Social

Psychology
NIMRAH AHMED
13/ OCTOBER/ 2016,17TH OCTOBER 2016, 18TH OCTOBER 2016 & 19TH OCTOBER 2016
Attitudes

Attitude Formation
 Myers, D.G. (2014). Social Psychology, 11th Edition. McGraw Hill.
International Edition. p. 46, 50, 51, 86, 87 and pp 123 - 127
Define Attitude?
A favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward
something or someone (often rooted in ones belief, and
exhibited in ones feelings and intended behavior)
(p.124)

Changing attitudes hardly affects changing

behaviors. An attitude might just help predict
behavior.
 Example of attitude predicting behavior-

An individual who likes minding their own business and keeping

to themselves, would that person step up in a crowd and help
someone in need? Would they always do this? Or sometimes? Or
never?
Does attitude perfectly predict behavior?
Relationship of attitude and
culture
Is our attitude affected by our culture?
Hazel Markus & Shinobu Kitayama: (p.46):
o Hazels story from a visit to Japan and
Shinobus from America
o There were certain differences they met with-
o 1. Class discussion
o 2. Ordering dinner
o 3. Ordinary path (fork in the path)
Self Analysis and attitudes

Timothy Wilson and colleagues (1985, 2002) (p. 50)

The mental processes that control our social behavior are distinct
from the mental processes through which we explain our
behavior.

CONTROL EXPLAINS
S

What does this

mean?
Activity
Take out a piece of paper

1. How happy are you in Pakistan? On a scale of 1-5,

rate your level of happiness

2. List good and bad things

about Pakistan
On a scale of 1-5, rate
your level of happiness
 What happened there?

CONTROL EXPLAINS
S

FALLACY OF
ANALYSING OUR
FEELINGS
Answer for Q.1 based on gut Answer for Q.2 based on analyzed
feeling feelings

When you dont have to think too When you think and analyze,
much or dont pay too much attention gets dispersed to many
attention to feelings, that is quite factors. Not based on gut feeling,
a predictor future behavior useless in predicting future behavior
 Important reading- pg 51, dating example.
Summary of what we are studying

The relationship between what we are (on the inside) with what
we do (on the outside)
We want to see whether attitudes (underlying beliefs) always
predict behavior
In the beginning, it was thought that changing ones attitude will
change their behavior, but Leon Festinger (p.123) disagreed with
this notion
We are studying to see the relationship between attitudes and
behavior
Dual Attitude System (p. 51)

Whatever we have studied thus far, two mental processes have

been at work. Can you name them?
Implicit attitudes (automatic/ gut feeling based)
Explicit attitudes (consciously controlled/ thought through)
Our implicit attitudes differ from our explicit attitudes

From childhood, for example, we may retain a habitual, automatic

fear or dislike of people for whom we now consciously verbalize
respect and appreciation.
Wilson: implicit attitudes, like old habits, change more slowly.
Reconstructing our past attitudes
(p.86)
Up till now we have seen what attitudes are, cultural impact on
attitudes, the implicit and explicit attitudes. But do our long held
attitudes change?
People whose attitudes have changed often insist that they have
always felt much as they now feel
Daryl Bem and Keith McConnell (1970) conducted a survey among
Carnegie Mellon University students. Buried in it was a question
concerning student control over the university curriculum
A week later, the students agreed to write an essay opposing student
control. After doing so, their attitudes shifted toward greater opposition
to student control. When asked to recall how they had answered the
question before writing the essay, the students remembered holding
the opinion that they now held and denied that the experiment had
affected them
A bit more about the experiment

