Chapter 19 Attitudes, Culture, and Human Relations

1. Chapter 19 Attitudes, Culture, and Human Relations

2. Quiz • Desensitization is the removal of inhibition, results in acting out behavior that normally would be restrained. • Mutual interdependence is a condition in which two or more persons must depend on one another to meet each persons goals. • Equal status contact is the differences in the power, prestige, or privileges of two or more persons or groups. • Symbolic prejudices are prejudices that are expressed obvious ways, such as through symbols. • Ethnocentrism is placing one’s own group or race at the center, rejecting others groups.

3. Attitudes and Beliefs • Learned tendency to respond to people, objects, or institutions in a positive or negative way • Summarize your evaluation of objects • Belief Component: What a person believes about the object of an attitude • Emotional Component: Feelings towards the object of an attitude • Action Component: One’s actions towards various people, objects, or institutions

4. Fig. 19-1, p. 633

5. Attitude Formation • Direct Contact: Personal experience with the object of the attitude • Interaction with Others: Influence of discussions with people holding a particular attitude • Child Rearing: Effects of parental values, beliefs, and practices • Group Membership: Social influences from belonging to certain groups • How did you learn in your family? • Describe your family’s ‘traditions’ regarding holidays, bedtime routines, preferred language and slang, value and use of money, views towards sex, grandparents, anything else unique or special

6. Attitude Measurement and Change • Chance Conditioning: Condition that occurs by chance or coincidence • Social Distance Scale: Scale where the degree of a person’s willingness to have contact with a member of another group is measured • Attitude Scale: Statements on a scale expressing various possible views on an issue

7. Social Distance Scale • 1. Are you willing to let Europeans live in our country? Yes    No • 2. Are you willing to let Europeans live in your village, town or city? Yes    No • 3. Are you willing to let Europeans live in your neighborhood? Yes    No • 4. Are you willing to let Europeans live next to you? Yes    No • 5. Are you willing to let your children play with European children? Yes    No • 6. Would be willing to let a child of yours marry a European? Yes    No

8. Reference Group • Any group a person identifies with and uses as a standard for social comparison • What groups are you a member of?

9. Ethologists • Study natural behavior patterns of animals • Believe that aggression is innate in all animals, including humans • Appears to be a relationship between aggression and hypoglycemia, allergy, and certain brain injuries and disorders • Certain brain areas can trigger or end aggressive behavior

10. Aggression: any action designed to harm another person Personal discomfort caused by aversive (unpleasant) stimuli can make aggressive behavior more likely. For example, studies of crime rates show that the incidence of highly aggressive behavior, such as murder, rape, and assault, rises as the air temperature goes from warm to hot to sweltering Hand slap game • Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Frustration tends to lead to aggression • Aggression Cues: Signals that are associated with aggression • Weapons Effect: Observation that weapons serve as strong cues for aggressive behavior • Social Learning Theory: Combines learning principles with cognitive processes, socialization and modeling to explain behavior • No instinctive (innate) desires for shooting guns, knife fights and so on • Aggression must be learned

11. Social Learning Theory (Bandura) and Television Continued • Disinhibition: Removal of inhibition; results in acting-out behavior that normally would be restrained • Television seems to be able to cause desensitization to violence • Desensitization: Reduced emotional sensitivity

12. . The results you see here further confirm the heat-aggression link. The graph shows that there is a strong association between the temperatures at major league baseball games and the number of batters hit by a pitch during those games.

13. Persuasion • Deliberate attempt to change attitudes or beliefs with information and arguments • Communicator: Person presenting arguments or information • Message: Content of communicator’s arguments • Audience: Person or group to whom a persuasive message is directed • When was the last time you persuaded people in your life to do something different, or you were persuaded to change. What types of arguments/ persuasive techniques were most and least effective?

14. Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger) • Contradicting or clashing thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or perceptions cause discomfort • We need to have consistency in our thoughts, perceptions, and images of ourselves • Underlies attempts to convince ourselves we did the right thing • Justification: Degree to which one’s actions are explained by rewards or other circumstances

15. Fig. 19-2, p. 636

16. Table 19-1, p. 636

17. Brainwashing • Engineered or forced attitude change requiring a captive audience • Generally three steps to brainwash someone: • Unfreezing: Loosening of former values and convictions • Change: When the brainwashed person abandons former beliefs • Refreezing: Rewarding and solidifying new attitudes and beliefs

18. Cults • Group that professes great devotion to a person or people and follows that person/people almost without question. • Leader’s personality is usually more important than the issues he/she preaches • Cult members usually victimized by the leader(s)

