Attitudes and Stereotypes

Attitudes

a set of beliefs that we hold in relation to an attitude object (a person, thing, event or issue.

can be positive or negative, or can have opinions about issues without any strong emotional commitment.

Attitude formation

mere exposure,

associative learning,

self-perception

functional reasons

mostly when no prior or existing attitude or knowledge

mere exposure attitude formation

The tendency to develop more positive feelings towards objects and individuals the more we are exposed to them- no action or interaction with the object is required, and we don’t need to possess or even develop any explicit beliefs about the object. Mere exposure positively impacts attitudes.

Very replicable

Prefer mirror print as that’s the image we most often see.

Highly pervasive and robust phenomenon- not limited to visual stimuli, but also auditory and even food stimuli

Rock and Roll experiment: found a decrease in liking of a rock and roll song with increased exposure, prior to the study participants reported they liked rock and roll music- participants said did not like the specific antiquated style of music used in this experiment. Mere exposure effect assumes stimuli are novel and neutral in connotation. If participants began with an initially negative attitude towards the music, repeated exposure might strengthen these negative affective reactions.

Study furthered with participants being shown abstract paintings they had rated positively, negatively or neutral, if initial positive or neutral attitude higher exposure increased liking, if initially negative attitude higher exposure  decreased liking

Confirms boundary condition initial attitude must be neutral or positive

associative learning

classical or operant

classical associative learning

learning process occurs when a neutral stimuli is paired with a stimulus that naturally evokes an emotional response (e.g. Pavlov dog and food). The previously neutral stimulus after enough pairings with the positive or negative object will acquire a positivity or negativity of its own

Pairing positive or negative words with nationalities can affect the evaluation of their people, but impact is quite small, only changed slightly in direction of the stimulus- associative learning cannot be the whole way of forming attitudes.

A stronger effect is found when aversive stimuli are paired with nonsense words. – associative learning more powerful determinant of attitude when little knowledge is available about the attitude object, mind more influenced by exposure to attitude-relevant information.

Could explain racial prejudice: lack of knowledge about other groups due to low interracial contact, so when encounter people expressing prejudiced views might lead to conditioned associations

operant associative learning

Operant conditioning: where behaiour is strengthened following rewards and weakened following punishments.

Different from classical as classical occurs implicity, no action required by participant for associations to form. Contrast operant conditioning is behavioural in nature, participants must carry out a reaction that is rewarded or punished e.g. carry on learning a new skill if early attempts met with praise, rather than negative reinforcements like laughter and ridicule.

self-perception theory

Form attitudes from observations of our own behaviour e.g. the opinions we openly express on particular issues and then attributing them to either internal or external causes, with internal attributions (inference that the behaviour is indicative of an attitude) more likely when that behaviour is freely chosen.

More likely to occur when someone has little or no existing knowledge about the issue at hand, or does not hold a strong prior attitude towards it (similar to mere exposure and classical conditioning)

People attend to their own behaviour even their own facial expression ‘facial feedback hypothesis’- when pen between teeth ‘smiling’, when pen between lips ‘frowning’ informing subsequent attitudes.- misattribute facial expression as being indicative of their feelings towards the attitude object.

Another explanation for this effect is physiological- vasculartheory of emotion: smiling or anything that feels like smiling causes the facial muscles to increase the flow of blood to the brain, increasing mood by lowering brain temperature, vowel sounds mimicking frowning increased forehead temperature and lowered mood, vowels mimicking smiling, increased mood and decreased forehead temp

Embodied cognition: where our bodily actions can influence our thoughts and feelings, been demonstrated in lots of different domains e.g. tilting head upwards increases feelings of pride in past behaviour.

Facial feedback with pen mimicking frowning and smiling hard to replicate but replications deviated including a video camera in front of participants to verify correct position of the pen, but feeling  monitored or observed can reduce reliance on internal cues in making judgement.- without camera confirmed original findings- even minor procedural variations can lead to meaningful changes in outcomes and so failed replications not end of the road, but reveal complexities .

functional approach

3 prior ways operate outside people’s awareness- cognitive misers

Functional approach- naïve scientist- processing information, thinking deliberately and weighs information to come to a judgement

According to functional approach, attitudes are sometimes formed based on the degree to which they satisfy different psychological needs- active not passive attitude theory

4 basic psychological needs different attitudes can address: utilitarian, knowledge, ego-defensive and value-expressive

utilitarian need

attitude helps us gain approval from others, creates instrumental attitudes, help us get along and make our lives better. Positive attitudes towards parents when dependent on them. Also conformity.

knowledge function need

particular attitudes help us organize and predict our social worlds, providing a sense of meaning and coherence to our lives- attitudes can be thought of as cognitive schemas e.g. stereotypes, attitudes that define our expectations about different social groups. These attitudes are simplifying mechanisms to give meaning and structure to our worlds.

ego-defensive function need

attitudes formed to help people protect themselves from acknowledging threatening self-truths, enabling them to maintain a positive view of themselves e.g. unfavourable attitude towards a co-worker with more success than us- attitude serves to protect us from acknowledging a potentially damaging social comparison

value-expressive function need

attitudes that express values important to us, e.g. taste for coffee we know grown under fair conditions, like the coffee as we like it helps us express more general beliefs and values that we hold.