After an initial measurement of student attitudes, which were

favorable toward student control, Bem and McConnel assigned
students to write an essay opposing student control. By writing
an essay proclaiming views different from the ones they held,
students' views changed to become less favorable toward
student control. When Bem and McConnell asked the students
how they had felt at the beginning of the study, students insisted
that they had always felt less favorable toward student control.
The students believed that the experiment had not changed their
opinions, even though it had changed their opinions significantly
Rosy Retrospection (p.86-87)
Besides the long held attitudes that we just spoke about, do we
change the attitude towards memories?
Think about the last time you went out with your friends, to a big
fun get together. How was it?
Terence Mitchell, Leigh Thompson, and colleagues (1994, 1997):
recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced
them
Likely to minimize the boring and unpleasant aspects and
remember the high points
Its not that we are totally unaware of how we used to feel, just that
when memories are hazy, current feelings guide our recall
 Cathy McFarland and Michael Ross (1985) found that as our
relationships change, we also revise our recollections of other
people. They had university students rate their steady dating
partners. Two months later, they rated them again.
Students who were more in love than ever had a tendency to
overestimate their first impressionsit was love at first sight.
Those who had broken up were more likely to underestimate
their earlier likingrecalling the partner as somewhat selfish and
bad-tempered.
What does this tell you about rosy retrospection?
How well do our attitudes predict
our behavior? (p.123-27)

Affect
(feelings) Feelings and thought
process interact and
predict how we might
Cognition act
Behavior
(thoughts)
 To answer the question, Alan Wicker (1969), did a bit of study
Looked at different research studies and found out that : peoples
expressed attitudes hardly predicted their varying behaviors
Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to the
likelihood of their actually cheating
Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with
worship attendance on any given Sunday
The disjuncture between attitudes and actions is what Daniel Batson and
his colleagues (1997, 2001, 2002; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007, 2008) call
MORAL HYPOCRISY (what is this). appealing task with a possible $30
prize and a dull task with no rewards. Only 1 in 20 believed that
assigning the positive task to themselves was the more moral thing to
do, yet 80 percentPEOPLES
did so. (further: coin toss) ATTITUDES
EXPRESSED
HARDLY PREDICTED THEIR VARYING
BEHAVIORS
When do attitudes predict
behavior then? PREDICT PEOPLES BEHAVIOR BETTER THAN
BOTH EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT ATTITUDES

EITHER ALONE
Behavior and expressed attitude differ due to multiple influences, such
as social influences, so when these factors are minimal, attitudes predict
behaviors
Tests have been discovered to help assist in measuring the tiniest signs
that will help see true implicit attitudes
A newer and widely used attitude measure, the implicit association
test (IAT) , uses reaction times to measure how quickly people
associate concepts (Greenwald & others, 2002, 2003).
Example: One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by
assessing whether White people take longer to associate positive words
with Black faces than with White faces. Implicit attitude researchers
have offered various IAT assessments online (projectimplicit.net)
Remember the dual attitudes system?
Implicit Bias
Bias at a level below consciousness
Eg, Bias against Muslims
The three characteristics of implicit bias:-
1. Implicit biases are pervasive. For example, 80 percent of
people show more implicit negativity toward the elderly
compared with the young
2. People differ in implicit bias. Depending on their group
memberships, their conscious attitudes, and the bias in their
immediate environment, some people exhibit more implicit bias
than others
3. People are often unaware of their implicit biases. Despite
thinking themselves unprejudiced, even the researchers exhibit
some implicit biases (negative associations with various social
groups).
Attitudes

Persuasion & Cognitive Dissonance

 Myers, D.G. (2014). Social Psychology, 11th Edition. McGraw Hill.
International Edition. pp 229 - 2
Smith, J.R. & Haslam, S.A. (2014). Social Psychology. Revisiting
the Classic Studies. 42 - 55
Persuasion

What is persuasion?

