Social Psychology Terms PDF

Asch’s Configural Traits: The idea that central traits play a disproportionate role in configuring the final impression; Understanding things as a whole rather than as individual parts. Warm/cold is a central trait dimension that has more influence on impression formation than polite/bl...

Asch’s Configural Traits: The idea that central traits play a disproportionate role in configuring the final impression; Understanding things as a whole rather than as individual parts. Warm/cold is a central trait dimension that has more influence on impression formation than polite/blunt (a peripheral trait) There is a gestalt view where impressions can be formed as integrated wholes by taking in central cues Central Traits: Important for the final impression Peripheral Traits: have less influence on the final impression Implicit Personality Theories: Our own beliefs about how different characteristics combine to form certain personality types (e.g. friendly people who talk fast are seen as sly) Primacy / Recency Effects: Being the first or last person means you are remembered better; you can apply this effect to make a good impression by being the first or last person to interact w/ them Positive / Negative Information: Positive information are generally forgotten more often; people usually remember negative things better than the positive; People typically assume the positive in people, but once one negative thing happens, it is much more difficult to go back to being positive Cognitive Algebra: using summation, average, and weighted average to combine different traits to create an overall impression of a person Summation: Traits are given values, and we add up all these values (ex: friendliness is +2 and laziness is -1. The sum is +1.) Average: Traits are also given values and we add them all up but then average them. This means that even if we have a good trait, the positive trait can still bring the score down if it is not a high valued trait Weighted average: similar to averaging, but now each characteristic has weights; This can be useful if we have context of we are trying to measure for. Ex: maybe we want to see if someone can be a good friend, so we put more weight on traits like “friendliness” Schemas: Mental structures people use to organize their knowledge about the social world by themes or subjects; can affect what we notice or think about; used to quickly make sense of our surroundings!! Can also FILL in missing details because we’ve used the information for years now Self Schemas: Information about YOURSELF based on past experiences! This influences how we feel about ourselves! Forms a concept of WHO WE ARE. Schematic traits: Beliefs that are organized around specific traits or features that we think of as most central to our image Role Schemas: Expected behaviors that people have of a certain role (ex: teachers, daughter, etc); A teacher is expected to be knowledgeable and authoritative. This helps people understand what role they have to play in the proper situation (ex: playing the role of a student in school and then the role of a daughter at home). Things run smoother if we have role expectations, and we have proper behaviors Person Schemas: Knowledge about a “type” of person, focusing on how they are likely to behave or using the schema to make quick judgments about them. Can lead to stereotyping Scripts / Event Schemas: Schemas about sequences of EVENTS in familiar situations. Ex: you go to a restaurant and you know that you have to first be brought to a table, look at what you want from the menu, order, eat, and then pay. Having an expectation of what is going to happen because you’ve had a lot of experience in the past can help things run smoothly. If you don’t know what to do, it gets awkward; ex: being a foreigner in a country you are not familiar with Prototype: abstract schemas defined by the features of an “ideal” type of person, social role, or situation; there is a literal prototype and we match things to that prototype! ABSTRACT Fuzzy Sets: NOT strict membership in a category, fuzzy boundaries around a prototype! Ex: a concert can be anything (classical, rock, opera, pop, etc) Family Resemblance: Similar characteristics but NOT completely the same Exemplar: a specific, real-world example of a category that embodies the attributes we want. Ex: An exemplar of an American can be Trump or Obama Suggests that as people become more familiar with a category, they shift from prototypical to exemplar representation; suggest that people use both prototypes and exemplars to represent groups to which they belong, but only exemplars to represent outgroups. Bookkeeping: Revising a schema by slowing adding more information gained from experience Conversion: Revising a schema SUDDENLY and DRAMATICALLY after getting strong information or experience Sub-typing: Creating a subcategory of the group when encountering an EXCEPTION; ex: beehive all doctors are serious and then meeting one funny doctor and creating an exception for that doctor Social Inference: How we make judgments and impressions about the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and behaviors of others based on available info, cues, and context Regression towards the mean: An evaluation becoming less extreme as more cases are encountered; ex - you go to a restaraunt for the first time, and you think it was really good, but then you go another time and it's just moderately good, and then another and it's mid, and then blah balh it gets worse Base-rate information: How frequently an event occurs; important in making accurate judgments and decisions! Illusory Correlation: When we tend to see a correlation between 2 things when the correlation actually does NOT exist! Ex: seeing pairs of words can cause us to overestimate how often the pairs show up because we think that certain pairs are supposed to be together 1) Associative Meaning: illusory correlation where items are perceived/associated together because they “ought” to be (ex: Hat-head, Lion-tiger) 2) Paired Distinctiveness: Illusory correlation where items are perceived to belong together because they both share some unusual feature! Distinctiveness-Based Illusory Correlation: Experiment - 2 groups (Group A and B) that the participants were observing  Group B had LESS statements than Group A, so participants said Group B had more negative statements than positive statements, even though this was not true. This shows an example of Distinctiveness-Based Illusory Correlation leading individuals to falsely associate negative traits with less common groups, even if positive traits were more prevalent. This matches the distinctive illusory correlation thing because negative events are considered distinctive because they are perceived to be rarer than positive events. If the less common group is also distinctive, these things are paired together. There is also evidence for an associative-meaning basis to negative stereotyping of minority groups: people have preconceptions that negative attributes go w/ minority groups! Stereotype Formation: A study showed that people remember a strange behavior MORE if that behavior came from a rare group rather than a common one; It was also shown that people will link that unusual behavior to that entire rare group, leading to false beliefs about a group as a whole based on one instance of unusual behavior! Heuristics: Rules or principles that allow people to make social judgments rapidly and with reduced effort Representative Heuristics: a mental shortcut that people use when making judgments about the probability of an event or the category to which something belongs; ex: assume someone is more likely to be a librarian than a farmer or soldier based on their personality and characteristics, but this is not a guarantee! The probability for someone to be a certain job is still going to be the same! Availability Heuristics: Strategy for making judgments based on how easily specific kinds of information can be brought to mind Anchoring and Adjustment: it is harder for us to adjust things after we already anchored (first impression) Lecture 3: Heider’s Naive Psychology: the innate tendency for humans to explain and understand behavior of others through simple and intuitive methods. He had 3 principles: 1) We believe our behavior is always MOTIVATED and NOT RANDOM 2) We try to discover enduring properties (traits that are STABLE over time such as personalities or abilities) to keep environments controlled 3) Internal vs External Attribution Jones and Davis’s Theory of Correspondent Inference: Explains how people infer that a person’s behavior is due to their PERSONALITY and NOT to external factors How do we figure this out?: 1) Freely chosen behavior; intending to choose to do something based on own free will 2) Non-common effects: If doing something makes you happy and then another thing makes you sad, then we can better understand more about what you enjoy by seeing which you choose. If one thing makes you feel the same as the other, then there is nothing to really observe. 