Unit 2 Social Psych Flashcards

3 Components of Attitude

• Affective Component: involves a person’s feelings/emotions about the attitude object

• Cognitive Component: involves a person’s knowledge about the attitude object

• Behavioral Component: behavioral tendencies toward the attitude object

Cognitively Based Attitudes

• An attitude based primarily on peoples knowledge about the properties of a thing/object

Affectively Based Attitudes

• Affectively based attitudes don’t come from examining facts based more on people’s feelings and values than on thier beliefs about the nature of a thing/object

Classical conditioning

A stimulus that elicits an emotional response is paired w/ a neutral stimulus. Neutral stimulus takes on the emotional properties of the first stimulus.

Behaviorally Based Attitudes

• Attitudes based on observations of how one behaves toward an object, often influenced by personal experiences and actions.

Self-Perception Theory

The theory that people develop attitudes by observing their own behavior and concluding what attitudes must have caused them.

Moral hypocrisy

Mismatch between attitudes and actions

Explicit Attitudes

Attitudes that are at the conscious level, and are deliberately formed and easy to self-report.

• Influences by social norms - people say what they think others want to hear

Implicit Attitudes

Formed at the unconscious level, are involuntarily formed and often unknown to us.

• Measured by the Implicit Association Test - a tool that assesses the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations.

  • Eg: Muslim - good v.s christian - bad

  • Obese job applicant study

Predicting Spontaneous behaviors

Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are highly accessible to people.

Attitude Accessibility

The strength of the association between an object/thing and a person’s evaluation.

Predicting Spontaneous Behaviors

• Attitudes will predict spontaneous behaviors only when they are highly accessible to people

Attitude Accessibility

• The strength of the association between an object/thing and a person’s evaluation.

Predicting Deliberate Behaviors

• If the attitude is general, it may not correspond to specific behavior.

  • General attitude does not mean specific behavior

  • Specific attitude = specific beahvior

Subjective Norms

• These are the perceived social pressures to perform or not perform a particular behavior, influencing an individual's intentions.

Perceived Behavioral Control

Behavioral intentions are influenced by the ease with which they believe they can perform the behavior.

Persuasion

The process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors

Central Route

Occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts.

Peripheral Route

Occurs when interested people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness, status, and the length of the message

Attractiveness

• People tend to like people who are like them! Can influence persuasion by making individuals more favorable towards a message or speaker, often affecting their beliefs and attitudes.

Primacy Effect

Other things can be equal, information presented first usually has the most influence

Recency Effect

Information presented last sometimes has the most influece

What are the types of conformity?

• Acceptance

• Compliance

• Obedience

What is acceptance?

Occurs when there is genuine belief that a group is right and you act accordingly

What is compliance?

involves publicly acting according to an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing

What is obedience

Involves to acting according to a direct order or command

What is the chameleon effect?

Mimicking someone else’s behavior

• happens unconsciously

Breaking Unanimity

Observing another’s dissent - even when it is wrong - can increase our own independence.

Cohesion

extent to which members of a group are bound together

• more cohesion = more power