Psychology 315 Ch. 7 Attitudes, Beliefs and Consistency Part 1

Determines whether people consistent in their behavior across situations or not Self-monitoring variable important, high and low self-monitors are equally capable, but in different situations

Lasting, general evaluations (good, bad, likable vs. unlikable) of “attitude object” - people, objects or issues that guide decisions and behavior Evaluations of attitude objects can occur outside awareness (implicit level), in the few microseconds of exposure (occur very quickly, don’t deliberate about these things, like or dislike something at an implicit level). These reactions occur for nearly everything we encounter. Some scientists say that it is impossible to feel neutrally about anything. Why is it important to do this, make these judgments so quickly? Withholding judgment in a potentially dangerous situation could threaten our survival, need to respond quickly to everything we encounter Attitudes are strongly affective – we feel positive or negative about the attitude object. We also possess knowledge about attitude objects – beliefs (beliefs, feelings very important)

Yes - affective reactions can be both positive and negative for the same attitude object – two dimensional affect experience, positive and negative affect independent dimensions, can have both positive and negative feelings about an affect object Can have high negative and high positive reaction = ambivalence, low negative and low positive reaction = indifference (low feelings about an affect object in general), low positive and high negative reaction = negative attitude, high positive and low negative reaction = positive attitude

Attitudes exist at both explicit and implicit levels. Those attitudes need not be highly related and they may influence different outcomes.

Easy to control and so stated attitudes may reflect situational norms and self-presentation motivesGoverned by social norms, values, external pressures, more related to verbalizations (how do you feel), highly controlled

Affective content, highly related to behavior (how a person acts), behavior is less controlled – can leak out through behavior

Classical ConditioningInstrumental ConditioningObservational LearningSocial ComparisonDirect ExperienceRepeated (and Mere) ExposurePriming

How does it work? (i.e. in getting a prejudicial attitude about a group) Unconditioned stimulus, response – response of someone else to the group Conditioned stimulus, response – members of another group that we might not hold a prejudice against i.e. conditioned stimulus – Iowan, conditioned response – fear Something we hold an irrational fear against – i.e. snakes, spiders, cockroaches, is often classically conditioned

How does it work? Actions that are positively rewarded you will repeat, actions that are punished you will not repeat Get a lot of attitudes that way, a lot of attitudes you share with family, peers, teachers come from this

Look around to see how others react to particular object, especially if person being rewarded, punished (instrumental conditioning through proxy) – i.e. see brother being rewarded for attitude, think that you can get that same reward if you display the same attitude

How should I feel? Turn to peer groups as a source of information – the attitudes they hold we think must be the right attitude, seeking information to tell us what is the proper attitude to hold

Most powerful source of attitude formation, engage attitude object (i.e. trying particular food item – once you try a particular food our attitude about it is very powerful, strong)

When repeatedly exposed to attitude object, even if you don’t remember how many times you have been exposed, more exposure = more positive attitude about object Exposed to something without recognition Research supports the importance of repeated exposure, but with two important qualifications · The initial response to the attitude object must be neutral or positive (initial negative attitude makes you hate it even more with repeated exposure) · Too much repetition can be harmful The underlying mechanism is that repetition leads to familiarity and familiarity leads to liking Repetition – Familiarity – LikingWe need not be aware of the repeated exposure for repetition to have an effect

Participants read aloud what they were told were Turkish adjectives (actually fabricated words) – made up words means that the person’s initial attitude toward the word is neutral in a study of foreign language pronunciation. Later they were asked to evaluate the words for their “goodness of meaning.” Some words were pronounced more often than others à KEY What happens when you have to say the word a lot versus a little – the subjects who had to say words more repeatedly rated the words rated as more favorable suggesting that repeated exposure has an effect The more you pronounce words the more you like it because you are increasing your ability to pronounce Turkish words Zajonc (follow up study) participants simply view what they were told were Chinese ideographs, in what was describe as a study of foreign language learning. Asked which ones gave good, bad connotations – those who saw pictographs more often rated their goodness as higher as compared to those who saw the pictographs less Zajonc had participants view photographs of men in what was described as study of visual memory. The more times a person saw the photograph, generally tended to like the individual more (familiarity leads to warm, fuzzy, positive feelings toward the person) * Point - doesn’t matter what you repeat, same kind of relationship = as exposure frequency goes up, leads to a more favorable attitude (like things that we are familiar with, familiar with things that we see a lot, too much exposure = bad thing)

Possible for the activation of one particular object in memory to trigger other objects in memory, could be particularly automatic*Murphy and Zajonc study - Zajonc showed participants Chinese ideographs for 2 seconds and then asked them how much they liked the appearance of each one. Unbeknownst to the participants the ideographs were preceded by stimuli that were flashed too quickly for participants to notice consciously Participants liked the ideographs more when they were preceded by positive “subliminal” stimuli (happy prime before character led to higher rating of character than negative, unhappy face)