Transcript Attitude Change and Prejudice

Attitude Change and Prejudice
20-2
Objectives
• Cite the sources of attitude change
• Describe prejudice and its relationship to
stereotypes and roles
Bell Ringer
• Use overhead from the notebook
• Read story p. 582
Attitude Change
• Cognitive consistency- trying to fit a new
situation into your existing assumptions.
– Make a prejudgment about a situation that
presents you from considering all the possibilities
Attitude Change
• Compliance
– Change of behavior to avoid discomfort or
rejection and gain approval
• Identification
– Seeing oneself as similar to another person or
group and accepting the attitudes of another
person or group as one’s own.
Attitude Change
• Internalization-incorporating the values, ideas,
and standards of others as part of oneself.
– Attitude is an integral part of the person
– Is the most lasting of attitude formation
Cognitive Consistency
• Cognitive consistency- the idea that you are
always trying to get things to fit logically inside
your head
• Cognitive dissonance-the uncomfortable
feeling that arises when a person experiences
contradictory or conflicting thoughts,
attitudes, or beliefs.
Attitudes and Actions
• Actions can affect attitudes
• Counterattitudinal behavior- the process of
taking a public position that contradicts one’s
private attitude.
• Self-justification- the need to rationalize one’s
attitude and behavior.
Attitudes and Actions
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy-a belief, prediction, or
expectation that operates to bring about its
own fulfillment.
Prejudice
• Prejudice- preconceived attitudes toward a
person or group that have been formed
without sufficient evidence and are not easily
changed.
• Stereotype-an oversimplified, hard-to-change
way of seeing people who belong to the same
group or category
Prejudice
• Role- an oversimplfied, hard-to-change way of
acting
• Illusory correlation- we see relationships that
match our set of beliefs while ignoring other
relationships.
Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice is an attitude, discrimination is an
act
• Discrimination-the unequal treatment of
individuals on the basis of race, ethnic group,
age, gender, or membership in another
category rather than on the basis of individual
characteristics.