Chapter 4: Attitudes, Behaviors, & Persuasions

Chapter 4: Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion 

Exploring Attitudes: 

• Attitude- our relatively enduring evaluation of something (ABC’S) (not caring about something is an attitude)

• Attitude strength- the importance of an attitude- assessed by how quickly it comes to mind 

• The principle of Attitude Consistency- the ABCs of affect, behavior, and cognition are normally in line with each other. 

• Theory of Planned Behavior- outlines important variables that affected the attitude- behavior relationship (the stronger the attitude, the stronger the behavior)

• Low self monitor (attitudes are more likely to guide your behavior)

• Self- monitoring- individuals differences in the tendency to attend to social cues and to adjust one’s behavior to one’s social environment (what other people do or say) 

• High self-monitors- tend to attempt to blend into the social situation in order to be liked. (wanting to keep peace; less likely to have attitudes) 

• Low self-monitors- are less likely to do so (more likely to have attitudes)

Changing Attitudes Through Persuasion:

• Self- Perception- occurs when we use our own behavior as a guide to help us determine our own thoughts and feelings. (being honest with ourselves; inspecting our own thoughts and behaviors)

• Insufficient Justification- behavior is governed by the situation but we don't realize that the situation is the cause

• Overjustification- when we view our behavior as caused by the situation, leading us to discount the extent to which our behavior was actually caused by our own interest in it. 

Effective Communicators: 

Attractive, similar, trustworthy, likeable, experts, speak quickly, against self-interest. 

• Sleeper effect- attitude change that occurs over time when we remember the content but not the source

• Spontaneous Message Processing- we focus on whatever is most obvious or enjoyable, without much attention to the message itself

• Thoughtful Message Processing- when we think about how the message relates to our own beliefs and goals and involves our careful consideration of whether the persuasion attempt is valid or invalid. 

Preventing Persuasion:

Forewarning- giving people a chance to develop a resistance to persuasion. 

Inoculation- involves building up defenses against persuasion by mildly attacking the attitude position”

Psychological Reactance- strong emotional response that we experience when we feel that our freedom of choice is being taken away. 

The Experience of Cognitive Dissonance Can Create Attitude Change

Cognitive Dissonance- the discomfort that occurs when we behave in ways that we see as inappropriate, such as when we fail to live up to our own expectations (the anterior cingulate cortex). 

Post-decisional Dissonance- the feeling of regret that may occur after we make an important decision. 

Approaches based on the attitudes-follow-behavior idea

The foot-in-the-door technique: a persuasion attempt in which we first get the target to accept a rather minor request, and then we ask for a larger request. 

The door-in-the-face technique- ask for something large and then decrease request and more likely to get smaller request (target). 

Low-ball technique- a salesperson get a customer’s commitment to the price of a car and then increases the price.

The bait-and-switch technique- someone advertises a product at a very low price and you go to buy the product you wanted has been sold out and then more likely to buy a higher priced product. 

Chapter 5 Perceiving Others: 

• Attributions- the process of assigning causes to behaviors. 

• Person Perception- the process of learning about other people. (Physical characteristics, social category membership)

Prefrontal cortex (active when people make judgments about people)

• Nonverbal Behavior- any type of communication that does not involve speaking. (facial expressions, body language) 

• Central Traits- characteristics that have a very strong influence on our impressions of others.  

• Primacy Effect- the tendency for information that we learn first to be weighted more heavily than is information that we learn later. 

• Recency Effect- information that comes later is given more weight, although much less common than primacy effect. 

• Halo Effect- is the influence of a global positive evaluation of a person on perceptions of their specific traits. 

Inferring Dispositions Using Causal Attribution

• Causal Attribution- process of trying to determine the causes of people’s behavior. 

• Personal/Internal/Dispositional Attribution- when we decide that the behavior was caused primarily by the person. 

• Situational/External Attribution- we may determine that the behavior was caused primarily by the situation.