attitudes Flashcards
(27 cards)
What is an Attitude?
An attitude is the feeling attached to a schema.
An attitude is a predisposition to respond to a particular object in a positive or negative
Components of attitudes
Cognition
Evaluation
Behavioural Predisposition
Explain the Cognition component of an attitude
An attitude is based off a set of cognitions or knowledge associated with the attitude object
Explain the Evaluation component of an attitude
the emotion tied to the cognition
Explain the Behavioural component of an attitude
Is the actions that correspond with the belief/ cognition - Believing class is boring, which corresponds with the action of skipping class more often
Formation of attitudes:
Reinforcement
Classical conditioning
Observational learning
Explain Reinforcement
Instrumental conditioning
When we have direct experience with an object, it can shape our attitudes
Explain Classical
- Learnt attitudes through the process of repeated association b/w stimuli
- taking an unconditioned stimuli, and conditioning it to become a conditioned stimuli
** example of a child getting in trouble for being dirty all the time correlating dirty with negative – hears parents talking about “dirty homeless people” and that child may form a negative attitude for this group
Explain Observational
- Learnt attitudes through what you see
- Learning from seeing linkage b/w concepts
What is Cognitive Dissonance, and who created it
Is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.
-Leon Festinger (1959)
Types of Dissonance:
Post-decisional Dissonance
Counter-attitudinal Behaviour:
Explain: Post-decisional Dissonance & Counter-attitudinal Behaviour:
- Post-decisional Dissonance:
- Whenever we make a decision, there are some cognitions that are consonant with that decision and other cognitions that are dissonant with it | When you feel unconformable with your decision. - Counter-attitudinal Behaviour:
- When our behaviours contradict existing attitudes we change or adjust our attitudes to resolve dissonance.
How do you Reduce Dissonance
-Which strategies you will use depends on the salience – the path of least resistance Disregard Change/Flip Distort Add a third cognition
An example of Reducing Dissonance: You consider yourself an A student but you fail your midterm
Disregard: ignore or forget the test
Change/Flip: I don’t believe that I am an A student
Distort: “that test wasn’t a fair test”
Add a third cognition: I wasn’t feeling well that day
Cognitive Dissonance experiment:
Festinger- 1956
When Prophecy Fails
Participant observation of doomsday cult in Chicago
- Leader (Keech) communicated with ‘the Guardians”
- Guardians would save cult from global flood at 12am
- Cult members engage in dissonance reduction strategies
- “Our belief in Guardians saved world from flood”
-When the prophecy failed they were faced with cognitive dissonance- so they CHANGED the belief that their worshiping saved the world
Cognitive Dissonance experiment: Aronson and Mills (1959) Initiation
-Severe group initiations often produce greater commitment and liking toward group
Study design: People go through uncomfortable situations based and then rat how the much they like the group
3 sets of college students chosen to join a group
Initiation activity (IV)-
-Severe (reads strong sexual language)
-Mild (reads mild sexual language)
-Absent
-Severe initiation resulted in the highest rating of the group. In order to resolve the cognitive dissonance of having to sit and listen to the boring group- they CHANGED the attitude
Cognitive Dissonance experiment: Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)– Pegs
-Participants told to do boring task inserting pegs into board
-Then asked to tell another person that the task was interesting
Two conditions: you received either $1 or $20 incentive
-Then people were asked to personally rate how interesting the task was (dependent variable)
- Participants who were given $1 rated task more interesting (evidence of more dissonance) because they had to resolve the lie they told. –
They internalize the activity as not boring to match the lie they told– they had no justification for lying, to they CHANGED/FLIPPED attitude to match the lie they told.
there was less dissonance for $20 group, they lied and they don’t care because they got paid lots of money
The added cognition they had was: “I’m getting paid! Who cares!”
Balance theory
Balance theory argues that you, the person, have a desire to balance across the elements in the system.
Balance theory:
Deals with cognitive consistency: what components or elements ?
- Person (P)
- Object (O)
- Impersonal Object (I)
An example:
Im friends with Jen, Jen does not like Cass, but I do.
Show what Imbalanced looks like
Make 2 solutions
Four factors explain why the correlation b/w Attitudes and Behaviour is not stronger:
- The characteristics of the attitude
- The correspondence between attitude and behaviour
- Situational constraints on behaviour
- The activation/accessibility of the attitude
Explain characteristics of an attitude
- Degree of consistency b/w affective and cognitive components –
- The relation b/w Evaluation, cognition and behaviors.
- The stronger cognition and Eval the more likely attitude will predict behavior - The extent of which the attitude is grounded in personal experiences
- The strength of the attitude
- The attitudes stability
Explain the correspondence between attitude and behaviour
The greater the degree of correspondence– the number of elements that are the same in behaviour and attitude the better we can predict behaviour from attitude
Explain situational constraints on behaviour
Can influence behaviour due to the likelihood that other ppl will learn about the behaviour and respond negatively or positively to it
