163 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
163 lines
7.9 KiB
Markdown
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# 4. Attitudes
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> PSYG2504 Social Psychology
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*Our <u>evaluations</u> of any aspects of the social world (including people, objects and ideas).*
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Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond favorably or unfavorably to objects, people, and events
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## Attitudes
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**Three components of attitude:**
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### Affectively Based Attitude
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*An attitude based more on people’s feelings and values.*
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Regarding the positive and negative feelings regarding the stimulus.
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People vote more with their hearts than their minds.
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We feel strongly attracted to something (or a person), despite the negative belief about him/her (e.g. knowing that the person is a “bad influence”).
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### Behaviorally Based Attitude
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*An attitude based on observations of how one behaves toward an object.*
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Based on observations of how one behaviors toward an object.
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Do you like Apple products? If you use many Apple products, you may think you really like this brand.
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### Cognitively Based Attitude
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*An attitude based on people’s beliefs about the properties of an attitude object.*
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Implicit attitudes are rooted in people’s childhood experiences, while explicit attitudes are formed in recent experiences (Rudman, Phelan & Heppen, 2007).
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- **Explicit attitudes**
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Consciously endorse and easily to report
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E.g. I dislike people who are always late
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- **Implicit attitudes**
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Exist outside of conscious awareness
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Test by Implicit Association Test (IAT)
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### Attitudes influence Cognitions
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IAT: a test that measures the speed with which people can pair a target face (e.g. Black/White, old/young; Asian/White) with positive or negative stimuli (e.g. the words honest or evil) reflecting unconscious (implicit) prejudices.
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People respond more quickly when white faces are paired with positive words and vice versa.
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https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/education.html
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## Attitudes formation
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### Social learning
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*The process that we acquire new information, forms of behavior, or attitudes from other people.*
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i.e. by interacting with others, or observing others’ behaviors (imitation)
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Social learning occurs in three processes:
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- Classical conditioning (learning based on association)
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- Instrumental/operant conditioning (rewards)
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- Observational learning
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### Classical conditioning
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*A basic form of learning in which one stimulus, initially neutral, acquires the capacity to evoke reactions through repeated pairing with another stimulus.*
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### Instrumental/operant conditioning
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*A form of learning whereby a behavior followed by a positive response is more likely to be repeated.*
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E.g. Insko (1965) showed that participants’ responses to an attitude survey were influenced by positive feedback on the responses they gave a week earlier.
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Reinforcing one’s attitudes with positive feedback means that the attitudes are more likely to survive and be expressed on other occasions.
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### Observational learning
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*A basic form of learning in which individuals acquire new forms of behavior as a result of observing others.*
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## Attitudes predict deliberative behavior
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### Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991)
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Several factors, including subjective norms, attitudes towards the behavior and perceived behavioral control, determine behavioral intentions concerning the behavior, and, in turn, intentions strongly determine whether the behavior is performed.
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![Picture1.jpg](https://photo-1303301880.cos.ap-guangzhou.myqcloud.com/2024/05/11/663f827e3d12e.jpg)
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## Why does action/behaviour affect our attitude?
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### Cognitive dissonance
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*The discomfort that is caused when two cognitions conflict, or when our behavior conflicts with our attitudes.*
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Dissonance is most painful, and we are most motivated to reduce it, when one of the dissonant cognitions challenge our self-esteem (Aronson, 1969)
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#### Three ways to reduce dissonance:
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- Changing our behavior to make it consistent with the cognition/attitude.
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- Attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognition/attitude.
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- Attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions.
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#### Less-leads-to-more effect
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*Less reasons or rewards for an action often leads to greater attitude change.*
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**Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment: **
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Performing a dull task for an hour: turning wooden knobs.
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Effect of preconceptions on performance.
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Manipulation: \$1, \$20 or no lie.
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Results?
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#### Insufficient Justification
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*The less incentive one has for performing a counter-attitudinal behavior, the more dissonance is experienced.*
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Needs to reduce the dissonance internally Vs Overjustification effect.
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The effect of promising a reward for doing what one already likes to do
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the person may now see the reward, rather than intrinsic interest, as the motivation for performing the task.
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Children promised a reward for playing an interesting puzzle or toy
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**Four conditions to produce dissonance:**
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1. The person has to realize that the *inconsistency has negative consequences* – e.g. the smokers realize smoking causes ill health
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2. The person has to *take responsibility* for the action – e.g. smokers are freely responsible for the decision to smoke
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3. The person has to *experience physiological arousal* – e.g. smoking causes anxiety as it could cause ill health
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4. The person has to *attribute the feeling of physiological arousal to the action itself* - e.g. smokers need to be able to link the feeling and the behaviour
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#### Alternative strategies to resolve/reduce dissonance
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- Change the behaviour to more consistent with our attitude.
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E.g. smoking fathers quit smoking.
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- Acquiring new information to support our behaviour.
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E.g. finding evidence that smoking away from the children would do no harm.
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- Deciding that the dissonance is not important.
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Smoking in the presence of children is not important.
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#### Indirect methods to reduce dissonance
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**To restore positive self-evaluations:**
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*Self-affirmation – restoring positive self-evaluations that are threatened by the dissonance.*
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E.g. Smoking father does not focus on his smoking behavior; but a responsible father as he earns the living.
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#### Dissonance can be a tool for beneficial changes in behavior
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*Hypocrisy induction – The arousal of dissonance by having individuals make statements that run counter to their behaviors and then reminding them of the inconsistency between what they advocated and their behavior.*
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The purpose is to lead individuals to more responsible behavior.
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Aronson, Fried, & Stone (1991); Stone et al. (1994)
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Asking college students to compose a speech describing the dangers of AIDS, advocating the use of condoms (safe sex)
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Group 1: students merely composed the arguments
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Group 2: after composing the arguments, the students were to recite them in front of a video camera and were told that the audience were high school students
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Highest dissonance: Group 2
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### Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972)
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*When we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer our attitudes from our behavior and the circumstances in which this behavior occurs.*
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e.g. You choose to eat oranges from a basket of seven kinds of fruit and somebody asks you how you feel about oranges.
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For 10 years the Cognitive dissonance theory was the only theoretical interpretation of effects of behaviors on attitude change.
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Self-perception theory and cognitive dissonance theory make similar predictions but for different reasons.
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Same prediction on Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1957) experiment.
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#### Why the actions affect the attitudes?
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- Cognitive dissonance theory – we justify our behavior to reduce the internal discomfort
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- Self-perception theory – we observe the behavior and make reasonable inferences about our attitude
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#### Both theories may be correct:
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- Self-perception theory seems more applicable when people are unfamiliar with the issues or the issues are vague, minor, or uninvolving
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- Cognitive dissonance theory seems more applicable to explaining people’s behavior concerning controversial, engaging, and enduring issues
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