Download Attitudes

Social Psychology
What Is Social Psychology?
• how our thoughts, feelings, and behavior
are affected by others.
The four “A”s
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Attitudes
Attributions
Attraction
Authority and Aggression
Attitudes
• tendency to think, feel, or act positively or
negatively toward object
• can drive behavior in absence of reward
• “neat room, neat kids”
• Components:
• cognitive
• emotional
• behavioral
When Is Behavior Consistent
with Attitude?
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thoughts and feelings agree
behavioral agrees with subjective norms
can do something
attitude acquired by direct experience with
object
Attitudes
Formation
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argumentation
reinforcement
pairing
mere exposure
observation
Change
• cognitive dissonance
• baby steps
• latitudes of
acceptance/rejection
• sequential
• foot in door
• door in face
• low reactance, no
behavioral restrictions
Next
Elaboration Likelihood Model of
Attitude Change
Back
Cognitive
Dissonance
and Attitude
Change
Back
What Influences Attitude Change?
• Source
• trusted
• likable
• authority
• Target
• low ego-involvement
• no threat to esteem
• little experience in defending positions
• Message
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fear attack
unsignalled
two-sided
rhetorical questions (“Don’t you think that”)
well organized
examples not statistics
redundancy
What Are Stereotypes?
• perceptions, beliefs, and expectations a
person has about members in some group
• effects of stereotypes on behavior can be
automatic and unconscious
Kinds of Stereotypes
• auto-stereotype (what the “out group”
thinks about themselves)
• 50% of blacks in USA have negative
stereotypes about themselves
• stereotype threat
• meta-stereotype (what “in-group” believes
the “out-group” is thinking about the “ingroup”)
What Is Prejudice?
• attitude toward an individual based solely
on the person’s group membership
• behavioral component is discrimination
• often not based on direct experience
Why?
• prejudice might serve to increases one’s
sense of security
• prejudice linked with authoritarianism
Explicit Prejudice
• Blatant Prejudice Items
• ‘Would you personally mind or not mind if a
suitably qualified aboriginal person was
appointed as your boss?’
• “Subtle” Prejudice Items
• ‘If aboriginals living would only try harder, they
could be as well off as other Canadians’.
Explicit and Implicit
• Explicit prejudice operates in a conscious
mode
• self-report
• bogus pipeline
• Implicit stereotypes are automatic activation
of negative traits in memory
• priming
• IAT
Studies of Implicit Stereotyping
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Is it a word or nonword?
Categories = black and white
Traits = positive and negative
White participants
Reaction times measured after prime (word ‘black’ vs
‘white’)
Reaction times to positive and negative
traits following black and white primes
1200
1150
milliseconds
1100
Black
White
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
Positive traits
Negative traits
Trait valence
Dovidio et al. (1986)
IAT
• https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to
Freedom
• “No one is born hating another person because
of the colour of his skin, or his background, or
his religion. People must learn to hate, and if
they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love
. . .”