Attitude Formation and Change Notes

Attitude Formation and Change

Stereotypes and Implicit Attitudes

  • Attitudes:
    • Settled ways of thinking or feeling about someone or something.
    • Reflected in a person's behavior.
    • Influenced by factors like stereotypes.
  • Stereotypes:
    • Generalized concepts about a group.
    • Mental shortcuts (heuristics) reducing cognitive load.
    • Often develop into schemas or mental frameworks.
    • Mostly negative and exaggerated.
    • Example: Believing all elderly people are slow and forgetful.
  • Effects of Stereotypes:
    • Cause and result of bias.
    • Reinforce biased perceptions and experiences.
    • Prejudiced Attitudes: Forming unfair opinions based on group membership.
    • Discriminatory Behaviors: Acting unfairly based on stereotypes.
    • Understanding stereotypes helps mitigate their negative impact.

Stereotypes and Prejudice & Discrimination

  • Stereotypes can lead to prejudice.
  • Prejudice: A negative attitude in advance of experience with a person or group.
    • Can create strong negative emotions, sometimes leading to hatred.
    • Can lead to discrimination.
  • Discrimination: Hostile behavior towards a rejected group.

Implicit Attitudes

  • Attitudes held without conscious awareness.
  • Example: Unconscious preference for one's own race.
  • Research Findings on Implicit Attitudes:
    • Just-World Phenomenon: Belief that people get what they deserve, justifying inequality.
    • Out-Group Homogeneity Bias: Tendency to see members of other groups as having unfavorable attributes.
    • In-Group Bias: Tendency to view own group as having favorable attributes and likability.
    • Both biases can lead to discriminatory behaviors.
    • Ethnocentrism: Believing one's own culture/group is superior.
  • Recognizing implicit attitudes promotes fair treatment.

Implicit Attitudes Study

  • Study from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago.
  • Applicants with ethnic-sounding names were less likely to be contacted by employers, even with identical resumes.
  • Gender bias: Men favored for automotive repair jobs over equally qualified women.

The Just-World Phenomenon

  • Belief that the world is a fair place where people get what they deserve.
  • Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.
  • Reduces anxiety when facing difficult realities, such as unhoused people.

Belief Perseverance

  • Clinging to beliefs even when faced with contradictory evidence.
  • Persistence of a belief despite evidence suggesting it is not accurate.
  • Example: Continuing to believe in a debunked health myth.

Facts, Figures, and Shark Attacks

  • Statistics on shark attacks:
    • 1 in 11.5 million chance of getting attacked by a shark in the United States.
    • 1 in 264 million chance of getting killed by a shark.
    • Higher likelihood of getting killed by a champagne cork.

Confirmation Bias

  • Seeking or interpreting evidence that confirms existing beliefs.
  • Example: Reading only news sources that align with one's political views.
  • Strengthens belief perseverance.
  • Highlighting evidence that supports existing beliefs, even if it means scanning a large population to find limited examples.
  • Ignoring evidence that does not support the belief

Confirmation Bias Practice

  • Venn Diagram overlap question:
    • Best fit for the overlap between "Facts and Evidence" and "Our Beliefs" is "The evidence we believe."

Belief Perseverance vs. Confirmation Bias

  • Belief Perseverance:
    • Once an attitude is developed, it becomes durable.
    • People often ignore evidence that disconfirms their belief.
  • Confirmation Bias:
    • Seeking evidence that supports beliefs and attitudes.
    • Ignoring or dismissing disliked evidence.
    • Seeing what one wants to see.

Cognitive Dissonance Introduction

  • Inconsistency between actions and attitudes can create mental discomfort.
  • Example: Believing in taking care of the planet but buying a coffee in a plastic cup every day.

Cognitive Dissonance

  • Mental discomfort that occurs when actions or attitudes are in conflict.
  • Example: Feeling uneasy about smoking due to knowledge that it is harmful.
  • Conflicts create a state of imbalance, forcing change.
  • Reducing Dissonance:
    • Changing Attitudes: Adjusting beliefs to align with actions (e.g., deciding smoking isn’t as harmful as believed).
    • Changing Actions: Modifying behavior to align with beliefs (e.g., quitting smoking).
  • Understanding cognitive dissonance helps recognize the motivation behind changing beliefs or behaviors to achieve consistency.

Cognitive Dissonance and Coffee

  • Buying coffee every day likely indicates a coffee habit.
  • Believing in protecting the environment, but buying plastic waste every day, can cause dissonance.
  • Result: Change in attitude about coffee cups (e.g., "It’s my one bad habit, and everybody else does it!").

Cognitive Dissonance and Smoking

  • People keep smoking because they are addicted to nicotine.
  • Knowing that smoking can lead to health problems creates dissonance.
  • Reducing dissonance may involve changing beliefs or actions.

Cognitive Dissonance: Belief vs. Action

  • Cognitive Dissonance: Unpleasant tension state; awareness that belief and action are inconsistent.
  • Belief: Smoking cigarettes is unhealthy.
  • Action: I smoke cigarettes.
  • Solution: Change action or change belief.

More Examples of Cognitive Dissonance

  • Wanting to be on a sports team but hating conditioning.
  • Seeing oneself as a kind person but ignoring an unhoused person.
  • Having homework but choosing to spend time on social media.
  • Being against cruelty to animals but enjoying eating them.