PSYB10 Lec 5 Attitudes

Trolly dilemmas

The switch feels impersonal so pull

Bridge feels personal so don’t push person

Damage to VMPFC; Somatic Marker Hypothesis

VMPFC makes individuals less sensitive to emotional decision making

Responses to Trolley problem with VMPFC damage

Moral decisions become less sensitive to emotional influences and there is greater response to push person

Social Intuitionist Model of Judgments

Non-conscious flashes of emotions form attitudes in decision making process

We have intuitions based on emotions, form our judgment, and our reasoning comes AFTER our judgment to make a case for the JUDGMENT

What is an attitude?

Favourable or unfavourable evaluation of something or somebody by assigning a value to a certain thing

Sensation, Emotion, Attitude

Sensation: Feeling warm in the sun after being cold

Emotion: fear or anger from stimuli

Attitude: involves good or bad judgment with cognitive value

Components of an Attitude

Affective value, Cognitive thoughts, Behavioural actions

What can we hold attitudes about?

Virtually anything

Two types of Attitudes

Explicit/conscious or Implicit/non-conscious

Name Letter Test

Implicit positive self-attitude dictates letters are more beautiful if name begins with that letter; implicit attitude of the self

Implicit Egotism:

Implicit preference for the self, drives high level behaviours (naming things after yourself; name with T becomes a teacher)

Working at companies with Matching Initial

More likely to work with companies with companies who’s name matches with their own

Confound of companies and employee name match

Family businesses hire people in the family but the business is named after them so not an active choice

Self-enhancement in visual perception of your face

Positive or negative, trustworthy or untrustworthy, exemplar blend your face and rate how much it is like yourself

People are more likely to select a trustworthy exemplar blend despite the same level of blend with an untrustworthy.

Self-enhancement applies to us even when we just see our face

Counter for self-enhancement in visual perception results:

Bias could be occurring at the response level; it is more likely to cause the response to be more biased if the behaviour is good versus negative. No baseline

The Endowment Effect:

Do you want to switch your bar after you’ve been given it? Show reluctancy to switch

Tendency to place more value on things one owns

Where does affective value come from?

Emotions, reasoning used to justify emotional judgments

What is value the product of?

Our attributions constructed through cognitions and thoughts we have

Ventral Pallidum

Only known region of the brain to experience pleasure

Damage to Ventral Pallidum

Turns rewarding/pleasant stimuli into aversive/disgust

Evolution and affective value

Evolution shapes what we fear, why we feel love, why we find certain things attractive, likely products of evolution

Spider phobia and congenital blindness

Innate fear from ancestors that led to their survival, therefore don't need to be able to see it in order to experience a fear of spiders

Big Five Personality Traits

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

Openness:

Curious, original, intellectual, creative, and open to new ideas

Conscientiousness:

Organized, systematic, punctual, achievement oriented, and dependable

Extraversion:

Outgoing, talkative, sociable, and enjoys being in social situations

Agreeableness:

Affable (Friendly), tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind, and warm

Neuroticism:

Anxious, irritable, temperamental, and moody

Liberal vs Conservative

Openness to Experience vs Conscientiousness

Genetic Influences on Political Attitudes

 

In a shared environment, the more similar a pair of twins is similar, the more that dimension is due to genes

 Monozygotic twins more similar

Heritability ratio:

estimate how much a difference across people appears to be genetic

Factors of affective value

Evolution, Personality, Culture and Social Norms, Early and recent experiences

Psilocybin for Treatment-resistant Depression

Reduction of depression 1 session of psilocybin in depression that does not respond to CBT and other drugs and continued for subsequent sessions

Persisting effects of psilocybin on attitudes about life

Evaluating life under Methylphenidate or Psilocybin

Individuals assigned Psilocybin relate more to positive attitudes about life/the self in short sessions (6 hours)

Preference and activity increase with mere exposure in which regions

PfC, nAC, VTA

Amygdala and affective value

Rapidly assigning salience to environmentally significant events & fear conditioning; key for separation between what is relevant or not (value) and fear

nAC and affective value

connected to VTA; VTA is origin for dopamine neurons (fundamental for desire and wanting); DA neurons project to nAC

Increased nAC activity under what cues?

Sexual cues, attractive faces, anticipating money, pleasurable music

Wanting:

Desire to experience a rewarding stimulus (Anticipatory)

Liking:

Enjoyment from experiencing a rewarding stimulus (Consummatory)

Example of wanting vs liking being different

Wanting increases for a drug but liking remains stable or decreases in drug addiction

Cognitive dissonance

Unease or distress at contradiction between thoughts and thoughts and behaviour

Example of cognitive dissonance

I am a good person BUT I lied to my best friend

Reducing Cognitive Dissonance

Change one of the dissonant cognitions, Add a new cognition, Change your behaviour

Change one of the dissonant cognitions

Maybe I am not a good person OR maybe I actually did not lie

Add a new cognitions

Maybe it is okay to lie under some conditions

Change your behaviour

I will stop lying to them

Post-decision Dissonance

Chosen picture becomes more liked and non-chosen picture becomes less liked post decision even in amnesiacs who cant remember their choice from earlier

Changeable versus Unchangeable decisions

Dissonance theory predicts person happier with no return policy because there is no longer a what if and you must come to terms with your purchase rather than being able to return it due to a displeasure

Justification of Effort

Increase liking for effort in order to justify it

Ikea Effect

When there is exertion of effort, you end up preferring the product more

Contrast Effect:

if you do something unpleasant, then getting something pleasant at the end makes it feel more pleasant due to the initial unpleasant experience

Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon:

Tendency for people who have agreed to a small request later accept larger ones

Low-ball technique:

Tactic for getting people to agree to something.

People who initially agree to a request will often still comply when the requester increases the stakes. People who receive only the costly request are less likely to comply with it.

door-in-the-face-technique

tendency for people who have first declined a large request to comply with a subsequent, but smaller, request.

insufficient justification

Reduction of dissonance by internally justifying one’s behaviour when external justification is “insufficient.”

self-perception theory

when unsure of our attitudes, we infer them much as would someone observing us—by looking at our behaviour and the circumstances under which it occurs.

overjustification effect

result of bribing people to do what they already like doing; they may then see their action as externally controlled rather than intrinsically appealing.