Transcript Intro Psych Jan28

Social Psychology (Chapter 8)
Second Lecture Outline:
Attibutions and Attitudes
Attitude change
Conformity
Social Cognition:
– How we perceive and interpret information
from ourselves and others
– What attributions are made below?
Attributions
• People are motivated to seek causes and
explanations of behavior related to situations and
dispositions
• You ask someone to dance. They say no. Why?
– Because I am a loser (personal attribution)
– Because they are talking to friends or do not like the
music (situational attribution)
• Someone bumps you in line. Why?
– Because they are an !@?&#!!.. This is a fundamental
attribution bias where we over-emphasize internal
causes behavior
– They may have tripped and are not “evil”
Self-serving bias
• Internalize success and externalize blame
• Winning a hockey game because “we’re a good
team”, losing because they were “lucky” or you
“did not get the bounces”
• Self-handicapping is the opposite, e.g., pass a test
because “it was easy”, fail “because I am stupid”
• Just-world hypothesis: People make sense of
senseless events based on their biases, e.g.,
tornado hits a particular region, people say it was
fate and deserved by those people
Attitude
• Who here has had a market survey
conducted over the telephone? What kinds
of questions? What products or issues?
• All assessed attitudes, defined as learned,
stable, relatively enduring evaluation of a
person, object, or idea
• Cognitive, behavioral, and affective
components
Aspects of attitudes
• Cognitive dissonance: Attitudes conflict, therefore
must change to create balance
– O.J. Simpson: Positive (great football player) vs.
negative (domestic violence history), therefore you
think either he is innocent or you now hate him
• Observational learning or modelling
– Michael Jordon wears Nike shoes
– But Joe DiMaggio and coffee makers?
– Beer commercials at the beach: Classical conditioning
or modeling?
Attitude change
• Central route: provide a direct argument
– Cigarette packaging (the latest: smoking causes impotence]
– Physical fitness ads “participaction”
– Direct appeals for votes during elections
• Peripheral route: indirect messages
– Smoking posters in doctor’s offices
– Seeing active adults
– “Photo-ops” kissing babies, no silly hats
Credibility and likability: Who would you
hire to be in your running shoe commercial?
Why?
Coercive Attitude change: Cults,
pressure sales tactics
• Person is put under physical or emotional distress, e.g., eat,
sleep, activity disrupted
• Problems are reduced to a single issue which is repeated,
e.g., do you want to be happy? Have a clean house?
• Leaders offer unconditional love, acceptance, and attention
• New identity results from group or purchase of product,
e.g., cult identity, “new product owner”, “Crotch-laker”
• Entrapment: Foot-in-the-door technique, e.g., criticise
your country, let sales-person in your door
• Access to other information is controlled, e.g., cults are
isolated, sales have to be “right now”, “in the next 50
seconds”
In the early 1970's, two individuals (my task partner and myself) from the Evolutionary Level Above
Human (the Kingdom of Heaven) incarnated into (moved into and took over) two human bodies that
were in their forties. I moved into a male body, and my partner, who is an Older Member in the Level
Above Human, took a female body. (We called these bodies "vehicles," for they simply served as
physical vehicular tools for us to wear while on a task among humans. They had been tagged and set
aside for our use since their birth.) -- Website excert
On its own, is this information persuasive?
Certain psychological themes which recur in these various
historical contexts also arise in the study of cults. Cults can
be identified by three characteristics:
1.a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an
object of worship as the general principles that may have
originally sustained the group lose their power;
2.a process called coercive persuasion or thought reform;
3.economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group
members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
Basic principles of a group
•
•
•
•
A number of individuals who interact
Social facilitation: joggers speed up
Social inhibition: first tee in golf
Arousal facilitates well-learned responses but
inhibits novel responses
– Exam stress wipes out newly learned material but can
enhance well-learned strategies and material
– Distraction-conflict: “Hey Mom watch!”
• Conformity: People tend to go along with the
group, want to be liked, get along, identify with
others
Other group processes
• Social loafing: Individual energy expended goes
down as the number of people goes up, e.g., your
science partner “goofs off” in group of 4, but not 2
• Illusion of unanimity: Group polarization, when
in groups, views become extreme
• Conflict resolution: Is this at the expense or
benefit of yourself and the other side?
• Groupthink: Isolated, biased leadership, and high
stress can lead to unusual and close-minded
decisions. Dissenters have pressure to conform