Sociology 2

Attitudes


Do attitudes predict behavior?

  • It depends 

    • When social pressures on what we say or do are minimal, attitudes can be more accurate

Can you assess attitudes?

  • How can you measure people's true attitudes?

  • Implicit attitudes are real and predict people's behavior when social strain/expectation is low

  • External, “I hate dentists… nut I go to keep my teeth clean”

Attitudes affect behavior but behaviors also affect attitudes

  • Behaviors drive attitudes

  • Our attitudes follow from our behaviors (as much as they cause them)

Roles

  • Formal or informal rules defining how a person in a particular position ought to behave

  • Stanford Prison Experiment (Beware of putting all blame onto peoples personalities, take other factors like environment and roles into account) 

Cognitive Dissonance: Internally justifying one's behavior when external justifications are weak

  • When external justifications are strong, there is no inconsistency

  • Inconsistency creates motivation either to

    • Ignore inconsistency

    • Change behavior to be consistent with attitude

    • Change attitude to become consistent with behavior

Self-Perception Theory

  • We infer our attitudes by observing our behavior (especially when attitudes are weak or ambiguous to begin with) 

  • Facial feedback (a manual smile created by holding a pen in one's mouth makes them happier in the long run)

  • Initial extreme behaviors foster extreme attitudes 

Balance Theory

  • We are motivated to create and keep a balance between our attitudes towards ourselves, other people, and a topic

Two kinds of conformity

  • Informational influence

    • Conform because we want to be correct

  • Normative influence

    • Conform because we want to be accepted by a group

Obedience

  • Compliance that occurs when we change our behavior in response to a directive by an authority figure

The power of the situation

  • We underestimate how much control situations and people have over up 

Obedience to Authority

Witnessing disagreement affects obedience to authority 

Individual differences

No difference

  • Gender

  • Political orientation

    Less obedient

  • Higher educated

More obedient

  • Military service

  • Christians

Elaboration LIeklihood Model

  • Central Route

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

    • When a subject is self-relevant to a person, this route is generally much more effective, (a person already interested in health might be more likely to read all the effects of a medication)

  • Peripheral Route

    • Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues, such as a speakers attractiveness

    • When a subject is self relevant to a person, peripheral routes don’t matter as much, (a person who does not care about the type of soda they want to drink might pick a soda based on a celebrity who they saw drink it)

What paths lead to persuasion?

  • Different paths for different purposes

    • Peripheral route: Superficial and temporary attitude change

    • Central route: more durable and more likely to influence behavior, might include more complex messages

Communicator credibility

  • Expertise and trustworthiness

    • Speak confidently

    • Speech rate/accent/pauses

      • People who speak faster are generally deemed more credible than a slow speaker

      • A person with a more familiar accent might be deemed more credible

    • Eye contact

    • Arguing against own self-interest

Communicator Attraction

  • Interpersonal attraction

    • Similarity-Liking

  • Physical attraction

    • Halo effect

Channel of Communication

  • Active experience strengthens attitudes

    • Repetition

The Audience

  • Uninvolved audiences use peripheral cues

    • In order to push viewers to the central route they have to be engaged

      • Rhetorical questions

      • Multiple speakers

      • Personal responsibility/ increase of intrinsic motivation to get them to want to persuade themselves in a way

      • Repeat the message

      • Mindfulness

Mindfulness

One of the best ways to switch someone to a central route is to make them mindful and aware of the situation that they are in

How to avoid persuasion: inoculation theory

  • Inoculating (immunizing) people to weak persuasive arguments will provide resistance to later persuasion

How to persuade others

Pique Technique

Peak someone’s interest with something random or specific (Can you spare any change? vs Can you spare 37 cents? 37 cents gets more responses)

Door in the face technique

Begin with an extreme request that’s rejected, and then you follow with a smaller request that you planned to make all along

Underlying mechanism: contrast effect

A cognitive bias where perception of one stimulus is influenced by exposure to another stimulus.

Key Factors:

  • Contrast: Differences between stimuli affect perception.

  • Comparison: Evaluating items against each other enhances differences.

  • Perception: Alters judgment based on relative positioning.

Implications: This may lead to misjudgments and skewed perceptions.

Foot in the door technique

A smaller request is made, then after people agree you make a much larger request

Lowball technique

Ask person to commit to an attractive offer, then change the terms of the deal before the offer is finalized

Norm of reciprocity

People would send Christmas cards to. a baseball player after he sent them one aa

Social Validation

We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct

  • Laugh tracks

  • creating lines outside of nightclubs

Scarcity

  • Limited-number tactic

    • Only so many left!

  • Deadlines

    • Must buy today!

  • Competition

  • Romance

  • Realtor “Other interest”