Chapter 13 Flashcards

Question

What're the components/dimensions of attitudes?

Answer 1

- - The cognitive component of an attitude is made up of the beliefs people hold about the object of an attitude. The affective component consists of the emotional feelings stimulated by an object of thought. The behavioural component consists of predispositions to act in certain ways toward an attitude object - - Attitudes also vary along several crucial dimensions. These include their strength, accessibility, and ambivalence - - strong attitudes are generally viewed as ones that are firmly held (resistant to change), that are durable over time, and that have a powerful impact on behaviour. The accessibility of an attitude refers to how often one thinks about it and how quickly it comes to mind. Ambivalent attitudes are conflicted evaluations that include both positive and negative feelings about an object of thought. When ambivalence is high, an attitude tends to be more pliable in the face of persuasion. - - When Wallace and colleague reviewed 797 attitude-behaviour studies, they found that the average correlation between attitudes and behaviour was 0.41. That correlation is high enough to conclude that attitudes are a meaningful predictor of actual behaviour, but they do not predict behav- iour nearly as well as most people assume

Answer 2

- - Explicit attitudes are attitudes that we hold consciously and can readily describe. Implicit attitudes are covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle automatic responses over which we have little conscious control. Implicit attitudes were discovered in research on prejudice and their role in various types of prejudice - - in modern societies most people have been taught that prejudicial attitudes are inappropriate and something to be ashamed of. At the same time, however, people grow up in a culture where negative stereotypes about these groups are widely disseminated. Research has shown that these negative ideas can seep into our subconscious mind and contaminate our reactions to others - - Implicit Association Test (IAT); A series of words and pictures are presented onscreen and subjects are urged to respond to these stimuli as quickly and accurately as possible. You measures how quickly people associate carefully chosen pairs of concepts - - Ex. In the first series; press a specific key with their left hand if the stimulus is a black person or a positive word and to press another key with their right hand if the stimulus is a white person or a negative word. In the second series of trials, the instructions are changed and participants are told to press the left-hand key if the stimulus is a black person or a negative word and to press the right-hand key if the stimulus is a white person or positive word. Research shows that reaction times are quicker when liked faces are paired with positive words and disliked faces with negative words. - - IAT scores are predictive of subtle but potentially important differences in behaviour. Implicit prejudice also predicts discrimination in hiring, negative attitudes about immigration, and aggression in response to provocation - - Higher implicit racism scores in white subjects are also associated with decreased smiling, reduced eye contact, and shorter speaking time in interracial interactions

Answer 3

- - The source is the person who sends a communication, -- the receiver is the person to whom the message is sent. - - The message is the information transmitted by the source - - the channel is the medium through which the message is sent

Answer 4

- - persuasion tends to be more successful when the source has high credibility (expertise or trustworthiness) - - Expertise is a plus, but trustworthiness can be even more important. Trustworthiness is undermined when a source appears to have something to gain - - Likability also increases the effectiveness of a persuasive source - -In addition, people respond better to sources who share similarity with them in ways that are relevant to the issue at hand

Answer 5

- - two-sided arguments seem to be more effective than one-sided presentations (just mentioning two sides can increase your credibility) - - Fear appeals appear to work, if the message is successful in arousing fear. Research reveals that many messages intended to induce fear fail to do so - - Fear appeals are most likely to work when your listeners think they are fairly probable if they don’t take your advice and are avoidable if they do - - The mere exposure effect is the finding that repeated exposures to a stimulus promotes greater liking of the stimulus, so frequent repetition of a message also seems to be an effective strategy

Answer 6

- - The value of forewarning applies to targets of persuasive efforts; when you shop for a new TV, you expect salespeople to work at persuading you, and to some extent this forewarning reduces the impact of their arguments - - the forewarning a receiver gets about a persuasive effort and the receiver’s initial position on an issue, generally seem to be more influential than the receiver’s personality - - studies show that stronger attitudes are more resistant to change - - Considerations that stim- ulate counterarguing in the receiver tend to increase resistance to persuasion - - resistance can promote resistance; when people successfully resist persuasive efforts to change specific attitudes, they often become more certain about those attitude

Answer 7

- - learning theory can help explain a wide range of phenomena, from conditioned fears to the acquisition of sex roles to the development of personality traits - - Attitudes may be learned from parents, peers, the media, cultural traditions, and other social influences - - The affective, or emotional, component in an attitude can be created through classical conditioning, just as other emotional responses - - evaluative conditioning consists of efforts to transfer the emotion attached to a UCS to a new CS - - Operant conditioning may come into play when you openly express an attitude. Agreement from other people generally functions as a reinforcer, strengthening your tendency to express a specific attitude. Disagreement often functions as a form of punishment, which may gradually weaken your commitment to your viewpoint - - Another person’s attitudes may rub off on you through observational learning - - Studies show that parents and their children tend to have similar political attitudes and that college students living in residence halls tend to show some convergence in attitudes

