PSY 216 - EXAM II

What is an attitude

**A positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object, or idea**

What are self-report measures of attitudes?

**The easiest way to assess a person's attitude about something, but issue is that attitudes are sometimes too complex to be measured by one question, and the honesty people are willing to express on questionnaires**

What are attitude scales

**A multiple-item questionnaire designed to measure a person’s attitude toward some object**

What is the bogus pipeline

**A phony lie-detector device that is sometimes used to get respondents to give truthful answers to sensitive questions**

How are attitudes measured using EMG

**records facial muscle activity associated with emotions and attitudes**

How are attitudes measured using EEG (brain waves)

**could detect, amplify, and record “waves” of electrical activity in the brain**

What is an implicit attitude

**An attitude, such as prejudice, that one is not aware of having**

What is the Implicit Association Test

**A covert measure of unconscious attitudes derived from the speed at which people respond to pairings of concepts—such as black or white with good or bad**

(Review the LaPiere (1934) study) What question did it raise for attitude researchers

**correspondence between attitudes and behavior**

(Review the LaPiere (1934) study) What does it mean to say that for attitudes to predict behavior they both need to have the same level of correspondence

**attitudes correlate with behavior only when attitude measures closely match the behavior in question**

What is the theory of planned behavior

**The theory that attitudes toward a specific behavior combine with subjective norms and perceived control to influence a person’s actions**

What three things contribute to intention

**Attitude toward a behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control**

Are stronger or weaker attitudes more likely to predict behavior

**stronger**

What are some things that make attitudes strong

**more stable and more predictive of behavior when they are born of direct personal experience than when based on indirect, second hand information, and are highly accessible**

What are accessible attitudes

**Quick and easy brought to mind**

What is persuasion

**The process by which attitudes are changed**

Know the elaboration likelihood model very well

**[Source Message] → [Audience] → [High ability and motivation] → [Central Route] → [Persuasion] → [Low ability or motivation] → [Peripheral Route]**

What are the two routes to persuasion

**Central route to persuasion and Peripheral route to persuasion**

What is elaboration

**The process of thinking about and scrutinizing the arguments contained in a persuasive communication**

How do people evaluate a communication in each route

**The central route to persuasion uses critical evaluation and the peripheral route to persuasion uses cues**

What two things determine which route people follow

**Source and audience**

What types of sources are more persuasive

**Credible**

What factors make a source seem credible

**Competence and trustworthiness**

What factors make a source seem likable

**similarity and physical attractiveness**

What is the sleeper effect

**A delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a non-credible source**

How does the discounting cue hypothesis account for the sleeper effect

**people immediately discount the arguments made by non-credible communicators, but over time, they dissociate what was said from who said it. In other words, we tend to remember the message but forget the source**

When must the course be presented for the sleeper effect to work

**participants do not learn who the source is until** ***after*** **they have received the original message**

The message: How long should a message be? Or does it depend on if a person is in the central route or peripheral route

**If a message is long because it contains lots of supporting information, then longer does mean better. But if the added arguments are weak or if the new sources are redundant, then an alert audience will not be fooled by length alone**

How does timing influence the impact of a message? Be familiar with the results of the Miller and Campbell study

**When participants read the summary of the defendant’s case right after the summary of the plaintiff’s case and then waited a whole week before reporting their opinion, a primacy effect prevailed, and the side that came first was favored. Both messages faded equally from memory, so only the greater impact of first impressions was left. When participants made a decision immediately after the second message but a full week after the first, however, there was a recency effect. The second argument was fresher in memory, thus favoring the side that went last**

When is there a primacy effect

**If you believe that the information presented first has more impact**

When is there a Recency effect

**If you believe that the information presented last has the edge**

When can fear messages be effective

**depends on the strength of the arguments and on whether the message also contains clear and reassuring advice on how to cope with the threatened danger**

Being in a positive mood usually encourages people to be in which route- peripheral or central

**Peripheral**

Do subliminal messages produce meaningful or lasting change in attitudes

**no**

What is need for cognition

**A personality variable that distinguishes people on the basis of how much they enjoy effortful cognitive activities**

How do people high and low in this trait differ

**People who are high rather than low in their need for cognition like to work on hard problems, search for clues, make fine distinctions, and analyze situations**

Which route does each tend to choose and how will this impact which type of appeals are most persuasive for them

**the higher their NC scores were, the more the participants thought about the material, the better they later recalled it, and the more persuaded they were by the strength of its arguments (Cacioppo et al., 1983). In contrast, people who are low in the need for cognition are persuaded by cues found along the peripheral route, such as a speaker’s reputation and physical appearance, the overt reactions of others in the audience, and a positive mood state**

_____ self-monitors **regulate their behavior from one situation to another out of concern for public self-presentation**

high

_____ **self-monitors are less image conscious and behave according to their own beliefs, values, and preferences**

low

What kinds of ads are persuasive to those low in SM

**low self-monitors were influenced more by information-oriented appeals**

What kinds of ads are persuasive to those high in SM

**high self-monitors were willing to pay more for products after reading imagery ads**

What is attitude inoculation theory

**The idea that exposure to weak versions of a persuasive argument increases later resistance to that argument**

What is psychological reactance

**The theory that people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves and perceiving the threatened freedom as more attractive**

