Week 5 Social Psychology

Front 1

What is an Attitude?

Back 1

A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating aparticular entity with some degree of favour or disfavour

Front 2

What are the components of Attitudes?

Back 2

Affect - feelings and emotions

Behaviour Intent - actions, conation

Cognition - beliefs and thoughts

Front 3

How do we form attitudes (behaviour)?

Back 3

• Direct (or vicarious) experience
  
• Mere exposure effect Classical conditioning
  

► Spreading ripple effect

• Operant conditioning
• Modelling

Front 4

How do we form attitudes (cognition)(1)?

Back 4

Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1972)

• Reverses usual view of causality
• Behaviour --> attitudes, through our own enquiry
• Perceptions of behaviour lead us to infer and form attitudesconsistent with that behaviour
• “Why did I do that? Do I have this attitude towards that?

Front 5

How do we form attitudes (cognition)(2)?

Back 5

Information Integration Theory

• We use cognitive algebra to construct our attitudes
• Integrate information using several operations – adding, averaging, weighted average, multiplying, etc.
  

Front 6

How do we form attitudes (cognition)(3)?

Back 6

Cognitive consistency

• Building balanced connections between more and moreelements
• We are driven to create consistency rather than have disharmonyor dissonance (contradicting thoughts)
  

Front 7

How do we form attitudes (social learning)?

Back 7

SOCIAL LEARNING

Important sources of enduring attitudes:

• Parents
• Teachers
• Friends
• Mass media
  

Front 8

What are the four factors of attitude change?

Back 8

1. Recipient/Audience
2. Source/Communicator
3. Message
4. Channel

Front 9

Describe Recipient/Audience:

Back 9

► self-esteem: extremes are less easily persuaded

► gender & age: very mixed results, no clear

Front 10

Describe Source/Communicator:

Back 10

► credibility (Hovland & Weiss, 1951)

► attractiveness (Debono & Telesca, 1990)

► similarity (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981)

Front 11

Describe Message:

Back 11

► two-sided arguments for well-informed audiences

► fear (Janis & Feshbach, 1953)

Front 12

Describe Channel:

Back 12

- audio/visual for easy messages, written for difficult messages

Front 13

Explain Normal Decay:

Back 13

NORMAL DECAY – high credibility

• Initially persuaded by credible source, attitudes gravitate backtoward opinion held prior to receiving message over time

Front 14

Explain the Sleeper Effect:

Back 14

THE SLEEPER EFFECT – low credibility

• Discounting Initially giving message from non-credible source less credence

• DisassociationUncoupling of message content and source over time

► If we can understand the message, who said it doesn’t matter – over time, we become convinced

Front 15

How does Fear change attitudes?

Back 15

• Protection motivation theory

► fear works best if coupled with information on how to effectively respond

• The inverted U-curve between fear & attitude change
  

► as fear increases, so does attitude change, unless extreme

Front 16

Describe the Central Route of the Elaboration Model:

Back 16

Central route:

► issue is important to us

► time to think about issue

► cognitive capacity to think about issue

Front 17

Describe the Peripheral Route of the Elaboration Model:

Back 17

Peripheral route:

► issue not important to us

► limited time to think about issue

► distracted, in a good mood

Front 18

What is the Sufficiency Principe?

Back 18

SUFFICIENCY PRINCIPLE

► We have desire to feel somewhat confident about our thoughts, feelings, and actions

► When forming/changing attitudes, there is a sufficiency threshold

► The point when we feel confident that we have sufficientlyperformed the task

Front 19

How do we resist attitude change?

Back 19

• Reactance: Result of attempt to limit personal freedom
  
• Forewarning:Prior knowledge of intent
• Inoculation effect: Weak attack “builds up” defene against stronger attacks
  

Front 20

Explain Balance theory:

Back 20

BALANCE THEORY (Heider)

• People prefer attitudesthat are consistent witheach other
• P-O-X triads, balancewhen odd number ofpositive relations
  

Front 21

Describe Cognitive Dissonance:

Back 21

- Inconsistency between cognitions/behaviours results in anaversive psychological state called dissonance

- Seek to reduce this by:

► Change one of the cognitions/behaviours

► Reducing importance of one of the cognitions/behaviours

► Adding additional consonant cognitions/behaviours

Front 22

What is Low Dissonance:

Back 22

Low dissonance

• Few conflicting cognitions/behaviour
  
• Cognition of thinking task is boring conflicts with the behaviour of saying task was fun
  
• BUT... behaviour of saying task was fun could be justified becauseof the high reward associated with it
  

Front 23

What is High Dissonance:

Back 23

High dissonance

• Many conflicting cognitions/behaviour
• Cognition of thinking task is boring conflicts with the behaviour of saying task was fun
• Behaviour of saying task was fun CANNOT be easily justified by thereward associated with it because the reward was so low!

Front 24

Explain the Self Consistency Model:

Back 24

SELF CONSISTENCY MODEL

- Dissonance only occurs when a person acts in way that isdiscrepant from a positive self-concept

- Strive for consistent view of self as moral & competent

- People with high self-esteem should experience more dissonance