message, otherwise it may distract from message. 8) REPETITION - Mere exposure effect: the more you see something, the more you like it. - Wear-out effects: liking levels off with too much repeated exposure. - Repetition with variation: repeated message in different format (ex. absolut or got milk?) |
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What are some characteristics of the audience that influence persuasion?
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1) PERSONAL RELEVANCE
- Issue involvement: does the attitudinal issue have important personal consequences? 2) INTELLIGENCE: influences likelihood of comprehension and being influenced by message 3) MOOD: happy people are usually easier to persuade than sad people 4) SELF-ESTEEM: people with higher self-esteem are harder to persuade than those with low self-esteem 5) NEED FOR COGNITION: ??? 6) AGE: depends on life stage and time perspective |
Need for cognition??
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Messages can be delivered in a number of ways. What are some of the ways we discussed in class that can either have positive or negative effects on persuasion?
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- RAPID SPEECH: may ↑ persuasion (if message is weak) or ↓ persuasion (if message is strong)
(ex. crazy eddie commercials) - FORCEFUL PRESENTATION: (greater volume, variations in pitch, concrete arguments, extreme adjectives, etc.) → greater persuasion - POWERFUL SPEECH STYLE: tends to be more persuasive - DISTRACTION: prevents elaboration |
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Why might Homer Simpson go to Clown School?
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Repetition of advertisement
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We have talked about the ABCs of attitudes. What are they in terms of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination?
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AFFECTIVE COMPONENT: your "emotions" about groups
BEHAVIORAL COMPONENT: your "actions" towards groups COGNITIVE COMPONENT: your "beliefs" about groups |
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How is prejudice defined?
What distinguishes a stereotype from other schemas? What do stereotypes do? |
PREJUDICE: affective reactions toward a group as a whole.
STRONG EMOTIONS distinguish a stereotype from other schemas. STEREOTYPES are a special type of schema that help us organize and remember information about a group as a whole. |
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What is the kernel of truth hypothesis?
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People hold onto a stereotype because there is slight ring of truth to it and therefore they overgeneralize and accept it.
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Describe 2 ways that implicit prejudice is measured.
What do these tasks show? Why are researchers interested in measuring both implicit and explicit prejudice? |
IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION TEST (IAT): presented with words or images and asked to categorize them as quickly as possible.
SHOOTER TASK: tests the likelihood of shooting someone who could be pulling out a cellphone or a gun, depending on what race they are. Tests show a pervasive implicit prejudice that most people are totally unaware they possess. ?? |
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What is the principle of least effort?
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PRINCIPLE OF LEAST EFFORT: tendency to rely on oversimplified generalizations and to resist information that complicates our categorical distinctions.
(Basically, people do at little as possible to get by. It's easier to put people into groups than to think individually about each and every person.) |
How does it work??
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What was the point of the moon colony survivors list activity that we completed?
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This activity showed that people tended to categorize people - e.g. determining who to save and who not to save based on whether or not they could reproduce. Again, showing principle of least effort & categorization.
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The illusory correlation is the belief that two variables are associated with each other when in fact there is little or no actual association. Describe how stereotypes are often based on the illusory correlation.
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1) ASSOCIATIVE MEANING: two variables are associated with each other because of perceiver's preexisting beliefs (ex. because you expect Jews to be deceptive, you're more likely to notice possible instances of deception and interpret ambiguous info to verify your assumptions)
2) SHARED DISTINCTIVENESS: two variables are associated because they share some unusual feature (ex. both minority group [Jews] and unfavorable trait [deceptiveness] are infrequent and distinct) |
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In-group bias is the tendency to give more favorable evaluations and greater rewards to in-group members. Describe the in-class exercise that demonstrated this.
How is in-group bias related to ethnocentrism? |
DOT ESTIMATION TASK: class estimated amount of dots in a clump and thus figured out if they were over-estimators or under-estimators. Then we had to describe qualities of both. Results showed that people rated their own groups with positive characteristics and the other group with more negative characteristics.
In-group bias is the basis for ethnocentrism (= a belief that your own group is better than other groups.) |
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What is the minimal intergroup situation?
What famous experiment showed this? |
MINIMAL INTERGROUP SITUATION: dividing individuals up into groups in an arbitrary meaningless way.
Example: Eye of the Storm experiment |
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Describe the out-group homogeneity effect.
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Perceptions that the members of an out-group are all similar to each other (ex. reason that Caucasian people have hard time telling Asians apart and vice versa)
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Some social factors that perpetuate stereotyping and prejudice include social dominance theory and intergroup competition. Describe and provide examples of these two factors.
Describe the Robbers Cave Experiment – know all of the phases and what happened at each phase. |
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY: societal groups are organized hierarchically and the dominant group tends to receive a disproportionate amount of society's assets, whereas the subordinate group receives most of society's liabilities (ex. dominant groups receive access to education and medical care and subordinate groups are subjected to poverty and poor health care)
INTERGROUP COMPETITION → Realistic conflict theory: intergroup conflict develops from competition for limited resources (ex. affirmative action) ROBBERS CAVE EXPERIMENT - 11-year-old boy scouts went to summer camp where experimenters created social groups that came into conflict with each other. - Phase 1: created in-groups - Phase 2: created group conflict by bringing groups together in competition - Phase 3: tried to resolve conflict with intergroup cooperation - Showed that superordinate goals (goals so large that it requires more than one group to achieve the goal) reduced conflict much more effectively than other strategies (ex. contact) |
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What is the scapegoat theory of prejudice?
