Gre Subject Test: Psychology

Front 1

Consistency Theories

Back 1

people attempt to resolve inconsistencies between their beliefs and behaviors by either modifying their behavior or their beliefs

Front 2

Fritz Hieder's Balance Theory

Back 2

Three elements:
1) person we're talking about (P); 2) another person (O); 3) thing, idea or third person (X)

balance exists when all three fit together; otherwise, stress exists
ex. disagreeing with someone you dislike

imbalance ex. agreeing with someone you dislike or disagreeing with someone you like

Front 3

Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory: overview

Back 3

conflict felt when attitudes don't match behaviors

reduce by either removing dissonant elements or by adding consonant elements

Front 4

free choice

Back 4

person makes a choice between several desirable alternatives

Front 5

positive decision dissonance

Back 5

emerges after a "free choice" is mage

Front 6

spreading the alternatives

Back 6

method of reducing dissonance

a) accentuate the positives of your "free choice" or
b) accentuate the negatives of the discarded option

Front 7

forced compliance dissonance

Back 7

required to behave in a way that is inconsistent with one's beliefs

Front 8

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959): spoon sorting experiment

Back 8

participants were forced to do a boring, tedious task of sorting spoons for an hour and were then paid $1 or $20 to lie to the next group and say they enjoyed it

the $1 group had more dissoance b/w their behavior and beliefs (because the $20 incentive decrease the tension from lying) --> so the $1 group altered their beliefs to a greater extent

Front 9

minimal justification effect / nsufficient justifcation effect

Back 9

when external justification is not satisfactory, will be forced to alter cognitions to match behavior

Front 10

two main principles of Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance theory

Back 10

1) If a person is pressured to say or do something against to his or her privately held attitudes, there will be a tendency for him or her to chance those attitudes
2) the greater the pressure to comply, the less this attitude chance. Ultimately, attitude change generally cocurs when the behavior is induced with minimum pressure

note: pressure can be thought of as external justification

Front 11

Daryl Bem's Self-Perception Theory

Back 11

attitudes are weak and ambiguous--- one determine's how one feels by observing one's own behavior

there is no discomfort or dissonance because initial attitude are essentially irrelevant

Front 12

overjustification effect

Back 12

if an external pressure comes in to compensate for the behavior, one will stop liking the behavior because they will assume the external pressure is actually the driving force

Front 13

Carl Hovland's Model

Back 13

communication for the purpose of persuasion
three elements:
1) communicator
2) communication
3) situation

Front 14

The Communicator

Back 14

taken a position on an isse and wants others to adopt his/her position
produces communication

Front 15

Credibility

Back 15

the degree to which the communicator can be beleived
depends on the trustworthy nature of the source

Front 16

Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss (1952)

Back 16

experiment where participants were presented with an article either written by a famous Americna scientist or a Russian newspaper

results: highly credible sources (i.e. the American scientists) are more effective in changing attitudes

however, the sleeper effect still is present

Front 17

Sleeper effect

Back 17

the persuasive impact of the high credibility source decreases over time while the persuasive impact of the low credibility source increases

Front 18

self interest and credibility

Back 18

one can increase one's own credibility by arguing against own self interest

i.e. a drug addict that argues against the use of narcotics

Front 19

two sided messages

Back 19

contain arguments for and against a position

used mostly in media messages