Download Unit VII-Social Psychology

Unit VII Lesson 2
Social Cognition: Attitudes,
Impression Formation,
and Attribution
Social Cognition: Attitudes
• Attitude
– Tendency to respond positively or
negatively toward person, object,
idea, or situation
• 3 components of attitude (ABC):
– 1. Affective component
• Emotional
– 2. Behavioral component
• Action taken
– 3. Cognitive component
• Thoughts about person, object or situation
– Attitudes tend to be poor predictors of
actual behavior
Formation of Attitudes
• Three ways to form attitudes:
– 1. Direct contact
• With the person, situation, object, or
idea
– 2. Direct instruction
• From parents or others
– 3. Interaction with others
• Around other people who hold a certain
attitude
• Vicarious Conditioning
– Observation of others’ actions and
reactions (Learned)
Persuasion
• Persuasion
– Attempt to change the belief, opinion,
position, or course
of action of another person
– Done through argument, pleading, or
explanation
• Factors in
persuasion:
1. Source of the
message
2. Message itself
3. Target audience, 4. Medium
Attitude Change:
Persuasion
• Elaboration likelihood model
– People elaborate on the persuasive
message or fail to elaborate on it
– Future actions of those who do elaborate
are more predictable than those who do not
• Central-route processing
– Attending to the content of the message itself
• Peripheral-route processing
– Attending to factors not involved in the
message
– Such as: appearance of the source, length of
the message, and other non-content factors
Cognitive Dissonance
• Discomfort or distress that occurs
when one’s behavior does not
correspond to one’s attitudes
• Creates unpleasant
tension and arousal
• Three choices for
reducing dissonance:
1. Change conflicting behavior to match
attitude
2. Change current conflicting cognition to
justify behavior
3.Form new cognitions to justify behavior
Social Cognition and
Impressions
• Impression formation
• First knowledge a person has
about another person
– Primacy effect
• First impression one has
about a person
• Tends to persist
even in the face of
evidence to the
contrary
Social Cognition and
Social Categorization
• Social categorization
– Automatic, occurs without conscious
awareness
– Is assignment of a person one has just met
to a category
– Based on characteristics person has in
common with other people experienced in
past
• Stereotype
– Set of characteristics believed to be shared
by all members of a particular social
category
Social Cognition and
Social Categorization (2)
• Implicit personality theory
– Assumptions about how different
types of people, personality traits,
and actions are related
– Formed in childhood
– Not necessarily true but form
schemas
• Patterns representing believes about
types of people
• Can become stereotypes
Attributions
• Attribution
– Explaining one’s own behavior and
the behavior of others
– Looks are why certain explanations
are chosen
• Attribution theory
– Situational cause
• Behavior attributed to external factors
• Such as: delays, the action of others
– Dispositional cause
• Behavior attributed to internal factors
• Such as: personality or character
Attributions (2)
• Fundamental attribution error
– actor-observer bias
– Tendency to overestimate influence
of internal factors in determining
behavior of others
• Explain behavior by “What kind of person
he/she is”
– Underestimate situational factors in
determining behavior of others