11. Attitudes and social cognition

Question 1

what are the levels of social behaviour>

Answer 1

intra-individual processes (social cognition, attitude formation)
interpersonal processes (between individuals e.g. helping behaviours)
group processes (e.g. nations, ethic groups, interest groups, political groups)

Question 2

attitude

Answer 2

association between an act or object and evaluation

Question 3

what are the 3 components of attitude?

Answer 3

cognitive, emotional and behavioural

Question 4

what are the different dimensions of attitude?

Answer 4

strength, implicitness, complexity, ambivalence, coherence

Question 5

strength of attiude

Answer 5

durability and impact of an attitude. Made up of attitude importance and accessibility

measured by the stability of attitudes over time and as affected by other dimensions

Question 6

strength - importance

Answer 6

personal relevance significance of an attitude for a particular person

measured by -> asking people how personally important their attitude is OR how concerned they are about something

Question 7

strength - accessibility

Answer 7

ease with which an attitude comes to mind

measured by -> length of time it takes for people to report their attitude about something, OR by people’s reports of how often they discuss with something with friends and family OR how often they think about the object

Question 8

implicitness of an attitude

Answer 8

degree to which we are aware of the attitude

sometimes so implicit they regulate behaviour unconsciously or automatically

Question 9

complexity of attitude

Answer 9

degree of reasoning that forms the attitude

intricacy of thoughts about different attitudes is their cognitive complexity

Question 10

ambivalence of attitudes

Answer 10

extends to which an attitude object is associated with conflicting feelings / conflicting evaluates responses (positive and negative)

low positive or negative = no impact on behaviour (dont care)
high positive or negative = impacts behaviour

Question 11

coherence of attitude

Answer 11

extent to which an attitude (particularly cognitive and evaluative) is internally consistent
do e like things we believe have positive consequences for us?

Question 12

what is the theory of planned behaviour?

Answer 12

behavioural beliefs = attitudes toward behaviour
normative beliefs = subjective norms
control beliefs = perceived behavioural control

all of ^^ together = intention which leads to behaviour

Question 13

attitude toward the behaviour -

Answer 13

the degree to which performance of the behaviour is positive or negatively valued

Question 14

behavioural belief

Answer 14

evaluation of the outcomes of performing the behaviour (e.g. costs or benefits of facebook?

Question 15

what did the Yale Studies show?

Answer 15

conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages.

manipulates aspects of a persuasive situation and looked at effects on attitude change in people

Question 16

1. communicator (yale)

Answer 16

message source

credibility (trust worthy)
attractiveness (looks)
likeable
powerful
similar to recipient

Question 17

2. message (yale)

Answer 17

fear = common tool

appeal to values

Question 18

3. channel (yale)

Answer 18

think about difference between TV, internet & radio

e.g photos of starving children

Question 19

4. contet (yale)

Answer 19

soft music in the background
smell of baking when buying house

attitude inoculation

Question 20

attitude inoculation

Answer 20

building up the receiver / audience resistance to a persuasive message by producing arguments for it OR to forearm against opposing messages

Question 21

5. receiver / audience factors

Answer 21

strong attitude to begin with?

individual difference with regard to some people easier to persuade than others

Question 22

what is the elaboration likeihood model?

Answer 22

two routes through which receiver may process messages content

central rout and peripheral rout

Question 23

central rout (elaboration likelihood model)

Answer 23

message recipient highly attentive and processes information through careful thought and rational thinking

Question 24

peripheral rout (elaboration likelihood model)

Answer 24

bypasses rational process and appeals to other processes such as heart or stomach

Question 25

cognitive dissonance theory

Answer 25

changes in behaviour often changes attitudes. when behaviour is inconsistent with attitude or we receive information that is inconstant with out attitude experience cognitive dissonance - lead to attitudinal change

Question 26

dissonance

Answer 26

inconsistency between cognitions result in an aversive psychological state called dissonance (i love chocolate v chocolate is damaging health)

Question 27

how to reduce dissonance?

Answer 27

1. changing one of cognitions 2. reducing the importance of one of the cognitions 3. adding additional justifying cognitions

Question 28

what does reducing dissonance do?

Answer 28

changes attitudes behaviour --> attitude

Question 29

schemas

Answer 29

our collection of terms of specific things; move away from fact and can be incorrect; how we try understand the world mental structures that organise our knowledge about the social world (about people, ourselves, social roles, specific events?

Question 30

event schemas

Answer 30

associated with particular situation, they tell us waht to expect

Question 31

person schemas

Answer 31

knowledge of structures about specific people / types of people stereotypes, implicit personality theories

Question 32

implicit personality theories

Answer 32

what characteristics go together to form a particular personality type

Question 33

self-schema

Answer 33

self-concept | future orientated schemas - what we would like to become

Question 34

prejudice

Answer 34

judging people based on stereotype requires distinction between in-groups and out-groups Jane-Elliot experiment (eye colour experiment)

Question 35

stereotype

Answer 35

characteristics attributed to people based upon their membership in groups

Question 36

social identity theory

Answer 36

social identity refers to the way that our group members affect our self-concept Deriving a sense of self or identity fro membership of a particulat group

Question 37

why does categorisation produce bias?

Answer 37

we have personal and social identities we have fundamental need to feel good about ourselves we are motivated to think our group is better than other groups so we display in-group preferential behaviour to increase the positivity of the intergroup comparison

Question 38

how do reduce bias and hostility?

Answer 38

contact between groups and finding common ground (common goals, interests)

Question 39

attributions

Answer 39

process of inferring the causes of one's own and other's mental states and behaviour attribution process is deciding if behaviour is internally or externally caused internal and external causes stable and unstable cuases

Question 40

what are attribution style

Answer 40

some of us have more of a tendency to attribute behaviours / experiences in a particular way. It is a person's habitual manner of assigning causes to behaviours or events

Question 41

fundamental attribution error (or correspondence bias)

Answer 41

tendency to attribute another person's behaviour to his r her own dispositional qualities, rather than to the situation. Development of negative stereotypes of disadvantaged groups

Question 42

Actor-observer Bias

Answer 42

tendency to attribute our own behaviour to external factors and others' behaviours to dispositional causes

Question 43

why does actor-observer bias occur?

Answer 43

posses more information about ourselves than others (distinctiveness and consistency info) in considering our own behaviour, focus is on the external environment not ourselves

Question 44

self-serving bias

Answer 44

tendency for attributes success to stable internal factors and failures to temporary external factors

Question 45

why does self-serving bias occur

Answer 45

self-presentation (make us look better than others) | enhance self-esteem (make us feel better about ourselves)