Answer 8

- - dissonance theory assumes that inconsistency among attitudes propels people in the direction of attitude change - - Festinger and Carlsmith had male college students come to a laboratory, where they worked on excruciatingly dull tasks - - When a subject’s hour was over, the experi- menter confided that some participants’ motivation was being manipulated by telling them that the task was interesting and enjoyable before they started it - - Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the experimenter offered to pay the subject if he would tell the person in the adjoining waiting room that the task was enjoyable - - This entire scenario was enacted to coax participants into doing something that was inconsistent with their true feelings (counter-attitudinal behaviour) - - Some participants received a token payment of $1 for their effort, while others received a more substantial payment of $20 - - Later, a second experimenter inquired about the subjects’ true feelings regarding the dull experimental task. The subjects who were paid $1 exhibited more favourable attitude change - - cognitive dissonance exists when related cognitions are inconsistent, that is, when they contradict each other. This creates an unpleasant state of tension that motivates people to reduce their dissonance, usually by altering their cognitions - - The subjects who were paid $20 for lying had an obvious reason for behaving inconsistently with their true attitudes, so these subjects experienced little dissonance. In contrast, the subjects paid $1 had no readily apparent justification for their lie and experienced high dissonance. To reduce it, they tended to persuade themselves that the task was more enjoyable than they had originally thought - - Research has supported Festinger’s claim that dissonance involves genuine psychological discomfort and even physiological arousal - - According to Bem’s self-perception theory, people often infer their attitudes from their behaviour. However, studies eventually showed that self-perception is at work primarily when subjects do not have well-defined attitudes regarding the issue at hand

Answer 9

- - Cognitive dissonance is also at work when people turn attitudinal somersaults to justify efforts that haven’t panned out - - For example, people who wait in line for an hour or more to get into an exclusive restaurant often praise the restaurant afterward even if they have been served a mediocre meal

Answer 10

- - asserts that there are two basic “routes” to persuasion. The central route is taken when people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive messages. The peripheral route is taken when persuasion depends on nonmessage factors, such as the attractiveness and credibility of the source, or on conditioned emotional responses - -Studies suggest that the central route to persuasion leads to more enduring attitude change than the peripheral route - - according to the elaboration likelihood model, the durability of attitude change depends on the extent to which people elaborate on (think about) the con- tents of persuasive communication - - Research also suggests that attitudes changed through central processes predict behaviour better than attitudes changed through peripheral processes

Answer 11

- - Conformity occurs when people yield to real or imagined social pressure - - That said, conformity lies in the eye of the beholder, as people have a curious tendency to see others as more conforming than themselves. Thus, people tend to believe they are “alone in a crowd of sheep” because everyone else is so conforming. - - group size and group unanimity are key determinants of conformity. As groups grow larger, conformity increases, up to a point - - However, group size made little difference if just one accomplice “broke” with the others, wrecking their unanimous agreement. Apparently, the subjects just needed to hear someone else question the accuracy of the group’s perplexing responses

Answer 12

- - Normative influence operates when people conform to social norms for fear of negative social consequences or when they are uncertain how to behave - - Informational influence operates when people look to others for guidance about how to behave in ambiguous situations - - Ultimately, informational influence is all about being right, whereas normative influence is all about being liked

Answer 13

-- Obedience is a form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority

Answer 14

- - A diverse collection of 40 men from the local community. When they arrived at the lab, they drew slips of paper from a hat to get their assignments. The drawing was rigged so that the subject always became the “teacher” and an experimental accomplice became the “learner.” - - participants were induced to use shocks on learners in a learning experiment as feedback when the learners failed at a rigged task - - While the learners were in fact confederates and the shocks were nonexistent, participants believed that they had delivered potentially harmful shocks to another person because they were told to do so by an authority figure, the experimenter - - Participants were induced to increase the shocks to what they believed would be dangerous levels as the learner continued to make mistakes in his task performance. Most participants went ahead and increased the shocks - - As a whole, Milgram was surprised at how high subjects’ obedience remained as he changed various aspects of his experiment - - That said, if the authority figure was called away and the orders were given by an ordinary person (supposedly another participant), full obedience dropped to 20 percent - - In another version, the real subject was always selected to run the shock apparatus in consultation with the other two “teachers.” When both accomplices accepted the experimenter’s orders to continue shocking the learner, the pressure increased obe- dience a bit. However, if an accomplice defied the experimenter and supported the subject’s objections, obedience declined dramatically. If the situational pressures favouring obedience are decreased, obedi- ence declines, as one would expect.

