PSYCH 3325 Exam 2 OSU

Three Elements of Attitudes

Affect, cognition, behavior

Does attitude predict behavior?

Early studies: No - Lapiete and Wicker

Later studies: Yes

Lapiere's 1934 Study

Prejudice. Refusal of service for Chinese people. Took Chinese friends to different hotels, sent letter ahead of time to access attitude. Then brought them in and saw in difference in attitude and behavior. / Flawed bc rules vs actuality

Correspondence

Match specificity to measure attitude & the behavior. Result from later studies on attitude and behavior. (If testing a specific behavior, measure a specific attitude)

$20 / $1 Study

Festinger

Participants do extremely dull tasks for one hour then tell next participant how amazing the experiment was. IV either paid $20 or $1 to do so. DV: Report attitude after justification.

$20 - not guilty, don't need to change attitude

$1 - cognitive dissonance, changed their attitude (internal)

$1 had most attitude change

Blender Study

Brehm

Women asked to rank household items then choose one to take home

Group 1: easy decision (blender vs spoon) - low dissonance

Group 2: decision was hard (blender vs iron) - high dissonance

After ranking again, group 2 had more positive change for item they chose. Changed attitude

Initiation Study

Aronson & Mills

College students join group to discuss psychology of sex, had to do a screening

1. 1/3 demanding & unpleasant

2. 1/3 only mildly unpleasant

3. 1/3 no screening at all ( control)

severe initiation ended up liking the group more

Persuasion

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

Elaboration Likelihood Model

Petty & Cacioppo

Two routes of Persuasion

1. Central Route (systematic)

2. Peripheral Route (heuristic)

-choice of route is based on how much elaboration people will spend given to the message (thought)

Factors that lead to central route

1. Personal relevance to the message

2. Our knowledge of the issue

3. If we are responsible for action

(Long lasting change!)

Factors that lead to peripheal route

1. Unmotivated, do not have ability to listen

2. Distracted, tired, busy, not relevant to us

(Changeable attitudes!)

Two Routes to Persuasion Study

Petty

Exposed students to message about senior comprehensive exams

IV: Participants either shown strong or weak message in favor

DV: Level of persuasion

Next: participants exposed to either 3 weak or 9 weak arguments, 9 are more persuaded because more

Sleeper Effect

Forgetting credibility overtime so increased persuasive impact

People mix confidence and credibility

Message quality

-Be straightforward, clear, logical

-Explicit conclusions

-Refute opposing argument, don't be too extreme

-Argue against own self-interest

Message vividness

-Make message stand out

-Emotional better than cold facts

-Can be used deceptively by anecdote that is an outlier

Identifiable Victim Effect

Tendency to be more moved by a story of one victim that abstract # of people

Fear appeal levels

Low: no effect

moderate: most attitude change

high: shut out message

Individualistic vs Collectivist

Focus on individual vs group message, harmony

James Vicary

Created subliminal messages (go get popcorn & corn)

Made it all up

Supraliminal persuasive messages

Conscious awareness - much more likely to create lasting attitude change

Conformity

Tendency to change our perceptions, opinions, & behaviors in ways consistent with group norms

Norms

explicit or implicit "rule" for how you should be behaving

Informational Influence

Influence due to belief that others are behaving correctly

Private conformity

Truly accept the position taken by others (walk on right side b/c I agree with them)

The Sheriff Study

Info influence

Subjects told doing a visual task to look at moving light on other side of the room

Autokinetic effect: light looks like its moving but its not

After days, subjects believed the norms and kept them

Normative influence

Influence due to fear of being negative social consequences of appearing deviant

-Think other people are wrong and the task is ambiguous

-arousal and discomfort

Public conformity

Superficial change in behavior w/o changing true behavior, produced by real or imagined group pressure

Asch Line Study

Normative Influence

Subject walks into room of other subjects (actually confederate)

-Told visual perception task -they would be judging the lengths of lines

-Subject will confirm the wrong answer that other people do

Sheriff's study vs Asch's

Sheriff: kept same opinion from with others, private conformity

Asch's: used own opinion when in private, public conformity

Pluralistic ignorance

when people misperceive social norms - if we think everyone else drinks, then we will want to conform to that norm (even if not true)

Compliance

Tendency to change all behavior in response to a direct request from other people

-Sales techniques

Foot in the door technique

2 Steps

1. Get them to agree to small, trivial request

2. Ask for a bigger request

They will feel pressure to be consistent with past behaviors

Household rating study

Foot in the door

-Telephoned homeowners and asked about products they had

-Telephoned homeowners and asked if they can come to their home and take inventory

Low-balling technique

Secure agreements w/ request, then increase request w/ hidden costs (buying a car)

Door in the face technique

1. Ask large first (impossibly huge and unreasonable)

2. When refused, ask for smaller (what you really wanted)

-creates perceptual contrast: request seems smaller and you feel listened to

-creates reciprocal concessions: other person compromised so you should too

Student Volunteer Study

Cialdini

First asked college students if they would volunteer w/ juvenile delinquents once a week for two years, then asked for one trip to the zoo

"That's not all" technique

Infomercial

Make unreasonable offer, then before you say no, jump in and make a better offer immediately (difference in time from door in face)

Obedience

When behavior is influenced by direct commands of authority figure

Milgrim Paradigm

Shock, learner & teacher study

65% continued to end, everyone to 300 volts

Variations of Milgrim Study:

-Gender no effect

-Office building, familiar context, not in Yale lab

-Victim in same room

-participants have their hand touching

-experimenter far away

-experimenter ordinary person

-2 confederates rebelled

Social facilitation

How does presence of others affect our behavior?

Tripplets

More people, better performance. Early study w conflicts

Zajonc

Presence of other people, increase arousal, increase dominant response

-Different people react differently to same situation

-If you like to dance, you'll perform better with other people. Opposite if not

Cockroach study

Roaches performed worse at complex turn with audience

Performed faster with easy run with audience

Pool player study

Michaels

above average: better in front of others

below average: worse in front of others

Mere presence

Heightens our awareness & vigilance, either in good or bad way

Evaluation Apprehension Theory

Others must be seen as potential evaluations for facilitation to occur

Distraction Conflict Theory

Others must distract away from task at hand

Social loafing

People exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal

-Not working as hard w/o getting in trouble with group

-Singing happy birthday in crowd, quietly bc other people doing it for you

-When efforts our pool, can't determine your individual contribution

Latane @ OSU

IV: make noise, either collective or as an individual

IV: type of noise (clapping vs cheering)

DV: sound, went down with 4-6

Group think

Faulty thinking by group members in which critical scrutiny of issues is subverted by social pressures to reach consensus

-motivated to agree

Characteristics of group think

-High cohesiveness

-Members are similar

-Group is isolated from others

-Directive leader

-high stress: if the group is threatened, time pressure

Group polarization

Tendency of group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals

-gambling, bigger + bigger, bets w/ others

-whichever way group is leaning, discussion pushes further in that direction

Deindividualization

Loss of a persons sense of individuality & diminished self-regulation when people are in a large group

-Lose personal identity: become anonymous, merge into larger group

People feel less accountable for actions

-Those who commit crimes are less likely to be caught

-No longer self-aware

Characteristics that promote deindividualization

-Looking similar

-Disguise

-Individual decision making minimized

-Appeals to group cohesiveness

Stanford Prison Study

-Randomly assigned prisoner/guard in mock prison

-Those given role of guard became very aggressive

-Prisoners became passive, helpless, withdrawn