Theory of planned behaviour

·Accounts for the process by which people consciously decide to engage in specific actions

It states behavioural intentions are the most proximal determinant of behaviour, 3 factors converge to predict behavioural intentions: attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control

Theory believes that neither attitudes nor norms on their own can determine behaviour- it is the interaction of these factors with perceived control that predicts behaviour

Doesn’t explain a large proportion of variance- proposal to include other variables to improve its predictive validity e.g. past behaviour/habits, self-identity and anticipated emotions.

Theory of planned behaviour- attitudes

determined by one’s beliefs and evaluation about the consequences of performing the behaviour

theory of planned behaviour- subjective norms

determined by the perceived expectations of significant others and one’s motivation to conform to those expectations

consistently emerge as the weakest predictor of intentions- argument to include moral norms which increased variance explained in intentions

Subjective norms could also be better categorized as group norms: when people are high group identifiers group norms may influence people’s behavioural intentions.- when people see themselves as group members they become depersonalised, see themselves as shared features that defines group membership- people behave inline with group norms. Adopting the group norm on an issue can provide an attitude with subjective validity as it’s based on group consensus- only people who highly identified with the group (saw group membership as important) influenced by group norms in forming behavioural intentions

theory of planned behaviour- perceived control

determined by one’s perception of how easy or difficult it is to perform the behaviour.

the only factor that can feed directly into actual behaviour because although knowing how possible it is to perform a behavior affects intention it could ultimately reduce the likelihood of performing a behaviour, even if intention is strong

cognitive dissonance

argues that behaving in a way that contradicts existing attitudes creates a feeling of discomfort- people feel bad when they perform an action inconsistent with their attitudes.

Motivation to avoid dissonance or discrepancy (internal imbalance)-people look for ways to explain it and if they can’t will resolve it by changing their attitude so that it matches their behaviour.

predicts behaviour causes attitudes but a weak prior attitude is not a prerequisite like in self-perception theory- Dissonance needs fairly strong prior attitude to create a discrepancy

Conditions under which cognitive dissonance will change attitudes: if given one dollar to lie have to change attitude, if given 20 dollars to lie, that justifies the discrepancy can still believe task was boring- operant conditioning would say 20 dollars changed most as paid to lie so would find the task more enjoyable than on dollar people.

3 factors determine cognitive dissonance: justification choice and investment

cognitive dissonance: justification

if have a justification for why they behaved counter to their  attitudes don’t need to change attitude to fit behaviour.

cognitive dissonance: choice

if forced to do something, that explains why we did it so no dissonance occurs

cognitive dissonance: investment

more invested you are in your point of view, more important it is to your self-concept so stronger feelings of dissonance

categorization

the process of understanding what something is by knowing what it is equivalent to, and what other things it is different from

way of classifying some collection of objects,, events opinions, attitudes, concepts, or people

prototype

social categorisation

Typicality is variable: group members can be highly typical or highly atypical of a category.- what defines typicality is the prototype of the category

Prototypes: are the most representative members of a category,

categorisation of less typical members may be slower or prone to error because they are less available. Conceptualise the extent to which a category member is prototypical of that category to the extent that it is easy to bring to mind.

The high probability of people bringing prototypical group members to mind when categorising others can lead to errors.- e.g. prototype engineers as male- more easy to bring a male engineer to mind., may lead to errors of categorisation when encountering a female engineer.

illusory correlation

Social learning and exposure play a role in forming prototypes but also illusory correlation

specifically negative stereotypes associated with minority groups: the belief that 2 variances are associated with one another, when in fact there is little or no actual association.

When provided more information about majority group than minority group, but same amount of desirable and undesirable behaviours, people still likely to characterise undesirable behaviour to minority group- illusonary correlation- believed that negative behaviours were more characteristic of the smaller group.

As both the minority groups and negative characteristics were relatively infrequent compared to large amounts of majority group information, both were distinctive and stood out- shared distinctiveness. More information overall about majority group and more positive characteristics about both groups overall- shared distinctiveness.

Consistent with representativeness heuristic, the low number of negative behaviours came to be seen as representative of theo smaller group- heuristics can account for some development of negative stereotypes that come to be regarded as stereotypes of minority groups.

outgroup homogeneity effect

tendency to perceive group members as all similar to each other in intergroup contexts appears to be more apparent in the way we think about outgroups than ingroups.- outgroup homogeneity effect.

seen in simple variability judgement and perceptual judgement

Asians can’t tell Caucasian faces apart and vice versa-

is also apparent in how people structure their memory for groups- people remember more about someone they encounter from their own group than from another group

explanations; we ave a more detailed and varied impression of our own social category compared with others, as have more experience of people within our category- more familiar

limitations: is observed for people that should have equal levels of exposure to e.g. gender, observed even in artificial laboratory groups where no prior contact and group membership anonymous and with increasing outgroup familiarity OHE should decrease but it doesn’t.

why do we categorize?

