Understanding Attitude Formation and Change

1. WHS AP Psychology Unit 12: Social Pyschology Essential Task 12-2: Discuss attitude formation and how attitudes change with specific attention to schema, primacy effect, cognitive dissonance and the central and peripheral routes to persuasion. 

2. Fundamental Attribution Error Self-Serving Bias We are here Schema Cognitive Dissonance Attribution Individualistic vs. Collectivistic Culture Attitudes and Persuasion Routes to Persuasion Just-World Hypothesis Unit 12: Social Psychology Attraction In-Group/Out-Group Impact of Others on You Group Behavior Group Think Conformity Compliance Group Polarization

3. Social Cognition: How you think about people? • Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition? • Primacy effect • Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions • We are “cognitive misers” • Self-fulfilling prophecy • A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations • “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile • Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains • Schemata • Stereotypes

4. Impression Formation • Schemata • Ready-made categories • Allow us to make inferences about others (good for cognitive misers) • Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information • We will remember characteristics of our schema that weren’t there

5. Impression Formation • Stereotypes • A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category • It is usually unfair • Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization • Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

6. Attitudes • The Nature of Attitudes • Relatively stable • Beliefs – facts and general knowledge • Feelings – love, hate, like, dislike • Behaviors – inclination to approach, avoid, buy • Self-monitoring • High self-monitors look for cues about how they are expected to behave • Makes using attitudes to predict behavior difficult • Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making prediction easier

7. Attitude Development • Many factors contribute to the development of attitudes • Imitation • Reward • Teachers • Peers • Mass media

8. Attitudes Can Affect Action Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior. Democratic leaders supported Bush’s attack on Iraq under public pressure. However, they had their private reservations.

9. Attitude Change • Process of persuasion • Must get and maintain the person’s attention (Sex and humor and sex and then some more funny sex) • Must comprehend the message • Comprehension leads to acceptance

10. Attitude Change • Communication model – how the message gets comprehended and then accepted • Source (credibility is key) • Message itself (more effective when it acknowledges other arguments and then gives novel ones – a little fear is good) • Medium of communication (writing good for complex, media better for audience with a gist, face-to-face is the best) • Audience’s characteristics

11. Routes a Message Can Take to Persuade You • Central Route to Persuasion • when the attitude of the audience, or individual, is changed as a result of thoughtful consideration of the message. • Peripheral Route to Persuasion occurs when positive or negative cues (such as images, sounds, or language) are associated with the object of the message. • An advertisement featuring a song that the audience member likes, or a person whom the audience member sees as appealing might cause a person to have positive feelings toward the brand, without that person ever thinking deeply about the message.

12. Audience Characteristics • Most difficult to change if • Strong commitment to present attitude • Attitude is shared by others • The attitude has been held since early childhood • Up to a point the larger the difference between message and audience the more likely attitudinal change will occur • Low self-esteem more likely to change

13. Cognitive Dissonance Theory • (Leon Festinger 1957) • Occurs whenever a person has two contradictory cognitions or beliefs at the same time. They are dissonant, each one implies the opposite of the other. • The less coerced and more responsible we feel for an action the more dissonance. The more dissonance the more likely we are to change our attitude • It creates an unpleasant cognitive tension and the person tries to resolve in the following ways:

14. Resolution of Cognitive Dissoance 1. Sometimes changing your attitude is the easiest way to solve this. • Example: I am a loyal friend, but yesterday I gossiped about my friend Chris . . . Well I can’t change my action . . . but I don’t want to change my view of myself, so my attitude about Chris must be wrong. He is more of an acquaintance than a friend. 2. Increase the number of consonant elements – the number of thoughts that back one side. • It was awesome gossip • Reduce the importance of one of both of the sides • The person I gossiped with won’t really tell that many people.