3) Socially undesirable behaviors 4) Hedonic Relevance: Things that can benefit or harm you 5) Personalism: directly INTENDED to benefit or harm you a) Personalism is when the actor has an actual intention to harm or benefit the perceiver (you), but hedonic relevance is only when the OUTCOME of the actor’s behavior unknowingly affects you Harold Kelley’s Covariation Model: Used to figure out WHAT is responsible for a person’s behavior? Could it be THE PERSON THEMSELVES, THE OBJECT THEY ARE DOING THE ACTION TO, OR THE SITUATION? Consensus - do other people also do it? ○ Yes -> high ○ No -> low Distinctiveness - does the actor also behave the same way towards other things? ○ Yes -> low ○ No -> high Consistency - does the actor always behave the same way in different situations? ○ Yes -> high ○ No -> low This model is difficult because we would need to have MULTIPLE observations of a person’s behavior, but we are able to use assumptions when looking at only a single observation! Causal schema - beliefs acquired from experience that help us understand how certain causes can produce a certain effect Can check if the environment inhibits or facilitates the behavior, we can tell if it is due to the person’s disposition or due to the environment Augmentation Principle (INTERNAL REASONS!) When there are strong external factors that could have influenced the behavior, so they would attribute their behavior to internal dispositions if they still acted against all odds Discounting Principle (EXTERNAL REASONS!) When someone does a behavior due to the SITUATION, so it is assumed to NOT be due to their internal dispositions! Over-justification: When an individual's intrinsic motivation to engage in a behavior diminishes when external rewards are introduced, leading to a reliance on extrinsic motivators! This occurs when external rewards (prizes, praise, money, etc) are provided for an activity that was initially intrinsically motivating! (ex: the young children no longer enjoy playing with magic markers because they got a reward for it) Intrinsic Motivation: Doing something because you actually enjoy doing it, not because you get an external reward for doing it. Weiner’s Attribution Theory: focuses on how individuals attribute causes to their own behavior and the behavior of others Locus of Control - is the performance caused by the actor or the situation? ○ Internal VS External Stability - Is the internal or external cause stable or unstable? ○ Stable vs Unstable Controllability - Is the task performance under the actor’s control? ○ Controllable vs Uncontrollable Studies found that Caucasians took greater personal credit for success and attributed failure to luck, but Asians assumed more personal responsibility for failure and attributed success to luck. Ex: May believe that failure in an examination might be attributed to "unusual hindrance from others" if the student was intelligent (internal trait, failure is due to external factors) and was disturbed by a nearby student sneezing from hay fever (unstable and controllable  because in future exams the sneezing student might not be present, or the intelligent student could have sat away from the sneezing student) SKIPPED IMPLICATIONS! GO BACK!! Correspondence Bias: the tendency for people to draw correspondence dispositional inferences from behavior! Fundamental Attribution Error: Bias in affirmation of another person’s behaviors more to their internal factors while ignoring the possible situational or external factors Focus of Attention: actor’s behaviors attract more attention than the background; the actor’s behaviors are disproportionately salient and overrepresented Differential Forgetting: People forget the situational cause over readily than dispositional causes; this can produce ad dispositional shift over time Linguistic Factors: English language is easier to describe an action and the actor on the same terms but more difficult to describe a situation ○ Ex: A greedy person but not a greedy situation; an honest person but not an honest situation  Cultural and Developmental Factors: in the West, young children explain action in concrete situation terms and then learn to make dispositional attributions only in late adulthood; Hindu Indian children do not drift towards dispositional explanations at all. These factors could reflect the idea of the differences between the conceptions of SELF in the West (Independence) and the Non-West (Interdependence) Actor-Observer Bias: The tendency for people to attribute other’s behaviors to their internal dispositions but YOUR own behaviors as external/situational! Ex: someone snaps at someone and you assume that is just personality (internal), but when YOU snap at someone, you may say that it was because of stress (external) False Consensus Effect: The tendency for us to think that OUR behavior is more typical than it actually is. Reasons: we usually seek out others that are similar to us, our opinions seem more salient, we are motivated to claim that our opinions and actions are validated to create a stable world Ultimate fundamental attribution behavior: The tendency to attribute bad outgroup behavior and good ingroup behavior so that we can preserve our unfavorable outgroup image (can be stereotyping?) Intergroup attribution: Individuals as group members make attributions for ingroup and outgroup members! Ingroup - Good -> internal, Bad -> external; Outgroup - Good -> external, Bad -> internal Ex: Our team won because we are skilled, their team lost because they're bad. Our team lost because we were unlucky, their team won because they were lucky Ethnocentrism: belief that one cultural group is better than the others and judge other cultures based on the standard/values of our own culture Group Differences in Attribution: Psychopathology differences: Majority of people with mental illnesses have less self-serving bais; people with depression have the LEAST; significantly less bias than those without psychopathology Cultural differences: Asian samples displayed significantly smaller bias than US or Western samples! Regarding rumination (dwelling on the past) - European Americans made more self-doubt attribution than East Asian descent Americans Religious differences: Protestants vs Catholics Protestants believe in a soul, and that belief in the soul promotes a tendency to attribute behavior to dispositions, not situations ○ Soul is commonly emphasized, and the Protestants believe that if their soul would be saved or damned would drive differences in attributions Results: protestants would endorse internal attributions more than Catholics would, and there is no such difference in external attributions Lecture 4 Personal Identity vs Social Identity Personal Identity: defines self in terms of unique personal attributes or unique interpersonal relationships; about the actual PERSONAL self Social Identity: self-concept that comes from our membership of social groups Collective Self: social identity + identity attributes; “I am in CUHK basketball team” Individual Self: personal identity + identity attributes: “I am good at basketball, I am Mary Chan” Collective Relational Self: social identity + relationship attributes; “I am good friends with CUHK basketball team members” Individual Relational Self: personal identity + relationship attributes; “I am a good friend with Jenny (the CUHK basketball coach)” Person-based social identity: how you see yourself as part of a group Rational social identities: how you see yourself as a friend, family, or partner Group-based social identities: putting yourself as a member of a group Collective identities: having a collective ideology and keeping up a certain group image Self-Categorization: categorizing ourselves into a group Comparative/Structural Fit: People within the category are very similar and people in different categories are very different Normative Fit: Do YOUR attributions fit the group’s norms? ○ Ex - Do you belong in the group of “women athletes”? Accessibility: How quickly can someone identify with a social group? Self Complexity High Self Complexity: Having many self-images and multiple roles (ex - being a badminton player, a student, a son) Low Self Complexity: People thinking they only have one role, and if they fail that role, they feel they have nothing left in life (ex - only one role as a student, if they fail a test, they might commit suicide) Buffering Effect: Having high self-complexity can buffer the impact of negative events; if something bad happens, their entire world wouldn’t crash and burn Self-Esteem: an individual’s positive or negative feelings of personal value or self-worth (Rosenberg’s Global Self-Esteem scale) Self-Efficacy: The feeling that one is competent and effective, being a productive and capable person (different from self-esteem) High self-efficacy: can handle complex problems, think quickly, formulate ideas clearly, am quick to understand things Low self-efficacy: never challenge things, undertake few things on my own, let others determine my choices) High self efficacy can lead to higher self esteem Self-Discrepancy Theory: Higgins's theory about the consequences of making actual – idea and actual – 'ought' self-comparisons Actual self: who I think I am Ideal self: who I would really like to be Ought self: who I should be A large actual-ideal discrepancy will lead to lower self-esteem and more negative emotions (disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc) because you have a high expectation