Social Psychology: Attitudes and Persuasion

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the social psychology of attitudes, models of persuasion, cognitive dissonance, and behavioral ethics based on lecture slides.

Attitude

A positive, negative, or mixed reaction to a person, object, or idea that is typically formed quickly, automatically, and implicitly.

Likert Scale

A self-report attitude scale where respondents rate their level of agreement on a continuum, such as from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree' or on a 1-to-10 numerical scale.

Bogus Pipeline

A covert self-report measurement technique based on the idea that individuals provide truer answers when they believe they are connected to an operating lie detector.

Facial Electromyography (EMG)

A covert physiological measurement technique that detects subtle, nonverbal emotional reactions and attitudes by recording electrical activity in facial muscles.

Evaluative Conditioning

The process by which an attitude is formed or altered toward a stimulus by pairing it with another positive or negative stimulus, frequently seen in advertising.

Theory of Planned Behavior

A model stating that an individual's attitude toward a behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control combine to determine intentions, which then directly predict behavior.

Persuasion

The process by which attitudes are changed through communication.

Central Route to Persuasion

The persuasion process wherein an analytical and motivated person thinks carefully and critically about a communication and is influenced primarily by the strength and quality of the arguments.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

The persuasion process in which a recipient lacks the ability or motivation to think critically and is instead influenced by superficial cues or simple heuristics.

Ability; motivation

The route of persuasion in which someone decides to take depends on whether the recipient of the message has the ____ and ____ to take the central route.

Source, message, audience

What three factors go into how a recipient processes a persuasive message?

Self-Validation Hypothesis

The premise that confidence in one's own generated thoughts can increase or decrease persuasion depending on whether those generated thoughts are favorable or unfavorable.

Sleeper Effect

A delayed increase in the persuasive impact of a message from a noncredible source, occurring reliably when the audience learns the discounting source cue only after receiving the message.

Primacy Effect

A serial position phenomenon in informational strategies where items or arguments presented first on a list are recalled and evaluated better than those presented in the middle.

Recency Effect

A serial position phenomenon where arguments or items learned at the end of a list are recalled best because they were encountered most recently.

Fear Appeals

Persuasive messages designed to motivate attitude and behavior change through threat, which are only effective when paired with clear, reassuring instructions on how to cope with the danger.

Subliminal Messages

Stimuli presented outside of conscious awareness that can subtly alter mood, perceptions, or preferences and reinforce preexisting desires.

Need for Cognition (NC)

A personality trait reflecting the extent to which an individual naturally enjoys, seeks out, and reflects on effortful cognitive processing and information.

Self-Monitoring

A personality characteristic describing the extent to which people regulate their behavior across social settings out of concern for their public self-presentation.

Regulatory Fit

The alignment between a message framing (such as promotion-oriented vs. prevention-oriented) and the recipient's psychological orientation, enhancing persuasiveness.

Cognitive Dissonance

The unpleasant state of psychological tension aroused when an individual freely engages in an attitude-discrepant behavior with some foresight of its consequences.

Effort Justification

The tendency to alter one's attitudes and come to like something more in order to justify significant suffering, time, or resources invested into an outcome.

Cooper and Fazio's Four Steps of Cognitive Dissonance

The sequential conditions required to arouse and resolve dissonance: (1) notice a mismatch, (2) feel responsible, (3) experience discomfort, and (4) reduce the tension.

Behavioral Ethics

The study of how individuals behave when facing temptations to cheat, steal, plagiarize, commit fraud, or engage in other unethical conduct.

Ethical Dissonance

Inner turmoil and threat to self-esteem experienced when an individual violates their own personal moral code.

Self-Affirmation

The process of revalidating the overall integrity of the self-concept, which relieves the psychological discomfort of cognitive dissonance caused by attitude-discrepant behavior.