Unit 4, Topic 3 - Attitudes Flashcards
Implicit attitudes
Are unconscious and involuntary, and people are often unaware of them.
Explicit attitudes
Attitudes that people are conscious of holding. People actively align their behaviour with explicit attitudes.
Leon Festinger 1957
Cognitive dissonance - A mental conflict that occurs when thoughts and behaviours don’t align, or a person holds contradicting beliefs.
Henry Tajfel 1970
Social identity theory - says that a person’s sense of identity is based on their group membership. Steps in forming social identity:
- Social categorisation (tendency to categorise people into groups in order to identity and understand them)
- Social identification (people identify with and conform to a group, which becomes their in-group)
- Social comparison (people compare their in-group to various out-groups with a favourable bias to affirm their identity)
Lee Ross et al. 1977
Coined the term ‘fundamental attribution error’ and argued that it forms the conceptual bedrock for the field of social psychology.
Attributions
The process by which people explain the causes of behaviour and events.
Situational attributions
Behaviour is attributed to environmental factors external to the person involved.
Dispositional attributions
Behaviour is attributed to innate factors internal to the person involved.
Fundamental attribution error
The tendency to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors and underestimate the impact of situational factors.
Self-serving bias
The tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favourable/positive manner
Confirmation bias
The tendency to seek, remember, and favour information that supports one’s prior beliefs, and to interpret info in a way that confirms these beliefs.
Tri-component model of attitudes
Attitudes are made up of affective, behavioural, and cognitive components.
Stereotypes are a type of belief, so they fit in the cognitive component of the ABC model. Stereotypes may lead to the development of attitudes towards a particular group, but they are only one component of the attitude.
CONDENSE
Prejudice
A negative attitude towards members of a group based solely on their membership in that group.
Discrimination
A behaviour directed towards members of a group based on their membership in that group. Expresses prejudice.
Scapegoating
displacing anger or agression on a minority group that contains less power