for yourself, and feel more disappointed if you are not actually that expectation. Ought > Actual: Agitation, scared and frightened; your actual self is less than your worst self (“I couldn’t even pass and that’s all I needed”) Ideal > Actual: Dejection, disappointed, gloomy, upset they could not reach their goal Ideal < Own: Cheerfulness, joyful; they are better than their ideal self Ought < Own: Quiescence, peaceful, steady; they are better than their minimum standard but not the best Regulatory Focus: Self-regulation + self-discrepancy theory; two separate self-regulatory systems -> Promotion and Prevention; The theory that individuals have different motivational orientations based on promotion (seeking gains) or prevention (avoiding losses). Promotion Focus: Focusing on achieving one’s ideal self; trying to improve and finding new challenges to reach their best self; approach strategy (purposely seeking out ways to improve or for new challenges) Prevention Focus: Focusing on just fulfilling their ought self; avoidance / vigilant strategy (avoid failures and new situations; not taking risks) Self-Motives: people have a preference for what they want to know about themselves; there are 3 classes of motives that lead to the search of self-knowledge: self-enhancement, self-verification, self-assessment 1) Self-Enhancement: motivation to develop and promote a favorable image of ourselves; emphasizing the POSITIVE rather than the negatives 2) Self-Verification: Searching for info to verify and confirm what we know about ourselves 3) Self-Assessment: The motivation to seek out NEW info about ourselves to figure out what sort of person we are! Central Traits: The core qualities that form the foundation of a person's personality Peripheral Traits: Less fundamental traits, more influenced by the situation Forming Self-Image Self-Perception Theory: We observe our own behaviors to figure out who we are Over-Justification: Giving a reward to an individual for engaging in a behavior which that person finds enjoyable can reduce the individual’s interest in the activity Social Comparison Theory: Comparing ourselves with other people to see if we are good or not; we typically compare to people that we know are slightly worse than us, so we can feel better about ourselves Counter-Factual Thinking: People are more affected by failures if they can easily conjure up a greater or lesser outcome that “almost happened”; ex - missing the plane by 5 minutes vs missing the plane for 30 minutes Social-Evaluation Maintenance Model: When people are forced to make comparisons to our upward competition, they try to deny similarity to the target; Ex - brown medalists expressed more satisfaction than silver medalists Impression Management: People's use of various strategies to get other people to view them in a positive light. Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRGing): linking yourself with desirable people or groups and thus improving other’s impressions of you; Ex - we share the glory in China’s victories and claim we are “part of China” so we can also share their victories Self-Handicapping: Publicly creating obstacles and excuses for ourselves, so that if we do poorly on a task, we already have an excuse Self-Monitoring: Carefully controlling how we present ourselves; regulating ourselves on the situation for the sake of desired public appearances; being highly responsive to social and interpersonal cues so we do the right things (changing yourself to respond to the situation properly!) Studies showed that people who date one partner have longer relationships if they have low self-monitoring People who date a lot of people have more partners if they have high self-monitoring Lecture 5 Attitude: a psychological tendency (internal) that is expressed by evaluating something w/ some degree of favor or disfavor; the general feeling of something Tripartite Classification of Attitude: Affective (emotions), Behavioral (actions, behaviors), Cognitive (thoughts) Measurements of Attitude: Self-Report Measures - Not the best measurement because they may not be honest, they may be biased, or they my want to be socially desirable ○ Likert Scale: Rating how much they agree or disagree with a statement ○ Semantic differential scale: 7-point scale with bipolar (opposite) adjectives, and the participant has to rate say what part of the scale they are on (ex: Cowardly VS Brave) (3 important dimensions: evaluative, strength, and activity factors) Physiological Measures - Measuring literal physiological changes in the body ○ Galvanic skin response (GSR): a physiological test that measures the skin conductivity through electrodes; because arousal causes sweating, we can use this method to measure the intensity of an attitude. However, it can ONLY measure the INTENSITY and not the direction of the attitude, so we can tell how strongly someone either likes popcorn or dislikes it. ○ Facial Electromyogram (EMG): Measuring the tiny muscle changes in the face via electrodes; tiny muscles can contract when a person feels an emotion and shows even the slightest facial expressions Duchenne Smile Non-Duchenne involves only - zygomatic major muscle which raises the corners of the mouth  Duchenne smile involves contraction of both zygomatic major muscle and orbicularis oculi muscle (raises the cheeks and forms crow’s feet around the eyes) -> basically when ur eyes squint Unobtrusive Measures: Observational approaches that do not intrude on the behavior being studied nor cause people to behave unnaturally ○ Ex: counting the number of beer bottles in the trash can to see how much beer they’ve drank ○ Not very good measure, better to be paired with self reports Obtrusive Measures ○ Bogus pipeline technique People are told that they are connected to a lie detector and are told that it measures both the strength and direction of emotional responses, thus revealing their true attitudes; implying that there is no point in lying Measuring Sensitive Issues Randomized Response Technique ○ Protects the confidentiality of the people who answer ○ Ex: How many unwedded children in mainland? Number of taxi-rides in the last seven days? ○ 10 film bottles, 4 capped, 6 without caps Unmatched Count Technique ○ Involves random assigning of individuals into two groups (control and treatment) ○ Both get a list of statements, but the treatment group has one sensitive statement (that people wouldn’t want to answer) ○ They are told to say how many statements they agree with ○ To know how many people chose the sensitive option, they found the difference in means between the two groups (mean of treatment group - mean of control group) Persuasion Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): the likelihood that a person will elaborate on processing issue-relevant arguments in the message Central processing: Really looking at the content in detail ○ If the recipient is MOTIVATED and has the ABILITY to process the message, then: If their argument is strong, recipient will be persuaded If the argument is weak, the recipient will not be persuaded and can experience a boomerang effect ○ If the recipient is MOTIVATED and has the ABILITY to think about the issue, then If the message is pro-attitudinal, recipient will be persuaded If the message is counter-attitudinal, recipient will not be persuaded and can experience a boomerang effect ○ Must ask, do they have the motivation and ability to process the contents of the message?  Peripheral processing: Just looking at the presentation, not the content ○ If they have no motivation to process it, they would look at the peripheral route ○ Looking at everything other than the message (who is delivering the message, how it is presented, attractiveness, etc) Chaiken’s Heuristic-Systematic Model: How do we seek validity in statements? Systematic Processing: Careful, thoughtful analysis of the information Heuristics Processing: Deciding something based on heuristics which simplify processes by providing assumptions of rules to make quick judgments (ex - “The majority is usually correct” “statistics don’t lie”) What processing route should we use? ○ Principles of Efficiency: Use the most efficient processing mode (would default to be heuristic processing since it’s faster!) ○ Principles of Sufficiency: Need to be sufficiently confident about the validity of the resulting attitude ○ Efficiency + Sufficiency = Confidence 1) Begin with heuristics processing first 2) If heuristic processing alone generates enough confidence, systematic processing is not necessary! 