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People often can't aggress against the source of their frustration, so they aggress toward stigmatized or helpless groups.
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Describe three personality factors that play a role in stereotyping/ prejudice/ discrimination.
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1) PREJUDICED PERSONALITY: hates all out-groups (ex. white supremacy)
2) AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY: trait characterized by submissiveness to authority, rigid adherence to conventional values, and prejudice towards out-groups. 3) SELF-ESTEEM: when self-esteem is threatened, people express more in-group bias (favoring your own group over another.) |
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What are the social learning factors that perpetuate stereotyping and prejudice?
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- Conformity to societal group norms
- Learning from parents - Religion - Media |
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What is face-ism?
What are the consequences of face-ism? |
FACE-ISM: face is emphasized in images of ♂, whereas body is emphasized in images of ♀.
Consequences: - ♀ more likely to be objectified - Strengthens stereotypes |
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What is stereotype threat?
What are the consequences of stereotype threat? |
STEREOTYPE THREAT: being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group.
Consequences: can create damaging self-fulfilling prophecies. |
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Racism, sexism and heterosexism are all forms of prejudice and discrimination. What is the difference between old-fashioned and aversive (a.k.a., modern) racism?
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OLD-FASHIONED RACISM: characterized by blatant negative stereotypes and open opposition to racial equality.
AVERSIVE/MODERN RACISM: attitudes toward racial groups that include egalitarian values and negative emotions, causing one to avoid interaction with group members. |
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What is sexism?
What is heterosexism? |
SEXISM: any attitude, action, or institutional structure that subordinates a person because of his/her sex.
HETEROSEXISM: cultural beliefs, values, and customs that praise heterosexuality and denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes non-heterosexual individuals and behaviors. |
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Can prejudice and discrimination be eliminated or reduced? How?
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Can be reduced through SELF-REGULATION.
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What is the contact hypothesis?
When does it operate? |
CONTACT HYPOTHESIS: under certain conditions, direct contact between antagonistic groups can reduce prejudice.
Operates under the following conditions: - Equal social status - Sustained close contact - Intergroup cooperation - Social norms favoring equality |
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What is social influence?
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The exercise of social power by a person or group in order to change the attitudes or behaviors of others.
Made up of conformity, compliance, and obedience. |
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What is conformity? Provide an example.
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CONFORMITY: giving in to perceived group pressure by copying the behavior and beliefs of others (ex. Candid Camera elevator experiment)
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What is a social norm?
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An expected standard of behavior and belief established and reinforced by a group.
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What is the difference between informational and normative social influence?
What classic studies demonstrate each? What are the key differences between these types of influence? |
INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE: conformity for the purpose of gaining information.
- Conform because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours. - Autokinetic effect: illusion in which a stationary point of light appears to be moving in a dark room. - Sherif's Autokinetic Illusion test: conformity in an ambiguous situation. Asked people if it was moving and if so, how much? Individually, people varied in the distance they thought it moved, but once they came together estimates gradually became more similar to each other. Sherif though that people were listening to others' answers and averaging them to an expected standard established by the group. NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE: conformity for the purpose of gaining rewards or avoiding punishment. - Conform to be liked or accepted by others/avoid looking stupid. - Ash's research: conformity in an unambiguous situation. - Showed participant 4 lines and asked which was the tallest. All confederates gave the obviously wrong answer and Ash wanted to see whether participant would feel pressured enough to conform even though they knew answer was wrong. In the end, 60% of subjects conformed. |
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Situational, personal, and cultural factors influence conformity. What are they?
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SITUATIONAL FACTORS
- Group size (↑ people = ↑ conformity) - Group cohesiveness and topic relevance (↑ cohesiveness = ↑ conformity, especially when topic is important to group) - Social support/dissenter present (↑ support = ↓ strength of norm) - Task difficulty (easy = ↓ conformity; hard = ↑ conformity) PERSONAL FACTORS - Self-awareness (public = ↑ conformity; private = ↓ conformity) - Need for individualism (↓ conformity) - Desire for personal control - Gender CULTURAL FACTORS - Individualism vs. collectivism |
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What is psychological reactance theory?
What are the two types of nonconformity? |
PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTANCE THEORY: when behavioral freedoms are threatened, people react and resist attempts to limit this freedom (ex. if parents hate your boyfriend, you'll probably want to see him even more)
INDEPENDENCE: not being influenced by attempts of others to control you (because you don't really care.) ANTICONFORMITY: opposition to social influence on all occasions (aka. purposely doing the opposite of everyone else) |
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When is conformity automatically activated?
What evidence supports this? |
NONCONSCIOUS MIMICRY (ex. yawning after seeing someone else yawn)
Evidence: survival reflex (ex. newborns mimic mother's gestures/expressions → establishes emotional bond between the two → more likely newborn will be nurtured/protected.) |
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