Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cognition PDF

😏 Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton What is Social Psychology Personality Factors personality traits motive dispositions values attitudes Competencies...

😏 Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton What is Social Psychology Personality Factors personality traits motive dispositions values attitudes Competencies Social Psychology Persuasion conformity group membership Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 1  competition culture Social psychology Examine the influence of social processes on the way people think, behave and feel. Thoughts cognition feelings emtions behaviour actions Considered indivdual behaviour but in the context of Interactions with others Influecne of others All are explained by conformity Attitudes Association between an object and evaluation either positve or negative Three main compenents of attidude Cognitive smoking is harmful to your health Emotional second hand smoking is disgusting Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 2  Behavioural i avoid being around smokers Attidudes residing within the indivudal (person factor), yet core topic in social psychology attidudes are influecned by soical others we have attidudes about different social groups can define group membership Dimensions of attidudes 1. Strength a. how durable is the attitude 2. importance a. how important is the attidude to my self concept 3. accessibility a. how readily does this attidude come to mind 4. Awareness a. how aware am i of this attidude 5. complexity a. how intricate and nuanced is the attidude 6. Ambivilance a. is the attidue enterily postive, negative or mixed 7. coherence a. are the compenets of the attidude consistent wiht one another These factors determine how much of the attidue influces behaviour and how it is susceptible to change Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 3  Implicit Attidues Attitudes can be unconscious implicit vs explicit attitudes dual process models Cognitive complexity two people may have similarily postive or negative attidues yet the complexity of their beliefs abotu the attidue object may be different Attitudinal Ambivalence “Mixed feelings” components of an attitude do not align with one another in terms of evaluation Attidude is only ambivalence if the two are balanced stronger attidues predict behaviour better than ambivalent ones but conflicting evidence Related to coherences whether an attidue is internally consistant Predicting Behaviour from attidues attidues do predict behaviour many other determinants of behaviour situational factors More likey to predict behaviour when attidude and behaviour are specific enviormental reinforcement matches the attidude important others share the same attidude Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 4  attitude is implicit unconscious attidude is strong attiduce has developed from personal experience Persuasion Deliberate attempte to change an attidue held by anohter long history of study art of rhetoric Aristotles components of persuasive speaking 1. Ethos a. appeal to authory/credibility 2. Pathos a. appeal to emotion 3. Logos a. appeal to logic Compenents of persuasion 1. Source a. Credible, attractive, likable, powerful and similar to the recipient 2. Message a. matches the recipeiants level of considerations of the topic 3. Channel a. delivery are personal i. face to face Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 5  4. Context a. messages should be delivered at the right time and right place 5. Receiver a. Persuasion is likey if the reciever has weaker attidues i. strong attidues are more resistant to change Processes of Persuasion Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) 2 routes to persuasion 1. Central route a. induce recipeints to consider the arugments carefully i. more likey when indivudals are motivated and able to consider different perspectives 1. when cognitive resources are available 2. Peripheral Route a. appeal to emotion i. more likey wehn a person is unmotivated or unable 1. when cognitive resources are not avalibale Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive Dissonance adverse, anxious state that arises form discrepancies between attitudes and behaviours key point persuasion is not the only way the attidudes can be changed Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 6  People are motiveated to reduce this dissonance when return to a state of consisteny by modifying either their attidues or behaviours Dissonance Arousing Situations Choice faced with tough choices between alternatives that seem equally desirable or undersiable Insufficient Justification doing something you dont really enjoy or are not really interusted in, perhaps as a favour for a freind or duty at work Effort justification being coreced into doing things that are very challenging or unpleseant New Information encountering new information that conflicts with their existing belifs or oaints their behaviours in a less desirable light Resolving Dissoance 1. Change the behaviour a. attidude remains unchanged 2. Modify the attidude a. weakend or made more complex 3. Replace the attidue a. new attidue more conisistant with behavioure 4. Ignore the inconsistency a. attitude and behaviour remain unchanged Self Perception Theory Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 7  Alternative Explanation findings used to support cognitive dissonance theory proposed by Daryl Bem Counter intuive proposition people infer attidues through obervations of their own behaviour Self perception rather than dissonance reduction Social Cognition Overlap between social psychology and cognitive psychology social psychology is social cognitive in nature social