3) But if heuristic processing alone does NOT generate enough confidence, then we use systematic processing ○ Under time pressure, we use heuristic processing ○ People who know the attitude object well may favor systematic processing ELM (Elaboration Likelihood Model) vs HSM (Heuristic-systematic model) ELM can only use EITHER central OR peripheral processing, NOT BOTH! HSM can use BOTH heuristic and systematic In ELM, content means NOTHING for peripheral processing, but in HSM, message content is relevant for both heuristic processing and systematic processing Hovland’s Paradigm of Attitude Change - how are attitudes changed by persuasion? Who? - Source ○ Credibility - are they trustworthy? What is their expertise? ○ Attractiveness ○ Single vs Multiple sources Multiple sources can be more effective when the arguments are strong and they have different arguments (?) What? - Message ○ Drawing conclusion ○ One-sided vs two-sided Two-sided argument is best if the target is knowledgable; better to be honest and say the goods and bads ○ Fear arousal Interacts w/ chronic fear arousal Ex: telling people that cigarettes can cause strokes and death by clogging the arteries in the brain  Scare people How? - Channel (Situation) ○ Distraction Can help stop you from thinking about a weak argument Interferes with the comprehension of strong arguments ○ Eavesdropping / overhearing If someone eavesdrop on you and then says the same thing that you are struggling with, you are more likely to believe them or something To Whom? - Target ○ Intelligence For messages lacking supportive arguments, high intelligence people were less persuaded than low intelligence people People w/ high intelligence retain more information ○ Self-esteem People with low-esteem are too distracted and withdrawn to receive the message; less likely to even listen to the argument People with high-esteem are also less likely to change because they are very confident in their own opinions The graph is an inverted U shape. The people most likely to accept the argument are those with medium self-esteem TLDR: Low self-esteem = little reception; high self-esteem = little yielding Cognitive Dissonance Theory: two cognitions or cognition and behavior are incongruent, not aligning Can lead to discomfort or dissonance They want to resolve this dissonance by modifying one of the cognitions or behavior, but behaviors cannot be undone, so they change the cognitions instead Self-Perception Theory (again): inferring our attitudes by looking at our own behaviors Is the only thing that can explain the over-justification effect Level of specificity between attitudes and behaviors: To predict a specific behavior, we have to ask for the specific attitude Theory of Reasoned Action: Aims to predict and explain human behavior based on individuals' attitudes and subjective norms Attitudes towards behavior: What YOU think about the behavior Subjective norm: What OTHER people think about a behavior Theory of Planned Behavior: For volitional behaviors that are DIFFICULT to actually do (ex: losing weight, quit drinking, etc); Perceived behavioral control = are they able to do it? Personal Constructs: PERSONAL ways that we characterize people; we decide which are their most important traits Stereotypes: impressions of people are strongly influenced by widely shared assumptions about personalities, attitudes, and behaviors of certain people Social Judgeability: figuring out if we are socially allowed to judge them Content-free schemas: Basically unspoken rules on how to behave? If you like Harry and Harry hates Leo, then you also would dislike Leo Attention is influenced by salience, vividness, and accessibility People can be influenced by extreme examples and assume that example is applicable to the entire group! Ex: islamists who promote terrorism is an atypical group of muslims behaving in an EXTREME manner, but people begin to believe that ALL muslims in the world are bad Implied Presence: When our behaviors are affected by an "invisible audience", even though no one is around. Ex - Even though no one is watching, we still wouldn't litter Accentuation Principle: The tendency to exaggerate differences between similar things. Affect-Infusion Model: Emotions impacting and influencing cognitive processes and judgments. Behaviorism: A psychological theory that focuses on observable behaviors rather than internal mental processes. Cognitive Miser: The idea that individuals try to conserve mental energy by taking mental shortcuts; taking many cognitive shortcuts to process limited information; no motivation? Gestalt Psychology: Emphasizing how people perceive wholes rather than individual parts. Motivated Tactician: Being both motivated and strategic in choosing cognitive strategies; a fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies available and chooses among them based on goals, motives, and needs (they are motivated!) Normative Models: Models that define how people should ideally make decisions. Salience: Prominence or noticeable aspects of a stimulus. Belief in a Just World: The belief that individuals get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Conspiracy Theory: An explanation that attributes events to a secret and often sinister plot by a group of people. Discount: Reducing the importance of a particular piece of information when making attributions. Essentialism: The belief that categories have an underlying true nature or essence. Self-affirmation theory People affirm positive aspects for themselves You usually do self affirmations when your self esteem was damaged People reduce the impact of a threat to their self-esteem and self-concept by affirming their competence in some other area ○ Ex: someone tells you you’re a terrible cook, so you say yea but I’m a great dancer Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and individuality in group settings, leading to reduced personal responsibility. Self-Affirmation Theory: Maintaining self-integrity by focusing on personal values and strengths. Terror Management Theory: How individuals cope with the fear of mortality through cultural beliefs and self-esteem maintenance. Chapter 4 Self-Perception Theory ○ We observe our own behaviors to figure out who we are ○ We don’t just observe people’s behaviors and attribute their internal dispositions (personalities), but we also observe our own behaviors to figure out OURSELVES ○ Ex: I know I enjoy eating curry because I eat curry of my own free will, and not everyone likes curry ○ Imagery also has an effect on self-conception Overjustification effect ○ We assume that we actually like doing an action because there are no other external factors that are pushing us to do it Ex: You aren’t sure if you REALLY truly like to use crayons because everytime you used crayons, you got a reward at the end. This study was done with actual children who were observed to draw It was shown that if you add an external reward, it may backfire by reducing motivation and enjoyment of a task Our intrinsic joy is put at risk when we get a reward at the end! How do we do a task we hate doing? ○ We can focus more on our performance than the lame task itself Ex: when we exercise alone, it is boring, but we can set targets and focus on those targets instead; We can check how may many calories burned or our heart rate, etc! Social Comparison and Self-Knowledge We can learn about ourselves by comparing ourselves to other people “Spyglass self” ○ We learn new qualities about ourselves by watching how others who are similar to us behave! ○ People would typically have a desire to copy characteristics they admire or want to possess ○ Copying people we think are similar or influential to us The social comparison theory - describes how people learn about themselves through comparisons w others When we compare with others for performance, we typically compare with people who are slightly worse than us ○ But sometimes we are forced to compare ourselves with upward competition Ex: younger siblings have no other options but to compare themselves to their more competent older brothers and sisters To avoid this: we go through the self-evaluation maintenance model When people are forced to make comparisons to our upward competition, they try to deny similarity to the target  ○ Silver medalists feel worse than bronze medalists because they’re so close to getting gold Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRGing) ○ When you link with DESIRABLE people or groups and share in the glory that realistically isn’t even yours at all ○ Ex: we share the glory in China’s victories and claim we are “part of China” so we can also share their victories People will do everything to think that they are better than others Many Selves, Multiple Identities Our "self" is not just a singular undifferentiated self; we have varied identities! We play different roles for different situations ○ Being a daughter, being a friend, being a student, being a team player People have more complex social identities if they have discrete social identities that do not overlap or share many attributes with other social identities Types of Self and Identity 2 broad classes of identity that shape how we see ourselves: ○ 1) Social identity - Based on the GROUPS WE BELONG TO; define who are are in terms of membership to various social groups ○ 2) Personal identity - Focused on our individual traits and unique personal relationships; how we see OURSELVES based on our personal characteristics Another person said there were 3 forms of self ○ 1) Individual self - based on personal traits that differentiate us from others ○ 2) Relational self - based on connections and roles we have with significant others ○ 3) Collective self - based on group memberships that differentiates “us” from “them” Recently has been proposed to have FOUR types of identity ○ 1) Person-based social identities - When you see yourself as part of a group and take on some of the characteristics of that group as part of you who are ○ 2) Relational social identities - How you see yourself in relation to SPECIFIC people you know; your identity can change depending on who you're with ○ 3) Group-based social identities - You think of yourself as part of another group; differentiate "us" and "them"  ○ 4) Collective identities - Where everyone works together to show what the group is all about and how others see them Contextual Sensitivity of Self and Identity When researchers change the situations people are in, they act and talk about themselves differently When they are divided into groups, they start to act differently based on whether they are seen as individuals or as part of a group; they may show favoritism towards their group very quickly and almost unconsciously. This is linked to the brain's amygdala for important emotions. Some think that the self is completely situation-dependent Social Identity Theory Deciding which group you are in and seeing yourself as part of that group; how we see ourselves in certain groups and then how we see ourselves in other groups Self-categorization theory How the processes of categorizing someone as a group member produces social identity and group and behaviors w/ other groups Personal identity and social identity 1) Social identity - defines the self in terms of group membrships (ex: ethnicity) 2) Personal identity - defines the self in terms of unique personal relationships (relationship w/ significant other) or personality Identities in groups can be very important to people somehow Processes of social identity salience Prototype - a literal prototype of model of something ○ We can use this to “try out” group prototypes (categories of things) Meta-contrast principle - the prototype of a group is that position within the group that has the largest ratio of “differences to ingroup positions” to “differences to outgroup positions” Structural fits - when a categorization fits for someone Normative fits - when it makes sense for a person to act a certain way when they are in the group If it fits structurally and normatively, it becomes psychologically salient and more likely to be remembered to be in that group Consequence of Social Identity Salience When a categorization becomes psychologically salient, people’s perception of themselves and others become depersonalized (they no longer feel like a unique multi-dimensional person but are more of a model of a categorical prototype) The evaluative implications of a specific group (status, prestige, etc) can reflect the esteem in which others hold us and have a very big impact on our own esteem People usually strive to protect or enhance the prestige and esteem of their existing group ○ If you feel that a group is super undesirable and unfavorable, you might just leave the group entirely and try to join a more prestigious group, but this is difficult Ex: being a minority in America can be difficult for you to “pass” as American because of their subtle clues in accent and stuff If “passing” is not possible, they may focus on accepting their own group and trying to make it more prestigious If people in a “low status” group think it is unfair that they are in a low status, they might compete directly with other groups to gain the upper hand ○ Can lead to terrorism and war Self Motives People are curious and have a drive to discover who they are, and there are many personality tests and stuff to do so Everyone has a preference for what they would like to know Self-assessment - Checking to see what we are really like (the truth), regardless of how unfavorable or disappointing the truth may be Self-verification - Looking for information that matches how we already see ourselves (validating our beliefs about ourselves) ○ People who have a negative self-image of themselves will actually seek out negative information to confirm the worst Self-enhancement - Searching for information that makes us seem better than we actually are ○ Promote self-positivity -> self-protection that fends off self-negativity  ○ Self-affirmation theory People affirm positive aspects for themselves You usually do self affirmations when your self esteem was damaged People reduce the impact of a threat to their self-esteem and self-concept by affirming their competence in some other area ○ Ex: someone tells you you’re a terrible cook, so you say yea but I’m a great dancer Self-Esteem Why do people really want to think well of themselves? People see themselves through “rose-tinted spectacles” Self-enhancing triad ○ People overestimate their good points ○ People overestimate their control over events ○ People are unrealistically optimistic Above-average effect / better-than-average effect ○ The idea that people tend to consider themselves better than the average ○ A study showed that people who sucked thought they were really good which is really embarassing for them tbh Having a positive bias is an evolutionary behavior probably because if we didn’t do this, we’d fall to depression and die Although feeling good about ourselves is important, it has to be balanced ○ People can typically stop their delusions when important decisions have to be made Self-Esteem and Social Identity Studies have shown that people of ethnic minorities often report perceptions of lowered self-esteem Consistently in studies, children from non-white minorities showed clear outgroup preference and wished they were white themselves Individual Differences One view claims that low self-esteem is responsible for a range of personal and social problems like crime, drug abuse, underachievement, delinquency, etc ○ But there is little evidence about this ○ They actually found the opposite: violence was often associated w/ high self-esteem, especially when people threaten their high self-esteem These people may feel “special” and superior to others -> narcissistic A study showed that self-esteem didn’t predict aggression, but narcissism did. Individual self-esteem tends to vary between moderate and very high, not between low and high ○ Most people feel relatively positive about themselves  There are 2 main underlying differences associated w/ trait self-esteem: ○ 1) Self-concept confusion: high self-esteem people have a more thorough, consistent and stable stock of self-knowledge than low self-esteem people ○ 2) Motivational orientation: high self-esteem people have a self-enhancing orientation in which they capitalize on their positive features and pursue success, but low self-esteem people have a self-protective orientation in which they try to remedy their shortcomings and avoid failures and setbacks Looking for Self-esteem Rather than self-esteem feeling happiness, feeling happy may inflate self-esteem We may pursue self-esteem so we can overcome the fear of death ○ Terror Management Theory The inevitability of death is the most fundamental threat that people face, and this idea is a basic human motivation to reduce the terror of death Through high self-esteem, people can escape from the anxiety of inevitable death It can make people feel good about themselves; we feel immortal and excited about life A study: Two groups; one group had self-esteem increase + positivity, and the other group did not. They were shown a video of death, and those who had higher self-esteem had lower physiological arousal and less anxiety We may pursue self-esteem as an internal monitor of social acceptance and belonging ○ Acts as a sociometer ○ Self-esteem is strongly correlated with reduced anxiety over social reaction and exclusion ○ Social inclusion = higher self-esteem ○ Social exclusion = made self-esteem worse Self-Presentation and Impression Management Impression Management (like theatre!) ○ People’s use of strategies to get other people to view them in a positive light Self-monitoring - people that monitor themselves and shape their behavior due to situation demands Self-presentation ○ There are two types of self-presentation: Strategic and Expressive ○ 1) Strategic: Self-promotion - trying to persuade others that you are competent Ingratiation - trying to get others to like you Intimidation - trying to get others to think you are dangerous Exemplification - trying to get others to regard you as a morally respectable individual Supplication - trying to get others to take pity on you ○ 2) Expressive: Manipulating others’ perceptions of you  We usually seek out people who we believe are likely to validate who we are Ex: delinquent behavior among boys is almost always performed publicly or in forms that can be publicly verified When people publicly perform behavior, that becomes their internalized description of themselves; it’s not enough for us to perceive us a certain way, we need social validation Cultural Differences in Self and Identity Western cultures tend to be individualistic, but other cultures tend to be collectivist Individualistic cultures -> tend to have independent self ○ Self is autonomous, separate from other people ○ Isolated and bounded self that gains meaning from separateness Collectivist cultures -> tend to have interdependent self ○ Interdependent self relies on connections and relationships with other people; expressed through roles and relationships ○ Filial piety, loyalty, dignity, etc ○ Relational self that gains meaning from its relations with others Studies Chapter 4 - Self and Identity Constantine