19. Ideal Cult “Targets” • Will try to recruit potential converts at a time of need, especially when a sense of belonging is most attractive to potential converts • Look for college students and young adults

20. Bystander Theory • The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

21. Kitty Genovese • Genovese had driven home in the early morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m. and parking about 100 feet (30 m) from her apartment's door, she was approached by Winston Moseley, a business machine operator.[2] Moseley ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" It was heard by several neighbors, but on a cold night with the windows closed, only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When one of the neighbors shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly made her way towards her own apartment around the end of the building. She was seriously injured, but now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help. • Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear and were certainly not given a high priority by the police. One witness said his father called police after the initial attack and reported that a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around."[6] • Other witnesses observed Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return ten minutes later. In his car, he changed his hat to a wide-rimmed one to shadow his face. He systematically searched the parking lot, train station, and small apartment complex, ultimately finding Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious, in a hallway at the back of the building. Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen any sign of the original attack, he proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying, he sexually assaulted her. He stole about $49 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks spanned approximately half an hour. • A few minutes after the final attack a witness, Karl Ross, called the police. Police and medical personnel arrived within minutes of Ross' call. Genovese was taken away by ambulance and died en route to the hospital. Later investigation by police and prosecutors revealed that approximately a dozen (but almost certainly not the 38 cited in the Times article) individuals nearby had heard or observed portions of the attack, though none could have seen or been aware of the entire incident.[7] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware she was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide was in progress; some thought that what they saw or heard was a lovers' quarrel or a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar outside when Moseley first approached Genovese.

22. Prejudice • Negative emotional attitude held toward members of a specific social group • Racism: Racial prejudice that can be found in institutions (schools, etc.) and is enforced by existing social power structure • Sexism: Prejudice against men OR women, based solely on gender • Ageism: Prejudice based on age; somewhat common in the USA

23. Prejudice Continued • Discrimination: Unequal treatment of people who should have the same rights as others • Displaced Aggression: Redirecting aggression to a target other than the actual source of one’s frustration • Personal Prejudice: When members of another racial or ethnic group are perceived as a threat to one’s own self-interests • Group Prejudice: Occurs when a person conforms to group norms

24. Personal Prejudices Make two columns on a sheet of paper. One column should be ‘good’ prejudices you hold. The other should be ‘bad’ prejudices you hold. What is prejudice? Can there be good and bad prejudices?

25. Racial stereotypes are common in sports. For example, a recent study confirmed that many people actually do believe that “white men can’t jump.” This stereotype implies that African-American basketball players are naturally superior in athletic ability. European-American players, in contrast, are falsely perceived as smarter and harder working than African Americans. Such stereotypes set up expectations that distort the perceptions of fans, coaches, and sportswriters. The resulting misperceptions, in turn, help perpetuate the stereotypes Fig. 19-3, p. 642

26. Prejudiced Personality • Authoritarian Personality: Marked by rigidity, inhibition, prejudice, and oversimplification • Ethnocentrism: Placing one’s group at the center, usually by rejecting all other groups • Dogmatism: Unwarranted positiveness or certainty in matters of belief or opinion • Difficult for dogmatic people to change their beliefs

27. Overcoming Prejudice • Mutual Interdependence: When two or more people must depend on each other to meet each person’s goals • Jigsaw Classroom: Each student only gets a piece of information needed to complete a problem or prepare for a test. In order to succeed and get all pieces, students must all work together

28. Prejudicial Policies?Affirmative Action • Affirmative action refers to policies that take gender, race, or ethnicity into account in an attempt to promote equal opportunity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and public contracting to educational outreach and health programs (such as breast or prostate cancer screenings). The impetus towards affirmative action is twofold: to maximize the benefits of diversity in all levels of society, and to redress disadvantages due to overt, institutional, or involuntary discrimination. • What are your feelings about affirmative action hiring? In what ways does a more culturally diverse set of employees add to the quality of decisions made by a company?

29. Decision Points Reached Before Giving Help • Noticing the person in trouble • Defining an Emergency: Until someone declares the situation an emergency, no one acts • Taking Responsibility: Assume responsibility to help • Diffusion of Responsibility: Spreading responsibility to act among several people; decreases likelihood that help will be given to the person in need • Select a Course of Action

30. Fig. 19-7, p. 653

31. Empathy Concepts • Empathic Arousal: Emotional arousal that occurs when you feel some of the person’s pain, fear or anguish • Empathy-Helping Relationship: We are most likely to help person in need when we feel emotions such as empathy and compassion