PSYC221 Exam 2 Study Guide Chapter 7 Attitudes Beliefs and Consistency ABCS of Attitude Affective evaluations emotions Behavior Cognition beliefs Attitude a schema about a topic Acts as an organizational function to help facilitate information processing Having an attitude increases speed ease and quality of decision making Utilitarian function help make judgments and decisions what we should pursue and what we should avoid They help us adjust to new situations They exhibit our values to communicate who we are They help us maintain good impressions on people Facilitate social interactions including social bonding and attraction Having similar attitudes helps foster intimacy and attraction Directional causality social networks influence common attitudes and common attitudes influence social networks Attitudes are for choosing where as beliefs are for explaining We may not be aware of all of our attitudes about something Dual attitudes different evaluations of the same attitude object implicit attitude and explicit attitude A person can have different competing attitudes in the conscious as opposed to the automatic parts of the mind Implicit attitudes automatic and non conscious evaluative processes Explicit attitudes controlled and conscious evaluative responses negative Stigma an attribute that is perceived by others as broadly There is a huge genetic component to attitudes Twin and adoption studies people who are genetically related are much more likely to have similar attitudes People born into the same family tend to prefer the same foods vote for the same candidate etc Attitude Formation Classical conditioning a type of learning in which through repeated pairings a neutral stimulus comes to evoke a conditioned response Ex Pavlov s dog experiment advertisements with celebrities Operant conditioning a type of learning in which people are more likely to repeat behaviors that have been rewarded and less likely to repeat behaviors that have been punished Social Observational learning people are more likely to imitate behaviors if they have seen others rewarded for performing them and less likely to imitate behaviors if they have seen others punished for performing them Ex aggression in children with the Bobo doll experiment Attitude polarization people s attitudes become more extreme as they reflect on them Social comparison theory people conform their attitudes to others attitudes Studies have shown that people who think that a beverage had alcohol in it act drunk even if they are not because that is what is expected of them Attitude Measurement Surveys efficient standardized gets information directly from participants The disadvantages are that people won t always be honest due to social desirability They are not always accurate to distinguish between the rational vs associative mind People don t always accurately remember or perceive their behavior correctly We may not have access to implicit attitudes Implicit Association Test a way to differentiate between explicit and implicit attitudes It measures attitudes and beliefs that people are either unwilling or unable to report It pairs positive and negative words with other stimuli You say if something is good or bad The relative speed of mental processing shows a closer schematic connection Should attitudes predict behavior Attitudes and behavior are not always consistent There is a gap between what people say and what they actually end up doing Studies on discrimination people openly discriminated against Asians during World War II Researchers wanted to see if restaurants and hotels that promoted discrimination in advertising would actually not let Asians in They found that when Asians showed up they let them in Studies on childbirth Many women who said that they would not have kids ended up having children anyway Attitudes towards sex 30 of people say that sex before marriage is wrong However people do it anyway The more specific you get when assessing attitudes the more prevalent they are over time and in different situations and the more they are accessible in the mind the more stronger attitudes and behavior will be linked Reasoned action model there is either too much thinking or not enough thinking when it comes to attitudes Attitude Thinking Behavior Behavior and attitudes aren t always linked because there isn t enough planning or thought process involved Ex saying you will go to the gym for new years resolution We also partially determine our attitudes based upon what other people think Ex how children perceive the way their friends and social network think about smoking pot is stronger than their own individual attitude Attitude to Behavior Process if two variables are correlated a third variable could cause both of them This shows that events and situations matter Ex you may have a certain attitude about violence but depending on the situation such as someone cutting you in a line or getting into a fight at a bar you may act differently Attitude strength the degree to which you hold that attitude Whether you really dislike or like something It is the extremity of emotion involved with that attitude and the degree of certainty vs ambivalence Stronger attitudes are more consistent and better predictors of behavior Increases with increasing amounts of information Mere exposure effect the tendency for novel stimuli to be liked more after the individual has been repeatedly exposed to them Attitude strength increases when you are told the same thing over and over again Attitude valence whether you are pro or against Direct personal experience and self interest also influence how attitudes impact behavior Ex Cornell didn t have enough housing for all students so some have to live in the gyms All students had a negative attitude about it However those who weren t affected didn t do much Only those who were affected took action Ex Drinking age raised in Michigan Those who were affected were the ones to take action Time differential impacts attitudes and behavior Ex people attitudes on voting in the election will change depending on if the election is 2 months or 2 days away Balance theory P O X Theory the idea that relationships among one person P the other person O and an attitude object X may be either balanced or unbalanced People work to make unbalanced situations balanced Cognitive dissonance theory inconsistencies produce psychological discomfort leading people to rationalize their behavior or change their attitudes
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