Sedikides: Put self-assessment, self-verification, and self-enhancement against each other Used a self-reflection task where participants could ask themselves more or less diagnostic questions focusing on different aspects of themselves Tried to figure out which was the most used Found that self-enhancement was the strongest and then self-verification being second ○ We desire to think well of ourselves “Greater self-reflection on POSITIVE than on negative aspects of self, weather the attribute is central or not, indicates a drive to learn positive things about self” Study for self-esteem: Found that very low-achieving students thought they were relatively high achievers ○ People tend to overestimate their good points Chapter 5 - Attitudes Attitude - a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events, or symbols ○ Or a general feeling abt something ○ Attitude is an indispensable concept ○ People invent attitudes to explain behavior that has already occurred ○ Today, researchers view “attitude” as a psychological construct that precede behavior and guides our choices and decisions for action ○ The studies slowed down but then came back at the centre of attention in the 1980s ○ Attitudes are basic and pervasive in human life! Without attitudes, people would have difficulty in construing and reacting to events ○ Attitude remains as a key and controversial part of social psychology Attitude Structure Is attitude a unitary construct or does it have a number of different components? One component ○ Defines attitude as “the affect for or against a psychological object” and “the degree of positive or negative affect associated with some psychological object” ○ Basically: do you like the object or not? Two components ○ Allport added a second component to Thurstone’s “affect” -> the mental state of readiness ○ Mental readiness is a predisposition that influences how we decide what is good or bad ○ Consists of the mental readiness to act and guides judgemental responses Three Components ○ Cognitive - thoughts and ideas ○ Affective - a cluster of feelings (likes and dislikes) ○ Behavioral - behavioral intentions ○ Suggested the idea that attitudes are: Relatively permanent (a momentary feeling is not attitude) Limited to socially significant events or objects Generalizable Ex: if u drop a book on your toe, you may feel update or pain once, but if that experience causes u to start disliking books or libraries, then the dislike is an attitude Attitude Functions There are various kinds of attitudes, each serving a different function: ○ Knowledge ○ Instrumentality (means to a goal) ○ Ego-defense (protecting one’s self-esteem) ○ Value-expressiveness (allowing people to display values that uniquely identify and define them)  Attitudes are important because don’t have to figure out if we like something or not “from scratch”, we already have a general idea ○ Same idea as a schema or stereotype Just having an attitude is helpful because it provides some sort of orientation towards the object ○ Ex: Having a negative or fearful attitude towards snakes is useful because survival Cognitive Consistency Cognitive consistency theories - the group of attitude theories stressing that people try to maintain internal consistency, order, and agreement among their various conditions Argue that people are motivated to change one or more contradictory beliefs so that their belief system a whole is in harmony Balance Theory People prefer attitudes that are consistent with each other over those that are not P-O-X unit Person (P) tries to maintain consistency in attitudes to other people (O) and the elements of the environment (X) ○ Balanced if P likes O, O likes X, an P likes X P liking X is a positive + O disliking X is a negative - P disliking O is a negative - ○ There are 8 possible combinations of relationships between 2 people and an attitude object (4 balanced, 4 unbalanced) ○ Unbalanced if P likes O, O likes X, and P dislikes X ○ People may feel tense and want to restore balance Cognition and Evaluation Sociocognitive model - attitude is defined as “a person’s evaluation of an object of thought” An attitude object is represented in memory by: ○ An object label and the rules for applying that label ○ An evaluative summary of that object ○ A knowledge structure supporting that evaluation ○ Ex: “shark” Label - a really big fish with very sharp teeth Rules - lives in the sea and eats other fish and sometimes people Evaluative summary - is scary and best avoided while swimming Knowledge structure - a scientifically and fictionally wel-documented threat to our physical well-being We are able to distinguish between AFFECT (the emotional reaction to an attitude object) and EVALUATION (specific kinds of thought, belief, and judgement abt an object) Decision-making and attitudes Information-processing - the evaluation of information; the means by which people acquire knowledge and form and change attitudes  ○ Was shown that it was complex to get knowledge and change attitudes Information integration theory - the idea that a person’s attitude can be estimated by averaging across the positive and negative ratings of an object When we get new information, we evaluate that information and combine it into our existing information stored in memory ○ Ex: people don’t like wearing face masks, but after learning that failure to wear a face mask can put lives in danger, they may re-evaluate their attitude and behavior ○ We acquire and re-evaluate attitudes by using cognitive algebra We “mentally” average out the values attached to discrete bits of information that are collected and stored in our memory overtime Ex: you think someone is shy, energetic, and compassionate; your attitude is the overall average of the evaluations you attach to those traits Can attitudes predict behavior? Attitudes may be useful in predicting what people will do ○ If we change people’s attitudes, we can change their behavior ○ But some people argued that that isn’t the case Found that people with attitude changes for alcohol consumption didn’t find a big positive correlation Found that only 9% of the variability in behavior is accounted for by an attitude Average correlation between attitudes and behavior was only 0.15 Meta analysis of 100 attitude-behavior studies concluded that the average correlation between people’s attitudes and behaviors was 0.38 So does attitude really predict behavior? No, attitude has little predictive power, but why do people still study attitude? Eventually came with the idea that there are other variables that determine behavior from attitude ○ These conditions can promote or disrupt the correspondence between having an attitude and behaving 1) how accessible an attitude is 2) whether an attitude is expressed publicly (group) or privately (questionnaire) 3) how strongly someone identifies with a group for which the attitude is normative Beliefs, Intentions, and Behavior If you measure an attitude purely on a SINGLE unidimensional bipolar evaluative scale (good or bad), you cannot really predict how a person will later behave Better prediction depends on an account of the interaction between attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions ○ With this, we can see how strong and how valuable a person’s beliefs are ○ The strength of a belief is very important in their decision-making process  ○ Strength of Belief - range from 0-1 Value of belief - range from -2 to +2 We can use this information to predict that the man probably won’t use a condom Specific Attitudes ○ It was found that behavioral predictions can be improved if the measures of attitudes are specific rather than general ○ Attitude research suffered from trying to predict specific behaviors from general attitudes ○ Ex: it is easier to predict a behavior if we observe a student’s attitude towards a psychology exam versus the student’s attitude towards learning about psychology as a whole ○ The closer a question is to the final behavior, the more accurately a behavior can be predicted General Attitudes ○ Can sometimes predict behavior, but only if we use a multiple-act criterion ○ The idea that general attitudes predict multiple behaviors better than just predicting a specific single behavior Reasoned action ○ Theory of reasoned action - theory of the relationship between attitudes and behavior Captures beliefs, intentions, and action Subjective norm - a product of what the person thinks others believe Attitude towards behavior - a product of the person’s beliefs about the target behavior and how these beliefs are evaluated; attitude towards BEHAVIOR not object  Behavioral intention - an internal declaration to act (literally intention) Behavior - the actual action performed ○ Typically an action is performed if: The person’s attitude is favorable The social norm is also favorable Expectancies - how likely it was that the object possessed the various attributes Gave the attributes a value Expectancies + values were used to predict the participant’s feelings towards the attitude object Planned Behavior ○ Some actions are less under people’s control than others ○ Consider the role of behavioral control Perceived behavioral control is a person’s belief, based on their own past experience and present obstacles ○ Theory of Planned