Download Unit 4: Social Psychology - Ms. Anderson

UNIT 4: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Essential Task 4-2: Discuss attitude formation and how attitudes change with specific attention to
schema, primacy effect, cognitive dissonance and the central and peripheral routes to persuasion.
Fundamental
Attribution
Error
Self-Serving
Bias
Attribution
Just-World
Hypothesis
We are
here
Individualistic
vs.
Collectivistic
Culture
Cognitive
Dissonance
Attitudes
and
Persuasion
Routes to
Persuasion
Unit 12:
Social
Psychology
Impact
of
Others
on You
Conformity
Schema
Attraction
InGroup/OutGroup
Group
Behavior
Compliance
Group
Polarization
Group
Think
Social Cognition: How you think about people
◦ Impression Formation – how do you construct your social
cognition?
◦ Primacy effect
◦ Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions
◦ We are “cognitive misers”
◦ Self-fulfilling prophecy
◦ A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the
expectations
◦ “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile
◦ Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains
◦ Schemata
◦ Stereotypes
Impression Formation
◦Schemata
◦Ready-made categories
◦Allow us to make inferences about others (good for
cognitive misers)
◦Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember
information
◦We will remember characteristics of our schema that
weren’t there
Impression Formation
◦Stereotypes
◦ A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a
social category
◦ It is usually unfair
◦ Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance,
place of residence, membership in a group or organization
◦ Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies
Attitudes
◦ The Nature of Attitudes
◦ Relatively stable
◦ Beliefs – facts and general knowledge
◦ Feelings – love, hate, like, dislike
◦ Behaviors – inclination to approach, avoid, buy
◦ Self-monitoring
◦ High self-monitors look for cues about how they are expected to behave
◦ Makes using attitudes to predict behavior difficult
◦ Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making
prediction easier
Attitude Development
◦Many factors contribute to the development of
attitudes
◦Imitation
◦Reward
◦Teachers
◦Peers
◦Mass media
Attitudes Can Affect Action
◦ Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because
other factors, including the external situation, also influence
behavior.
Attitude Change
◦Process of persuasion
◦Must get and maintain the person’s attention (Sex and
humor and sex and then some more funny sex)
◦Must comprehend the message
◦Comprehension leads to acceptance
Attitude Change
◦Communication model – how the message gets
comprehended and then accepted
◦ Source (credibility is key)
◦ Message itself (more effective when it acknowledges other
arguments and then gives novel ones – a little fear is good)
◦ Medium of communication (writing good for complex, media
better for audience with a gist, face-to-face is the best)
◦ Audience’s characteristics
Routes a Message Can Take to Persuade You
◦ Central Route to Persuasion
◦ when the attitude of the audience, or individual, is changed as a result of
thoughtful consideration of the message.
◦ Peripheral Route to Persuasion occurs when positive or negative cues
(such as images, sounds, or language) are associated with the object of
the message.
◦ An advertisement featuring a song that the audience member likes, or a person
whom the audience member sees as appealing might cause a person to have
positive feelings toward the brand, without that person ever thinking deeply
about the message.
Audience Characteristics
◦Most difficult to change if
◦ Strong commitment to present attitude
◦ Attitude is shared by others
◦ The attitude has been held since early childhood
◦Up to a point the larger the difference between message and
audience the more likely attitudinal change will occur
◦Low self-esteem more likely to change
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
◦ (Leon Festinger 1957)
◦ Occurs whenever a person has two contradictory cognitions or beliefs
at the same time. They are dissonant, each one implies the opposite of
the other.
◦ The less coerced and more responsible we feel for an action the more
dissonance. The more dissonance the more likely we are to change
our attitude
◦ It creates an unpleasant cognitive tension and the person tries to
resolve in the following ways:
Resolution of Cognitive Dissoance
1. Sometimes changing your attitude is the easiest way to
◦
solve this.
Example: I am a loyal friend, but yesterday I gossiped about my friend
Chris . . . Well I can’t change my action . . . but I don’t want to change my
view of myself, so my attitude about Chris must be wrong. He is more of
an acquaintance than a friend.
2. Increase the number of consonant elements – the number of
thoughts that back one side.
◦
It was awesome gossip
3. Reduce the importance of one of both of the sides
◦
The person I gossiped with won’t really tell that many people.