ATTITUDES: MAKING SOCIAL JUDGMENTS

1. ATTITUDES: MAKING SOCIAL JUDGMENTS Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought

2. Cognitive component: beliefs people hold about the objects of an attitude • Affective component: emotional feelings stimulated by an object of thought • Behavioral component: predispositions to act in certain ways toward an object of thought COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDE

3. Strength: durable; powerful impact on behavior • Accessibility: how often one thinks about something; how quickly it comes to mind • Ambivalence: conflicted evaluations that include both pos and neg feelings about an object of thought DIMENSIONS OF ATTITUDE

4. Attitude does not predict behavior • Stronger attitudes are more predictive • Behavior relies on situational constraints---especially subjective perceptions of how people expect you to behave ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOR

5. Constant • 4 basic elements: • Source: sender of communication • Receiver: to whom the msg is sent • Message: info transmitted • Channel: the medium PERSUASION

6. Persuasion more effective if source has credibility • Source should by trustworthy • Likable: similarity and physical attractiveness SOURCE FACTORS

7. Should you present a one-sided argument or two-sided argument • Concentrate on your strong arguments • Validity effect: repeating a statement causes it to be perceived as more valid or true • Appeal to fear? MESSAGE FACTORS

8. Stronger attitudes are more resistant to change • Confirmation bias: arguments that conflict with beliefs are scrutinized longer • Observers’ prior knowledge makes it difficult to persuade RECEIVER FACTORS

9. THEORIES OF ATTITUDE FORMATION AND CHANGE

10. Affective component can be created through classical conditioning • Operant conditioning comes into play when you express ideas • Peoples’ responses reinforce your tendency to repeat a specific attitude • Observational learning: you repeat behavior you see LEARNING THEORY

11. Leon Festinger • Inconsistency among attitudes propels people in the direction of attitude change (counterattitudinal behavior) • Cognitive dissonanceexists when related cognitions are inconsistent—that is, when they contradict each other DISSONANCE THEORY

12. Effort justification: when people switch attitudes to justify efforts that did not work out • Cooper: dissonance occurs only when individuals feel personally responsible for causing aversive events that were unforeseeable • Steele and Aronson: occurs when individuals behave in a way that threatens their sense of self-worth DISSONANCE THEORY CONTINUED

13. Daryl Bem • People often infer their attitudes from their behavior • Very similar to dissonance SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY

14. Petty and Cacioppo • Asserts there are 2 basic routes to persuasion: • 1) Central route: when people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive msgs • 2) Peripheral route: when persuasion depends on nonmessage factors (attractiveness or credibility) or on conditioned emotional responses ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL

15. CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE

16. DEF: when people yield to real or imagined social pressure • Solomon Asch experiments • Group size and unanimity are key determinants of conformity • Ambiguous situations also lead to conformity CONFORMITY

17. DEF: form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority • Stanley Milgram studies • Studied tendency to obey authority figures OBEDIENCE

18. BEHAVIOR IN GROUPS Group: consists of 2 or more individuals who interact and are interdependent

19. DEF: people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone • Why? • People search their environments for behavior clues • If people hesitate, perception is the situation is not that serious • When alone, responsibility rest on you BYSTANDER EFFECT

20. Individual productivity declines in large groups • Due to loss of coordination • Social loafing: a reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups as compared to when they work by themselves • Due to diffusion of responsibility GROUP PRODUCTIVITY AND SOCIAL LOAFING

21. DECISION MAKING IN GROUPS

22. DEF: occurs when group discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction GROUP POLARIZATION

23. DEF: when members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision • Group cohesiveness: the strength of the liking relationships linking group members to each other and to the group itself GROUPTHINK