Categories are in some way the ultimate heuristic- can be applied to all aspects of our lives.

Categories save time and cognitive processing: allows us to be a cognitive miser- stereotyping is fast and provides a lot of information about people we do not know freeing up cognitive resources for other tasks.

Categorization clarifies and refines our perception of the world- once a category is activated, tend to see members as possessing all the traits associated with the stereotype- categorisation provides meaning and reduces uncertainty and helps us predict social behaviour providing prescriptive norms for understanding ourselves in relation to others

when do we categorize?

Some factors evoke categorisation when we do not consciously choose it: 3 key factors that determine whether a category will be activated without our awareness: Temporal primary, perceptual salience and chronic accessibility

Temporal primacy: we categorize on the basis of the feature we encounter first

Perceptual salience: when difference becomes salient e.g. sole man in room full of females

Chronic accessibility: categorization in terms of some categories e.g. gender,race and age are so common that it can become automatized

Even when trying hard to not use categories can lead to us using them more without knowing it- the very act of trying to suppress category stereotype means we have first, thought about it.

Suppressors showed more stereotyping when actively no longer trying to suppress those thoughts, then when people hadn’t bother to suppress them at all, also if suppressed stereotype, show more discrimination, create distance between you and characterized individual

To suppress a stereotype it’s necessary to conduct a monitoring process, scanning consciousness for any trace of stereotyping. This increases its accessibility so when individual’s no longer actively suppress stereotyping it can result in greater stereotyping and stereotype consistent behaviour than if no attempt was made to suppress

behavioural assimilation

when people think about categories, they can unconsciously begin to act in line with the stereoytpes associated with those categories

Participants who are primed with elderly stereotype walked significantly more slowly, it made them act like an elderly person, subtly primed with African American faces more hostile when a computer error happened- denoting an associated stereotype of hostile, a typical professor made people outperform a test than those who imagined a typical secretary.- behavioural assimilation can occur on more complex social bhevaiours

Thinking of the category subconsciously, increased the accessibility of stereotypes associated with the category.

Activating category information may influence behaviour as well as impression formation because behavioural responses are mentally represented in a similar way to other social information e.g. trait concepts, stereotypes and attitudes.-There is neuropsychological evidence, same area of the premotor cortex is active when humans perceive an action and when they perform the action themselves

Although intelligence is an abstract concept rather than concrete behavour, behavioural representations are likely to be hierarchically structured, whereby the abstract concept of intelligence is associated with a series of behavioural patterns e.g. concentration, careful consideration and systematic thinking.

Although priming wouldn’t have changed participants actual level of intelligence or knowledge, may have temporarily induced participants to behave differently in their reaction to the task.

Priming participants with intelligent may have subconsciously induced concentration, led to the use of more varied strategies and additional cues and increased confidence, all of which may have affected performance

Behavioural priming effect been involved in replication crisis. People only walked more slowly when experimenters believed they should walk more slowly, experimenters the reason not priming effect- maybe they delivered instructions more slowly or shook hands more leisurely. Professor piriming studies also failed to be replicated.

But it Is a varying phenomenon- effects may not be replicable today because old no longer associated with being slow or certain words no longer associated with old people, priming effect could be true

stereotype threat

Behavioural assimilation effects can adversely impact our academic performance when negative stereotypes define our own groups

the predicament felt by people in situations where they could conform to negative stereotypes associated with their own group membership

Result of this fear of conforming to threatening stereotypes is people may underperform on tasks associated with the threatened domain

E.g. women may underperform on a maths test as aware their category is not supposed to be as good as a comparison on such tasks.

African americans underperform on a test when they were told it was indicative of intelligence but also simply asking African americans to state their race before taking a test reduced the students subsequent performance.

psychological processes causing stereotype threats

Cognitive load: when individuals perceive the threat of a negative stereotype, they expend more cognitive effort when performing the task at hand then if they didn’t perceive a threat. Stereotype threat makes you vigilant for any evidence that could be confirming the stereotype e.g. am I making mistakes, what do others think?

Those experiencing stereotype threat become motivated to identify and suppress any indication they might be conforming to the stereotype. Ironically the increased vigilance depletes the central executive processes needed to succeed on complex cognitive tasks, resulting in poorer performance.

According to social identity theorizing, individuals conform more to their group’s norms 1) when the group identity is salient 2) when they are accustomed to thinking about themselves as a group member aka they’re a high identifier

If identity of a particular group not particularly important, didn’t feel threatened when stereotype threat made salient, performance doesn’t suffer.

2 strategies to alleviate negative effects of stereotype threat: multiple social identities and reframing a threat as a challenge