How does each explain why forewarning reduces persuasion

**Simply knowing that someone is trying to persuade us also sparks a motivational reaction as we brace ourselves regardless of what position is taken & We want the freedom to think, feel, and act as we (not others) choose**

How does the kind of ad that is persuasive depend on cultural orientation? What kinds of ads are more persuasive to people in a collectivist culture

**collectivistic - integrity, achievement, well-being of one's in-groups (Celebrating a half-century of partnership, share this breath-freshening experience)**

How does the kind of ad that is persuasive depend on cultural orientation? What kinds of ads are more persuasive to people in a individualistic culture

**individualistic - personal benefits, individuality, competition, self-improvement (She's got a style all her own, treat yourself to a breath freshening experience)**

What is cognitive dissonance theory

**Theory holding that inconsistent cognitions arouses psychological tension that people become motivated to reduce**

How can dissonance be reduced

**change your attitude, change your perception of the behavior, add consonant cognitions, minimize the importance of the conflict, reduce perceived choice**

How can cognitive dissonance change attitudes (hint: act in a way that is inconsistent with your attitude with insufficient justification)

**unless you can deny your actions (which is not usually possible), you’ll feel pressured to change your attitude about the task**

What is insufficient justification

**A condition in which people freely perform an attitude-discrepant behavior without receiving a large reward**

Be familiar with the three classic cognitive dissonance studies. 1) the Festinger and Carlsmith peg board study

**As soon as you arrive, you are greeted by an experimenter who says that he is interested in various measures of performance. The experimenter hands you a wooden board containing 48 square pegs in square holes and asks you to turn each peg a quarter turn to the left, then a quarter turn back to the right, then back to the left, then back again to the right. The routine seems endless. After 30 minutes, the experimenter hands you another board, another assignment. For the next half hour, you are to take 12 spools of thread off the board, put them back, take them off, and put them back again. Finally, you’re done. After one of the longest hours of your life, the experimenter lets you in on a secret: There’s more to this experiment than meets the eye. You were in the control group. To test the effects of motivation on performance, other participants are being told that the experiment will be fun and exciting. Would you be willing to tell the next participant that the experiment is enjoyable? As you hem and haw, the experimenter offers to pay for your services. Some participants are offered $1; others are offered $20. In either case, you agree to help out. Before you know it, you find yourself in the waiting room trying to dupe an unsuspecting fellow student (who is really a confederate)**

In the Festinger and Carlsmith peg board study, why did the $1 group like the task more than the $20 group in the peg turning study

**They engaged in an attitude-discrepant act without sufficient justification**

What conditions have been proposed as necessary for cognitive dissonance to arise

Behavior → (Step 1) Unwanted negative consequence → (Step 2) Personal Responsibility →  (Step 3) Physiological arousal → (Step 4) Attribution of arousal to behavior

Self-perception

**We infer how we feel by observing ourselves and them circumstances of our own behavior**

impression management theory

**What matters is not a motive to be consistent but rather a motive to appear consistent**

self-esteem/affirmation theory

**Acts that arouse dissonance do so because they threaten the self-concept**

What theory’s key point is that arousal is not necessary and attitude change occurs because people observe their own behavior

**Self-perception theory**

What theory says that dissonance can be reduced by making our self feel better in other ways

**Cognitive dissonance**

What is the continuum of social influence

**Social influences vary in the degree of pressure they bring to bear on an individual. People may conform to group norms or maintain their independence, comply with requests or be assertive, and obey or defy the commands of authority**

conformity

**the tendency of people to change their perceptions, opinions, and behavior in ways that are consistent with group norms. (Most social pressure)**

compliance

**changes in behavior that are elicited by direct requests**

obedience

**behavior change that is produced by the commands of authority**

Which (conformity, compliance, obedience) represents the least social pressure

**defiance**

Which (conformity, compliance, obedience) represents the most social pressure

**obedience**

Be familiar with the two classic studies on conformity: Sherif (1936) and Asch (1951). Know the procedures and findings of both

**Male students, who believed they were participating in a visual perception experiment, sat in a totally darkened room. Fifteen feet in front of them, a small dot of light appeared for two seconds, after which participants were asked to estimate how far it had moved. This procedure was repeated several times. Although participants didn’t realize it, the dot of light always remained motionless. The movement they thought they saw was merely an optical illusion known as the** ***autokinetic effect***

What is the autokinetic effect

**In darkness, a stationary point of light appears to move, sometimes erratically in various directions**

How many of the overall responses in the Asch conformity study were conforming? This is one of the few times where exact results of an experiment are emphasized as you study, so pay attention to the percentage of overall responses were conforming

**Asch’s participants went along with the incorrect majority 37% of the time—far more often than most of us would ever predict. Not everyone conformed, of course. About 25% refused to agree on any of the incorrect group judgments. Yet 50% went along on at least half of the critical presentations, and remaining participants conformed on an occasional basis**

