Social Psych - Cognition?

  • Attitude = an evaluation of some target

  • Attitude rarely predict behavior

  • Theory of Planned Behavior (Azjen & Fishbein) — attitudes interact with other things

  • attitudes + social influence = behavior intention → behavior

  • behavior intention: an attitude specific to a particular behavior (e.g. “its good to recycle”)

  • Attitude are complex, includes:

  • related knowledge

  • pattern of links

  • meta-knowledge

  • accessibility

  • intensity of the attitude

  • ABCs of attitude

  • Affect

  • Behavior

  • Cognition

  • Attitudes are structured by uncertainty and ambivalence

  • uncertainty: meta knowledge about the accuracy of

    attitudes/knowledge

  • ambivalence: holding potentially conflicting attitudes or discounting the validity of one’s attitudes

  • Working Knowledge

  • among all the conflicting overlapping diverse cognitions emotions and behaviors surrounding an attitude