Answer 15

- - Critics maintain that the participants went along only because they knew it was an experiment and “every- thing must be okay.” And some have argued that subjects who agree to participate in a scientific study expect to obey orders from an experimenter. - - Milgram replied by arguing that if subjects had thought, “everything must be okay,” they wouldn’t have experienced the enormous distress that they clearly showed. - - As for the idea that research participants expect to follow an experimenter’s commands, Milgram pointed out that so do real-world soldiers and bureau- crats who are accused of villainous acts performed in obedience to authority - - Overall, the evidence supports the generalizability of Milgram’s results, which were consistently replicated for many years - - Critics noted that without prior consent, subjects were exposed to extensive deception that could undermine their trust in people and to severe stress that could leave emo- tional scars. Moreover, most participants also had to confront the disturbing fact that they caved in to the experimenter’s commands to inflict harm on an innocent victim

Answer 16

- - Burger screened participants with great care, excluding those who seemed likely to experience excessive stress, emphasized repeatedly that participants could withdraw from the study without penalty at any time, and provided instant debriefing after each participant completed the procedure - - Most importantly, he enacted Milgram’s scenario only up through the level of 150 volts. Burger chose 150 volts as the maximum because in Milgram’s series of studies the vast majority of subjects who went past this point went on to administer all the levels of shock - - Interestingly, in spite of the extra precautions, Burger’s study yielded obedience rates that were only slightly lower than those observed by Milgram 45 years earlier. Given Burger’s repeated assurances that participants could withdraw from the study (which one would expect to reduce obedience), it seems likely that people today are just as prone to obedience as they were in the 1960s.

Answer 17

- - the phenomena of conformity and obedience seem to transcend culture. - - many of the studies have reported even higher obe- dience rates than those seen in Milgram’s American samples. For example, obedience rates of over 80 percent have been reported for samples from Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands - - Like many other cultural differences in social behaviour, variations in conformity appear subject to cultural influences (individualism versus collectivism ) - - Various theorists have argued that collectivistic cultures, which emphasize respect for group norms, cooperation, and harmony, probably encourage more conformity than individualistic cultures and have a more positive view of conformity - - Consistent with this analysis, studies have found higher levels of conformity in collectiv- istic cultures than in individualistic cultures

Answer 18

- - Zimbardo and his colleagues designed the Stanford Prison Simulation to investigate why prisons tend to become abusive, degrading, violent environments - - After 70 volunteers were given an extensive battery of tests and interviews, the researchers chose 24 students who appeared to be physically healthy and psychologically stable to be the subjects - - A coin flip determined which of them would be “guards” and which would be “prisoners” in a simulated prison set up at Stanford University - - The prisoners were “arrested” at their homes, handcuffed, and transported to a mock prison on the Stanford campus. - - The subjects assigned to be guards could run their prison in whatever way they wanted, except that they were not allowed to use physical punishment. - - confrontations occurred between the guards and prisoners, and the guards quickly devised a variety of sometimes cruel strategies to maintain total control over their prisoners. Meals, blankets, and bathroom privileges were selectively denied to some prisoners to achieve control. The prisoners were taunted, humiliated, and called demeaning names. Pointless, petty rules were strictly enforced. Difficult prisoners were punished with hard labour. And the guards created a “hole” for solitary confinement of rebellious prisoners. Although there was some variation among the guards, collectively they became mean, malicious, and abusive in fulfilling their responsibilities - - A few prisoners showed signs of emotional disturbance and had to be released early, but they mostly became listless, apathetic, and demoralized. The study was designed to run for two weeks, but Zimbardo decided to end it prematurely after just six days because he was concerned about the rapidly escalating abuse and degradation of the prisoners. The subjects were debriefed, offered counselling, and sent home

Answer 19

- - They attributed the participants’ behaviour to the enormous influence of social roles - - Social roles are widely shared expectations about how people in certain positions are supposed to behave - - The participants had a rough idea of what it meant to act like a guard or a prisoner, and they were gradually consumed by their roles - - Second, the researchers attributed their subjects’ behaviour to the compelling power of situational factors. Before the study began, the tests and interviews showed no measurable differences in personality or character between those randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners. As a result, Zimbardo, like Milgram before him, concluded that situational pressures can lead normal, decent people to behave in sinister, repugnant ways. - - Some critics argued that the Stanford Prison Simulation was more of an elaborate demonstration than an empirical study that collected precise data. Other critics voiced concern that the guards were implicitly encouraged to be abusive, thus tainting the findings.

Answer 20

- - a group consists of two or more individuals who interact and are inter- dependent. - - the nature of groups is evolving because of advances in technology; Traditional groups usually had a designated leader, whereas modern groups often are self-managing, with shared leadership. Similarly, traditional groups tended to be created in a top-down fashion, whereas modern groups often coalesce on their own to explore shared interests.