cognition the processes by which people make sense of themselves, others, social interactions and relaitonships Cognitive models used to understand social phenomena Schemas Mental Structures that organise our knowledge about the world organizses concpets Activation of schemas depend on avaliability applicability accessibility Priming spread of activation enhancing accessibility Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 8  Types of Schemas 1. Person Schemas a. Represents spefific types of people i. libraians, extroverts, students 2. Situation Schemas a. represent different social situations i. formal vs informal 3. Role schemas a. represent expectations for social roles i. student, professor, parent 4. Relatoinship schemas a. represent expectations about self and others in unique relationshios i. siblings and couples Power of first impression Halo effect Tenency to assume that positive qualities cluster together Schemas Oerson schemas, role schemas Sterotypes Types of person schemas Stereotyping and Prejudice Sterotypes Represent characteristics assigned to persons based on their membership in a spefific gorup Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 9  Sterotypes are necessary we do not have the cognitive resources necessary to analyse every new situation we encounter often need to make judgements about people before we have much information about then Not always negative but sterotupes are almost universally held to be a negative social phenomenon Prejuice involves judging others based on steroptypes Discrimination acting negativley toward a person on the basis of sterotypes and group membership Sterotype accuracy: Controversial Issue Sterotypes are widely held to be inaccurate however, the inaccuracy is sometimes and underlying assumption Hetrogeneity within groups mean that generlisations/huristics will be less than perfeect Aggregate sterotypes are reliably associated with mean level differences between groups Combatting sterotypes people are indivduals, not aggregations or groups sterotyping can lead to prejuice and discrimination Dimensions of sterotyping Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 10  Sterotype Content Model influental model of sterotyping concerns content rather than process Proposes all sterotypes vary on 2 major dimensions 1. Warms 2. Competence Authoritarian Personality Authoritarianism Preference for strict social order, obedience to authority and a mistrust of change and outsiders thought to make peole susceptible to the racist messages and polices of authrotiatin regiemes. Researches out that traits arisse from dominant/sadistic fathers and submisive mothers no country level differences can account for the rise of fascism in nations Implicit Racism Explicit racism Conscious use of sterotypes and the expression of prejudice Implicit racism Unconscious influence of sterotypes toward memebers of a racial group Explicit and implicit attitudes are uncorrelated Sterotype Suppression Can be suppressed when a person is motivated Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 11  but when things are back to normal, sterotypes can rebound even stronger than before. Perspective talking can reduce the strength of both implicit and explicit attidudes. Social Identity Approach Social identity theory originally formulated by Tajel and Turner 1979 later changed to Self Categirusation Theory Key idea we define outselves to some extent by the groups we belong to parts of the indivdual identities are inherently social some social identities can be less or more important Group memebers try to esbalish and maintain Positive Distinctiness Between the in group and out group in group group influences interactions with memebrs of other groups Out group defnined by the in groups to which we belong to Positive Self Concept, Method of achieveing Positve Distinctiness in group favouristm vs out group derogation Attribution in group favourtism and out group derogation can be often achieved by biased explanations for behaviour Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 12  attribution = process of inferring the cause of mentla states and behaviours of yourself and others Internal vs external attributions Making Attributions Cube Model of Casual Inference Consesus do others behave the same way Low consesus = internal attribution Distincitvness does this person act like this in other situations low distinctivness = internal attribution Consistancy does this person frequenctly act this way High consistency = Internal Attribution Bias and Erros in attribution Fundamental attribution error tendency for observers when analysing another persons behaviour, to underestimate the impact of external factors and to over estimate the impact of internal factors Self serving bias attribute our success to internal factors and failures to external factors tend to see ourselves in more a positve light than others see us Ultumate Attribution error positive in group behaviours and negative out group behavours attributed to internal causes Negative in group behaviours and out group behavours Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 13  attributed to external causes Maintains positive distinctiveness as per the social identiy perspective The Self The way we define ourselfs influences the way we percieve and interact with others therefore relevance to social psychology Self Concept schema that guides thinking and memory relevant to the self cognitive component Self Esteem inviduals evaluation of the self and how much they like and respect the self affective component Self Schemas and Motivation People need ot maintain a consistant self concept self consistancy Self schemas are resistant to change this process is called self verification Week 9: Attitudes and Social Cogniton 14