The process by which a message

induces change in beliefs, attitudes
or behaviors
The power of persuasion (p.230-231)
1. 9/11
In 2003, there was a rift between America and other countries as
to the military action against Iraq where Americans favored it and
others opposed it
Why was there an opinion gap between countries? Was there any
persuasion at work?
YES! Us media led half of the Americans to believe that Saddam
Hussein was involved in 9/11 and also to believe that weapons of
mass destruction were to be found in Iraq
Persuasion occurs TOP-DOWN, from elites or someone in power
to the rest. Hence, wherever people lived the war was seen in
that light- either as Americas liberation of Iraq or as Americas
What is happening at
invasion of Iraq

present between Pakistan

and India?
So is persuasion all bad?
All the schools that have opened and are promoting education in
Pakistan, have they changed the minds of the lower class
towards education? Eg, TCF.
Polio campaigns?
Malala and education in Pakistan for women

Bad Good
persuasion - persuasion-
Propaganda Education
2. Al Gores case
This individual for three decades has been raising awareness
about the negative impact of pollution. From melting ice caps to
rising seas to climate waring etc
Through many means he is working towards creating awareness
and changing peoples attitude towards pollution, he is involved in
MASS PERSUASION
Is his work education or propaganda? Whatever it is, persuasion
is everywhere
3. NASA faked moon landing
Claim happens to be that in 1969, NASA put two men down on
the moon
Many believe it to be a fake landing and a fake set up
Over the years, there were many rebuttals claiming that the
landing was a fact and not faked
Two sides, which one persuaded better?

9/11, Gores case and Nasa landing-

all three are examples of
controversy theories. They are
debatable, there is disagreement,
and whichever side of the story
persuades better- gets more
support
What path leads to persuasion?
(231- 233)
Factors that influence persuasion?

The message, the The peoples thoughts in

communicator, the response to all that
content stated on the left
 Persuasion entails clearing several hurdles, the more hurdles cleared out of the way, the
smoother the process of persuasion
 The two paths

Central route - The

Peripheral route- The
central route occurs
peripheral route
when interested
occurs when people
people focus on the
are
arguments and
influenced by
respond with
incidental
favorable thoughts. If
cues, such as a
the argument is
speakers
weak, people counter
attractiveness.
argue
Explicit and Implicit and
Reflective Automatic
 Dont forget to read from pg. 231-233, including different paths
for different purposes
A heuristic is a rule of thumb or
shortcut that generally, but not
always, solves the problem.
Remember what primacy effect
was?
Information presented early is most persuasive. First impressions
are important.
For example, can you sense a difference between these two
descriptions?
John is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical,
stubborn, and envious.
John is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive,
industrious, and intelligent
Persuasion techniques
Only 17 % consented
1. Foot in the door technique (p.134-135)
Research with Californians

Be a safe
driver
Nearly all consented

76% consented
 2. Lowball (p. 135- 136)
It is a variation of foot in the door phenomenon
A tactic for getting people to agree to something. People who
agree to an initial request will often still comply when the
requester ups the ante. People who receive only the costly
request are less likely to comply with it.
E.g. if the students first agreed to participate in an experiment
without knowing the time and only then were asked to participate
at 7:00 a.m., 53 percent came
Initially compliance to a small request only to reveal later
additionally cost involved
 3. door in the face (p.256)
A strategy for gaining a concession. After someone first turns
down a large request (the door-in-the face), the same requester
counteroffers with a more reasonable request.
When Robert Cialdini and colleagues (1975) asked some of their
Arizona State University students to chaperone delinquent
children on a zoo trip, only 32 percent agreed to do so. With
other students the questioner first made a very large request
that the students commit 2 years as volunteer counselors to
delinquent children. After getting the door-in-the-face in
response to this request (all refused), the questioner then
counter offered with the chaperoning request, saying, in effect,
OK, if you wont do that, would you do just this much? With this
technique, nearly twice as many56 percentagreed to help.
Cognitive dissonance and
Persuasion
Cognitive dissonance is at the heart of many form of persuasion
With all the information presented, dissonance is experienced
After which either a belief undergoes change or the action
The person trying to persuade would want to persuade and take
advantage of the dissonance