Social Psychology

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Social Psychology

• Attitudes and Attitude Change

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Attitudes

• Enduring orientations with cognitive, affective,
  and behavioral components.
• Cognitive
• Affective
• Behavioral
• A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction
  toward something or someone, exhibited in ones
  beliefs, feelings or intended behavior

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Attitude Development

• External Stimuli
• The Target
• Intervening Processes
• The Response

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Intervening Process Learning

• Attitudes as Habits Carl Hovland (1953)
• Processes
• Association
• Reinforcement
• Imitation

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Association

• Message Learning
• Weak relationships
• Motivation
• Transfer of Affect
• Associations between two objects

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Reinforcement

• Rewarded for attitudes that fit with values of
  group, society, culture
• May initially change behavior
• Then accept the underlying value

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Reinforcement Incentive Theory

• Adopt attitude that maximizes gains
• Consider importance and value
• Cognitive response theory
• Respond to proposition with thoughts attitude
• Expectancy value theory
• Consider likelihood value

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Imitation

• Model our behaviors (and related attitudes) after
  others
• Aronson OLeary
• Water conservation
• Cialdini
• Littering

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Intervening Process Cognitive Consistency

• Gestalt influence Seek coherence
• Attitudes must be interpreted in context
• Balance theory (Heider, 1958)
• Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)

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Balance Theory

• Key
• P Person (self)
• O Other
• X Attitude Object (issue, person, etc.)
• Unit or Sentiment Relations
• sign Link/Like
• - sign No Link/Dislike
• Triads can be
• Balanced signs multiply to positive ()
• Unbalanced signs multiply to negative (-)

or -
P
O
or -
or -
X
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Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger)

• Cognitions can have 3 relations
• Irrelevant
• Consonant
• Dissonant

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Dissonance

• Dissonance A feeling of discomfort that is
  caused by holding 2 or more inconsistent
  cognitions
• Dissonance and importance

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How do you get rid of it?

• How do you restore a sense of consistency?
• Change your behavior
• To be consistent
• To compensate
• Change your cognitions
• Add consonant cognitions (mis-remember things,
  rationalize your behavior)
• Alter importance of cognitions

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory Study Example
(Festinger Carlsmith, 1959) Insufficient
Justification

• Participants are asked to engage in a very boring
  task
• After that, they either
• Were told the study was over
• Were paid 1 to lie to another participant about
  the task
• Were paid 20 to lie to another participant about
  the task
• Then, participants (real) attitudes about the
  task were measured

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Applications

• Therapy
• Cults
• Festinger When Prophecy Fails
• Daily situations

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Self Perception Theory

• Bem (1972)
• Rational cognitive process
• Behaviorist
• Infer attitudes for others
• Zanna Cooper (1974)

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Consistency Reactions to Discrepancy

• Modes of resolution
• Derogating the source
• Distorting the message
• Blanket Rejection

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Elaboration Likelihood Model(Petty Cacioppo,
1986)

• Two routes
• Central
• Based on thoughtful consideration of facts
• Peripheral
• Based on thoughtless affective evaluations
• Leads to acceptance of weak messages
• Route depends on motivation opportunity

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Controlling Cognitive Responses

• Counterarguing
• Active processing
• Implicit or explicit
• Verbal or nonverbal
• Depends on quantity and quality

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ELM Communicator

• Credibility
• Expert
• Trustworthy
• Reciprocity
• Reference

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ELM Communication

• Discrepancy
• Motive arousal
• Anger
• Fear

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ELM Target

• Ego involvement
• Commitment
• Issue involvement
• Response involvement
• Defense McGuire
• Supportive
• Inoculation

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ELM Situation

• Forewarning of position
• Forewarning of intent
• Distraction

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Cults

• Changed norms
• Gradual
• Powerful leader
• Unquestioned authority

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Applications

• War
• Token economies
• Presentations
• Office politics