Behavior - Extended version of the theory of reasoned action; suggests that predicting a behavior from an attitude measure is improved if people believe they have control over that behavior ○ Habit can be a predictor of future behavior (action became relatively automatic) Do not need to use reasoned decisions Promoting Healthy Behavior ○ Theories of both reasoned action and planned behavior have been used to understand people’s attitudes towards their health and to identify obstacles that may stand in their way of achieving a healthy lifestyle ○ Protection motivation theory - adopting a healthy behavior requires cognitive balancing between the perceived threat of illness and one’s capacity to cope w the health regimen ○ Motivation towards protection results from a perceived threat and the desire to avoid potential negative outcomes ○ Healthy adults who identified strongly w an exercise-defined referent group reported higher levels of physical activity because they felt they could gain health benefits from exercise Attitude Accessibility Attitudes are represented in memory Accessible attitudes are those that can be recalled from memory more easily and can be expressed more quickly ○ Accessible attitudes exert a strong influence on behavior They are more stable, more selective in judging relevant information, and more resistant to change Fazio’s model of attitudes as an association in memory between an object and an evaluation ○ Rationale behind this is that an attitude is “handy” when it can be used instantly as it is automatically activated in memory  When we choose from several possible categories to describe an object, we are more likely to select an accessible one ○ Ex: when participants rehearsed their attitudes towards dairy products, yogurt was more likely to cue as a dairy product; but if the attitudes were towards health food, then it has become more accessible in the memory, and yogurt would cue as a health food Perceptions of stimuli will probably be biased in the direction of a person’s attitude ○ If you have an accessible attitude, it is stable and probably won’t change it can be tough to see if that thing has changed or if there's something new about it. This can make it tricky to notice if your feelings about it should be different now. Just like how you might keep loving your broken toy without realizing it's time for a new one. Accessible attitude is a cognitive node in the mind that is well connected to other cognitive modes Connectionist approach is consistent w/ ○ 1) dual-process models of attitude change ○ 2) the notion of algebraic weights placed on beliefs Attitude Strength and Direct Experience Do strong attitudes guide behavior? Strong attitudes must be highly accessible ○ Come to mind more readily and influence behavior more than weak attitudes Attitudes are evaluative associations w/ objects ○ Associations can vary in strength from “no link” to a “weak link” to a “strong link” ○ Automatic activation - attitudes that have a strong link to situational cues are more likely to come automatically to mind from memory Direct experience AND interest with an object makes the attitude more accessible and can strengthen its effect on behavior! ○ Ex: someone who has had a nuclear reactor built in their neighborhood will have a stronger attitude regarding safety than people who didn’t The more often you think about an attitude, the more likely it is to resurface and influence your behavior through easier decision-making More accessible if you have direct experience with the object ○ You’d think that someone who has been caught driving under the influence would be less likely to drink and drive in the future, but unfortunately, this is not always the case Although direct experience seems appealing as an influence on attitude accessibility, predicting the actual effectiveness is difficult. Attitude strength can fall under many constructs rather than just one (attitude alliance, ambivalence, attitude extremity, etc) Reflecting on the attitude-behavior link As attitudes are being formed, they correlate more strongly with a future behavior when: ○ The attitudes are accessible ○ The attitudes are stable over time  ○ People have had direct experiences with the attitude object ○ People frequently report their attitudes (think about it more) Moderator variables - a variable that qualifies an otherwise simple hypothesis with a view to improving its predictive power Ex: A causes B but only when C (the moderator) is present Moderators can be the situation, personality, habit, sense of control, and direct experience Situational variables A situation can cause people to act in a way that is inconsistent with their attitudes ○ This can happen most often when the attitude is WEAK ○ Social norms can affect behaviors Ex: if the norm is to dress in jeans and casual clothes, people will dress in jeans and casual clothes Norms have typically been separated from attitudes; attitudes are “internal” and private while norms are external Study: Two longitudinal questionnaire studies tested students’ intentions to take regular exercise and to protect themselves from the sun They were stronger when participants thought that the group they belonged in also took regular exercise or protected themselves from the sun! (followed the social norm) Individual Differences There are two sides of a debate: ○ 1) situational explain social behavior ○ 2) personality and individual differences explain social behavior Bem and Allen and Vaughan have shown that people who were consistent in their answers on a personality scale were more likely to be consistent in their behavior across a variety of situations than people who gave varying answers ○ Ex: a high scorer on an extraversion-introversion scale would be more likely to behave in an extroverted manner even across different social settings But those who measured in the middle would not behave consistently Also important to note that habits can affect the attitude and behavior link ○ Ex: someone who smokes as a habit may have a physiological or psychological dependency, so their behavior is less about the attitude towards cigarettes (ex: they know that smoking causes disease and death) Mood - another moderator variable that can be considered both a situational and personality variable ○ Ex: angry jurors had more irrelevant thought, detected fewer inconsistencies in the witness’s testimony, and judged the defendant more harshly Cognitive Bias - another moderator of attitude-behavior correspondence ○ Asked people what they thought would happen if one drinks alcohol along with how readily available they believed alcohol should be  Found that support for tighter control over alcohol availability stems from what people expect to happen! The greater the bias, the greater the support for alcohol restriction Self-identity - sense of who they are as defined by the roles they occupy in society ○ More focused on roles than on group membership ○ Influences people’s intentions to act ○ Ex: people are more likely to donate blood if being a blood donor was an important part of their self-identity Forming Attitudes Attitudes are learned as part of the socialization process Are developed through direct experiences or when watching other people interact Behavioral approaches From Direct Experience ○ More exposure, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning, and self-perception ○ When we are exposed to the object, we gain more attributes and details about it; this can shape our beliefs and how much we like or dislike the object (bad experiences can mean negative attitude) ○ Mere exposure effect - repeated mere exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object Ex: you listen to a song for the first time and neither strongly like nor dislike it, but as you listen more and more, your response in one direction is likely to strengthen Classical conditioning ○ Evaluative conditioning - the degree of liking for an object will change when the object is consistently paired with other stimuli that are either positive or negative Ex: we may like a candidate more due to the exposure to a parent who has been an enthusiastic support of that candidate ○ Classical conditioning Having a positive stimulus can lead to being a more persuasive message Ex: you are provided a soft drink, and the positive feelings associated w the soft drinks has become associated with persuasive messages Spreading effect - if you don’t like a person, you will start to slowly dislike the people that they are with Ex: Eva notices Peter and Paul taking with Marc, and she dislikes Marc. Peter and Paul are now less likeable to Eva Instrumental Conditioning ○ Behavior that is followed by positive consequences is reinforced and is more likely to be repeated, but behaviors that are followed by negative consequences are not ○ When parents reward or punish children, they are shaping attitudes on many issues, such as religious or political beliefs and practices Observational Learning  ○ Modelling Involves OBSERVATION -> people learn new responses, not by directly experiencing positive or negative outcomes but by observing the outcome of OTHER PEOPLE’S responses The tendency for a person to reproduce actions done by other people Cognitive Development Attitude formation can also be viewed as