Answer 21

- - bystander effect: people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone - - In the Darley and Latané (1968) study, students in individual cubicles connected by an intercom par- ticipated in discussion groups of three sizes. Early in the discussion, a student who was an experimental accomplice hesitantly mentioned that he was prone to seizures. Later in the discussion, the same accom- plice faked a severe seizure and cried out for help. Although a majority of participants sought assistance for the student, the tendency to seek help declined with increasing group size - - the most important factor at work appears to be the diffusion of responsibility. If you’re by yourself when you encounter someone in need of help, the responsibility to provide help rests squarely on your shoulders. However, if other people are present, the responsibility is divided among you, and you may all say to yourselves, “Someone else will help."

Answer 22

- - Individuals’ productivity often does decline in larger groups - - Two factors appear to contribute to reduced individual productivity in larger groups. One factor is reduced efficiency resulting from the loss of coordination among workers’ efforts. As you put more people on a yearbook staff, for instance, you’ll probably create more and more duplication of effort and increase how often group members end up working at cross-purposes. - - The second factor contributing to low productivity in groups involves effort rather than efficiency. Social loafing is a reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups as compared to when they work by themselves - - To investigate social loafing, Latané and his colleagues measured the sound output produced by subjects who were asked to cheer or clap as loud as they could. Subjects were led to believe that they were either working alone or in a group of two or six, when in fact they were working alone and individual output was actually being measured (blindfolds and head- phones through which loud noise was played was put on). When participants thought that they were working in larger groups, their individual output declined. - - Since lack of coordination could not affect individual output, the subjects’ decreased sound production had to be due to reduced effort. Latané and his col- leagues also had the same subjects clap and shout in genuine groups of two and six and found an additional decrease in production that was attributed to loss of coordination - - Social loafing and the bystander effect appear to share a common cause: diffusion of responsibility in groups

Answer 23

- - social loafing is less likely when individuals’ personal contributions to productivity are readily identifiable and when group norms encourage productivity and personal involvement - - social loafing is reduced when people work in smaller and more cohesive group

Answer 24

-- Studies with subjects from Japan, China, and Taiwan suggest that social loafing may be less prevalent in collectivistic cultures, which place a high priority on meeting group goals and contributing to one’s ingroups

Answer 25

- - good evidence that decision making in groups may sometimes display or accentuate important biases when compared to individual decision making. - - research by Wilfrid Laurier University’s Roger Buehler and his colleagues has shown that the tendency of individuals to make optimistic predictions regarding how long it will take to complete a task is accentuated as a result of group discussion

Answer 26

- - risky shift; Stoner asked individual subjects to give their recommendations on tough decisions and then asked the same subjects to engage in group discus- sion to arrive at joint recommendations. When Stoner compared individuals’ average recommendation against their group decision generated through discussion, he found that groups arrived at riskier decisions than individuals did - - However, investigators eventually determined that groups can shift either way, toward risk or caution, depending on which way the group is leaning to begin with - - A shift toward a more extreme position, an effect called polarization, is often the result of group discussion - - Thus, group polarization occurs when group discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction - - One reason for group polarization is that group discussion often exposes group members to persuasive arguments that they had not thought about previously. Another reason is that when people discover that their views are shared by others, they tend to express even stronger views because they want to be liked by their ingroups

Answer 27

- - Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision - - groupthink doesn’t produce very effective decision making. Indeed, groupthink can lead to major blunders that may look incomprehensible after the fact - - When groups get caught up in group- think, members suspend their critical judgment and the group starts censoring dissent as the pressure to conform increases. Soon, everyone begins to think alike. Moreover, some members serve as “mind guards” and try to shield the group from information that contradicts the group’s view. - - If the group’s view is challenged from outside, victims of groupthink tend to think in simplistic “us versus them” terms - - Groupthink also promotes incomplete gathering of information. Like individuals, groups often display a confirmation bias, as they tend to seek and focus on information that supports their initial views - - individual members often fail to share information that is unique to them - - What causes groupthink? Group cohesiveness refers to the strength of the liking relationships linking group members to each other and to the group itself. Members of cohesive groups are close-knit, are committed, have “team spirit,” and are very loyal to the group - - Cohesiveness can facilitate group productivity but the danger of groupthink is greater when groups are highly cohesive. - - Groupthink is also more likely when a group works in relative isolation, when the group’s power structure is dominated by a strong, directive leader, and when the group is under stress to make a major decision. Under these conditions, group discussions can easily lead to group polarization, strengthening the group’s dominant view

Chapter 13 Flashcards

(51 cards)