Chapter 7: Attitudes and Behavior Flashcards
(37 cards)
DEF What is attitude?
an evaluation of an object in a positive or negative fashion that includes 3 components
What are the three components of attitude?
- affect
- cognition
- behavior
DEF What is affect (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- ammount of pos or neg emotion associated with an object
DEF What is cognition (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- thoughts that reinforce a person’s feelings
- –knowledge or associated memories abou the object
DEF What is behavior (attitude)?
- component of attitude
- tendency to approach or avoid
How do we measure attitudes?
- accessibility
- response latency
- centrality
- implicit attitde measure
- physiological indicators
DEF What is accessibility (attitude)?
how readily and attitude comes to mind
DEF What is response latency?
- measure of attitude
- the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus
- less time = stronger attitude
DEF what is centrality (attitude)?
- measure of attitude
- how central an attitude is to one’s belief system
DEF What is implicit attitude measure?
- indirect measure
- something that is not self report
What are physiological indicators (attitude)?
increased heart rate, sweaty palms, etc.
Why are attitudes a poor predictor of behavior?
- attitudes conflict with other powerful determinants
- we introspect abou the reasons for our attitudes
- mismatch between general attitudes and specific targets
EDIE REEXAMINE #3 ABOVE
What is a stronger determinant of behavior than attitude?
prevailing social norms for apporpraite behavior
Introspection of attitudes Experiment
- participants asked to give an overall evaluation of relationship or reasons with overall evaluation
- those who had to give reasons gave less accurate evaluations because they were almost guessing how they really felt
What are differences in general attitude and specific targets?
- Highly specific attitudes may predict specific behavior
- Highly general attitudes may predict general behavior
DEF What are cognitive consistency theories?
Tendency to rationalize and justify our behavior to minimize inconsistences between attitudes and actions
(predicting attitudes form behavior)
DEF What is cognitive dissonance theory?
Inconsistency between a person’s thoughts, sentiments, and actions creates an aversive emotional state (dissoance) that leads to effects to restore consistency
- changing our attitudes to maintain consistency
What are three applications of cognitive dissonance theory?
- hard decisions create some dissonance
- effort justification
- induced (forced) compliance
Hard Decisions and Dissonance Experiment
- participants asked to rate their chances before or after placing their bet
- those rating before said ‘fair’
- those rating after said ‘good’ or ‘excellent’
- irrevocable decision caused them to reevaluate their choice as more favorable and find fault in other choices in order to eliminate dissonance
What is effort justification?
reduce dissonance by justifying the time, effort, or money devoted to something that turned out to be dissapointing
Effort Justification Experiment
- participants underwent a mild or servere test to participate in discussion
- discussion was horrible
- those who underwent mild test rated discussion lower
- those who underwent severe test rated discussion higher to justify their efforts
What is induced (forced) compliance?
subtely compelling people to behave in a manner that is inconsisten with their beliegs, attitudes, or values in order to elicit dissonance and therefore a change in their original attitudes and values
Induced Compliance Experiment (boring task and money)
- participants performed a boring task
- asked to lie and say it was exciting (given $1 or $20)
- $20 was justification to lie, rate experiment low
- $1 was not justification to lie, so they rate experiment higher to accomodate for dissonance
When does inconsistency produce dissonance?
if it challenges our core concept of self
(1) behavior was freely chosen
(2) behavior wasn’t sufficiently justified
(3) behavior had negative consequences
(4) negative consequences were foreseeable
