AP Psychology Social Psychology Essential Task Discuss Attitude

• Slides: 14

Download presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attitudes Can Affect Action Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior. Ex: Politicians supporting a President’s actions under public pressure. However, they have their private reservations.

Attitude Change • Process of persuasion – Must get and maintain the person’s attention – Must comprehend the message – Comprehension leads to acceptance

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

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.

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

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:

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 3. Reduce the importance of one of both of the sides – The person I gossiped with won’t really tell that many people.