_____ Influence that produces conformity when a person believes others are correct in their judgments

**informational**

_____ influence applies to The Asch’s Conformity study

**normative**

_____ influence applies to The Sherif’s Conformity study

**informational**

______ Influence that produces conformity when a person fears the negative social consequences of appearing deviant

**normative**

Being ostracized has been shown to activate parts of the brain normally associated with what

**rejection can inflict a social pain that feels just like physical pain**

private conformity

**The change of beliefs that occurs when a person privately accepts the position taken by others**

public conformity

**A superficial change in overt behavior without a corresponding change of opinion that is produced by real or imagined group pressure**

What factors influence the amount of conformity including: group size up until what point

* **that conformity increased with group size—but only up to a point & as more and more people express the same opinion, an individual is likely to suspect that they are acting either in “collusion” or as “spineless sheep.”**

How is conformity increased or decreased by awareness of the norms and having another dissenter

**Social norms give rise to conformity only when we know the norms and focus on them. Changing people’s perceptions of norms can be used to change their behavior. Any dissent, whether it validates an individual’s opinion or not, cannot—can break the spell cast by a unanimous majority and reduce normative pressures to conform**

explain gender differences in conformity

**In public situations, women conform more and men conform less than they do in a more private situation**

Which type of culture (collectivistic or individualistic) is more likely to conform

**Collectivist**

What are the two views of how minorities can be influential? 1) Consistent dissent proposed by Moscovici

**To exert influence, those in the minority must be forceful, persistent, and unwavering in support of their position**

What are the two views of how minorities can be influential? 2) First conform, then dissent proposed by Hollander.

**In this way, people should first conform to establish their credential as competent insiders, and then after their accumulate idiosyncrasy credits, a certain amount of their deviance can be tolerated**

What are idiosyncrasy credits

**Interpersonal “credits” that a person earns by following group norms**

Are minorities more influential in matters of fact or opinion

**Minorities are more influential on matters of opinion. because there is no right or wrong answer**

Are minorities more successful in inducing public or private conformity

**They are more successful in indirect, or private, measures of conformity**

What is mindlessness

**refers to how people respond to triggers in speech or action without thinking carefully about the wording or specific requests**

How mindfulness increase compliance in the Langer copier study

**by simply adding the word "because", the person automatically increased compliance in his or her request**

What is the norm of reciprocity

**The norm of reciprocity dictates that we treat others as they have treated us**

Be able to give examples of how the norm of reciprocity can be used to increase compliance

**This norm can be used in positive and negative ways - in the positive manner, it can make us feel obligated to repay others for acts of kindness, and in the negative manner, this norm can be used to justify retaliation against those who cause us harm, e.g. "an eye for an eye"**

Foot-in-the-door

**A two-step compliance technique in which an influencer sets the stage for the real request by first getting a person to comply with a much smaller request**

low balling

**A two-step compliance technique in which the influencer secures agreement with a request but then increases the size of that request by revealing hidden costs**

door in the face

**A two-step compliance technique in which an influencer prefaces the real request with one that is so large that it is rejected**

that's not all

**A two-step compliance technique in which the influencer begins with an inflated request, then decreases its apparent size by offering a discount or bonus**

Be able to explain the two possible explanations for why the door in the face works: Perceptual contrast

**to the person exposed to a very large initial request, the second request seems smaller, which could explain why the door in the face technique works**

Be able to explain the two possible explanations for why the door in the face works: reciprocal concessions

**close to the reciprocity norm, this refers to the pressure to respond to changes in a bargaining position. When an individual backs down from a large request to a smaller one, we view that move as a concession that we should match by our own compliance**

Milgram’s study. Be familiar with the general procedure of the original study e.g. the learner was a confederate. What percentage of people went all the way to 450 volts? This is one of the few times I emphasize exact results of an experiment so pay attention to the percentage of people that obeyed to the end of the shock panel

**65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts. Participants administered 27 out of 30 possible shocks. Predictions were that the participants would call it quits at 135 volts. Not a single person thought they would take it to 450 volts.**

Milgram’s study. How many people did psychiatrists think would go all the way to the end

**Psychiatrists estimated that only one of a thousand people would exhibit that kind of extreme obedience**

Milgram’s study. What factors influence the amount of obedience that is elicited? This includes factors related to the authority figure, the victim, and the procedure

**The presence of the experimenter and his apparent legitimacy were major players in drawing obedience. When the experimenter was replaced by an ordinary person, the obedience dropped by 20 percent. The victim's proximity also contributed to the obedience, as only 40 percent fully obeyed when they were in the same room as the learner. Finally, the procedure also affected obedience. As the experimenter said up front that he was accountable, the participants were relieved of responsibility for the victim's welfare**

How does Milgram’s procedure have components of the foot in the door

**The escalating intensity of the actions also played a role in the level of obedience. This is how it relates to the foot in the door theory - the requests start small and gradually grow over time, therefore increasing compliance**

Social impact theory- what three things influence how strong the level of social influence will be on a person

**Strength of a source, Immediacy, The number of sources**

Social impact theory - describe the strength of a source

**determined by his or her status, ability, or relationship to a target**

Social impact theory - describe immediacy

**refers to a source's proximity in time and space to the target**