WHS AP Psychology Unit 12 Social Pyschology Essential

WHS AP Psychology Unit 12: Social Pyschology Essential Task 12 -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 In-Group/Out -Group Behavior Compliance Group Polarization Group Think

Social Cognition: How you think about people? Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition? 1. Primacy effect • Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions • We are “cognitive misers”

Impression Formation 2. 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 • A student who is good with math might do poorly in his class, because the teacher treats him like an idiot.

Impression Formation 3. 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 4. 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

OA Define each of the following terms. Then provide an example for each. 1. Self fulfilling prophecies (689) 2. Social facilitation (657 -658) 3. Social loafing (658) 4. Foot-in-the-door effect (646 -647)

• Social Facilitation : Stronger responses on simple or well learned tasks in the presence of others – Home varsity games • Social Loafing is the tendency for people in a group to exert less effect when pooling their effort towards attaining a common goal. – GROUP PROJECTS (there’s always at least one lazy jerk who doesn’t do anything!) • Foot-in-the-door effect: Small request leads to a Large request. – Can I come in? You want to watch Netflix? • Lowball procedure: low cost leads to commitment, but then adds on additional expenses to make the purchase less of a bargain than originally thought. – Cheap price on surgery, but expensive medicine revisits • Door-in-the-face effect: Deny large to get small. – Great deal for $100! No… well Would you like to try a session for only 20?

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 and Action Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors, including the external situation, also influence behavior. Democratic leaders supported Bush’s attack on Iraq under public pressure. However, they had their private reservations.

Attitudes and Action • Richard La. Pierre • Wrote to owners of hotels and restaurants how they felt about Chinese immigrants and whether or not they would serve them at their business • When he visited the same businesses with Chinese students, the business owners still served them. – 66 hotels and 184 restaurants • Attitudes does not always predict action/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 • When Prophecy Fails (1956) • 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 more dissonance the more likely we are to change our attitude • It creates an unpleasant cognitive tension and the person tries to resolve

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.