a cognitive process! We build connections between more and more cognitive elements As the number of related elements increases, it is more likely that a generalized concept is being formed Self-perception theory ○ We gain knowledge of ourselves only by making self-attributions; we infer our own attitudes from OUR OWN behavior ○ People gain knowledge about what kind of person they are from seeing their own behavior and wondering “Why did I do that?” ○ People may not put that much thought into forming their attitudes -> they may just choose for the most readily available cause Sources of Learning Parents and peers ○ Attitudes are quickly acquired early in life; one significant source is parents ○ Parents are involved in all kinds of learning (classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, and observational learning) ○ Some people actually adopt attitudes that are inconsistent with those of their parents, perhaps to be contrary or perhaps because they are forging a new identity with another important peer group Mass media and the Internet ○ Mass media can STRONGLY influence attitudes ○ Especially when original attitudes are not strongly held ○ Media coverage does more than reflect public opinion - it has helped shape it ○ Found that children who watched a lot of TV were twice as likely as those who watched a little to believe that sugar-coated sweets and cereals were good for them ○ People learn, fine tune, and confirm attitudes through the Internet ○ We also know that the Internet is a source of information that we use to support our own existing attitudes rather than change attitudes or for new ones Ex: liberal go to liberal websites, conservatives go to conservative websites Concepts related to attitudes Values Your specific attitudes are often framed by your wider set of values Values are rated for their importance as guiding principles in life An early measure of values focused on how important six broad values were to people: ○ 1) Theoretical - an interest in problem-solving ○ 2) Economic - an interest in economic matters, finance, and money affairs  ○ 3) Aesthetic - an interest in the arts, theatre, music, etc ○ 4) Social - a concern for one’s follows, a social welfare orientation ○ 5) Political - an interest in political structures and power arrangements ○ 6) Religious - a concern with theology, the aterlife and morals It was later suggested that values should be conceived less in terms of interests or activities but more as preferred goals ○ Terminal values (ex: equality and freedom) Ex: this value can really affect someone’s attitudes on racial issues ○ Instrumental values (ex: honesty and ambition) Values offer standards for evaluating actions, justifying opinions, planning behavior, deciding between different choices, engaging in social influence, and presenting the self to others ○ They are organized into hierarchies within themselves and these may change overtime Can values predict behavior?: ○ If the target behavior is a specific act, it is very unlikely, because a value is an even more general concept than an attitude Ideology A systematically interrelated set of beliefs whose primary function is explanation Integrated widely shared systems of beliefs Populism - an ideology that promotes messianic leadership AND explicitly focuses on how the will, aspirations and autonomy of one’s group are thwarted by the hostile actions of outsiders and outgroups who are plotting to destroy one’s way of life ○ Theories can strengthen ingroup identity and give people a powerful sense of belonging and confidence in who the are in a complex and changing world Can help maintain the status quo but also challenge it Much of our everyday thinking arises from “ideological dilemmas” ○ Ex: teachers face the dilemma of being an authority and yet encouraging equality between teacher and student People will go to great lengths to protect and promote their ideology and the group that defines it Religious ideologies are so common and strong because it can help w anxiety of the unknown ○ Can define one’s self and identity Terror management theory - people may follow an ideology as a buffer against the paralyzing terror over what happens to them when they die Social Representation - the way that people elaborate simplified and shared understandings of their world through social interaction Believe that people’s attitudes an beliefs are shaped by what other people believe and say and are shared w other members of one’s community Attitudes tend to reflect the society or group in which people live their lives Measuring attitudes (finally in lecture) Attitude scales  Do we measure attitude explicitly or implicitly? ○ Some measurements can be completely explicit: people are simply asked to agree or disagree with various statements Had to move beyond just scales that summarized scores across items ○ They had to create scales that optimized the fit between a single item and a specific behavior Expectancy-value model ○ Done by measuring both the evaluative and belief component of an attitude ○ Direct experience with an attitude object informs a person how much that object should be liked or disliked in the future Using Attitude scales today Combinations of Likert scale and semantic differential (asks for a rating on a scale composed of bipolar adjectives ex: good bad) have been used to measure complex evaluations Combining these two can help predict behaviors Physiological measures Attitudes can be measured indirectly through monitoring physiological indices They have a big advantage over self-report measures People may not realize their attitudes are being assessed and it’s also difficult to control their responses ○ Ex: polygraph / lie detector for criminal investigations Cortisol can be measured as an indicator of stress level These methods can indicate intensity, but it cannot provide information about direction ○ They can feel strongly about something, but it cannot be distinguished into which side One way to figure this out is facial expression Under the assumption that people who agreed with a speech they were listening to would display facial movements different from those who disagreed with the speech ○ They would record the movements of specific facial muscles before and during a speech We are also able to measure social neuroscience ○ Measuring the electrical activity in the brain! ○ The intensity and form of electrical activity and where it occurs in the brain should give an indication of what the attitude is ○ Relative homogeneity effect The tendency to see outgroup members as all the same and ingroup members are more differentiated Used an ERP to follow electrical activity from different stimuli and found that white people gave more attention to white faces than other racial groups Measures of Overt Behavior We can measure attitude by recording what people do Sometimes what people say they do isn’t the same as what they actually do  Unobtrusive Measures ○ Ex: Counts of empty beer and whiskey bottles in a trashcan ○ Observational approaches that do not intrude on the behavior being studied nor cause people to behave unnaturally ○ Sitting patterns You may sit closer to someone you like more You may feel nervous or awkward in sitting close to someone of an outgroup You may sit closer to each other when in fear ○ This is probably not as reliable as self-reported attitudes! You would want to use BOTH unobtrusive and self-reported measures Obtrusive Measures ○ Bogus pipeline technique Meant to convince people that they cannot hide their true attitudes People are told that they are connected to a lie detector and are told that it measures both the strength and direction of emotional responses, thus revealing their true attitudes; implying that there is no point in lying Measuring covert attitudes Kihlstrom argues that an unobtrusive method assesses an attitude that people are aware of but may not be wiling to reveal, but implicit methods assess attitudes that people may not actually be aware of themselves 3 methods to get their true attitudes: ○ 1) Detecting bias in language People are more likely to talk in abstract rather than concrete terms about undesirable characteristics of an outgroup Can measure the ratio of abstract to concrete language usage ○ 2) The priming of attitudes Priming - activation of accessible categories or schemas in memory that influence how we process new information Ex: while looking at a series of photos of black and white people, participants decided by pressing a button whether an adjective that followed very quickly after a particular image was “good” or “bad” White participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a black image Black participants were slower in rating a positive adjective as good when it followed a white image Primed vs Control groups - the primed group took longer overall to respond than the control group ○ 3) The implication association test (IAT) A reaction-time test to measure attitudes, particularly those unpopular attitudes that people might conceal Ex: American Japanese and American Korean groups  The Japanese responded more quickly when a Japanese name was paired with a pleasant word, and Koreans did the same with a Korean name Has been reliable for a long time, but now there are concerns over its validity