Actions affecting attitudes
Under some circumstances, one’s actions can influence attitudes.
They include:
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon is the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
Actions affecting attitude pt2
The Low-ball technique
consists of getting a person to agree to something; then, once they have committed, making the offer less attractive.
Actions affecting attitudes pt3
Playing a role can influence or change one’s attitude
Role is a set of expectations in a social setting that define how one ought to behave
Cognitive dissonance theory
is the theory that we act to reduce discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent.
• When our attitudes are inconsistent with our actions we change our attitude:
social influence
social influence has huge power of social influence on our actions and attitudes
social facilitation
is improved performance on tasks in the presence of others
• Occurs with simple or well learned tasks (very well rehearsed)
• but NOT with tasks that are difficult or NOT yet learned
• Being watched increases our arousal
Arousal strengthens our ability to preform well-learned tasks, but it diminishes our performance on tasks we have not yet mastered.
social loafing
is the tendency for people in a group to exert
less of their efforts towards attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
• People may be less accountable in a group, or
• they may think their efforts are not needed
effort when pooling
Group influence
5 main types + four others
1. Social facilitation
2. Social loafing
3. Deindividuation
4. Group polarization
5. Groupthink
Other Influences on Decision Making
1. Overconfidence
2. Confirmation Bias
3. Heuristics
4. Framing
attribution therory
the therory that we tend to explain behaviour of others as an aspect of either
1. internal disposition (inner trait)
2. the situation
Dispositional attribution
Attributing someone’s actions to the person’s disposition i.e. their thoughts, feelings, personality characteristics, etc.
Situational disposition
Attributing someone’s actions to the various factors in the Situation
Fundamental attribution therory
Fundamental attribution therory is the tendency to attribute the behaviour of others to internal dispositions rather than to situations
self serving bias
Sel serving bias is a readiness to percive oneself favorbility
• we tend to attribute the bad things wedo to situations and the good things we do to our dispositions.
Aftermath of Milgram’s Obedience Study
found that the likelihood of obedience increased
-when:
• the victim could not be seen
• the authority figure giving the orders was close at hand,
• authority figure was part of a prestigious organization or institution.
Obedience decreased if participants could observe a defiant role model.
Milgram’s obedience experiment provoked a debate over research ethics
Deindividiuation
is the loss of self-awareness & self-constraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal
& anonymity
People lose their sense of responsibility when in a group
group polarization
is enhancement of a group’s already-existing affitudes through discussion within the group
Discussion among the like-minded tends to strengthen preexisting attitudes.
groupthink
is the mode of thinking that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in a decision-making group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making
outcome
The desire for group consensus/cohesion overrides a realistic desire to present alternatives
availability heuristics
is estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory
Can be correct or incorrect
think, Hey
will stay
It helps us explain how media coverage of plane crashes or shark attacks can lead us to overestimate older ppl still the frequency with which these events occur.
confirmation bias
is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs or hypotheses.
• we believe what we want to believe.
• we look for facts that support our world view
Framing
Framing is how an issue is worded or presented, which can influence decisions and judgements Can you imagine what would happen if ground beef were marketed as:
• 20% fat instead of 80% lean?
What if a surgeon bragged about a
2% death rate, rather than a 98% success rate?
Conformity
occurs when people simply do NOT want to be different.
• They are not necessarily self-censoring.
• Rather, they are going along so they will fit in
self-fufilling prophecy
when we believe something to be true about others and we act in a way that cause this belief to come true
