Social Psychology Exam 3

Discuss the suggestions that are presented in how to resist persuasive messages.

Attitude Inoculation - considering the arguments for and against their attitude before somebody attacks it Being Alert To Product Placement - companies pay the makers of a TV show to incorporate their product into the script, studies show that alerting people to upcoming product placement makes them less susceptible to that persuasive attempt Resisting Peer Pressure - such as exposing adolescents to mild versions of attempts to get them to smoke and having them roleplay counteracting these pressures Reactance Theory - strong prohibitions threaten a person's feeling of freedom, and the boomerang is an attempt to restore that feeling of freedom

Predicting spontaneous behavior, theory of planned behavior.

Attitude accessibility - refers to the strength of the association between an object and an evaluation of it - when accessibility is high, your attitude comes to mind whenever you see or think about the attitude object - when accessibility is low, your attitude comes to mind more slowly Theory of planned behavior - when people have time to contemplate how they are going to behave, the predictor of their behavior is their intention, which is determined by three things - their attitudes toward the specific behavior - their subjective norms - their perceived behavioral control

Describe the components of attitudes and where the attitudes come from.

Attitudes are an enduring evaluation, positive or negative, of people, objects, or ideas. Attitudes consist of three components, - affect - emotional reaction toward the attitude object - cognition - beliefs about it - behavior - actions one takes with respect to it Where the attitude comes from - Cognitively based attitudes - based primarily on a persons beliefs about the properties of the attitude object - Affectively based attitudes - based more on people's feelings and values than on their beliefs - Behaviorally based attitudes - based on self-perception of ones own behavior when the initial attitude is weak or ambiguous

**MultipleChoice** The most powerful determinant of human behavior.

Culture

**MultipleChoice** What are the different ways to reduce cognitive dissonance?

Change behavior Justify behavior by changing one of the dissonant cognitions Justify behavior by adding new cognitions

**MultipleChoice** Classic and operant conditioning of attitudes

Classical conditioning - learning by association Operant conditioning - behaviors that people freely choose to perform increase or decrease frequently, depending on whether they are followed by positive reinforcement or punishment

Describe the role of cognitive dissonance in decision making. Discuss the factors (permanence, importance and irrevocability).

Dissonance is experienced with every decision made. Dissonance is present in making a decision, starting at the beginning and end, postdecision dissonance which is aroused after any important dicision The more permanent a decision, such as marriage, the greater the need to reduce dissonance after making it. Creating the illusion of irrevocability is a factor that increases dissonance and the motivation to reduce it, salesman have created the technique lowballing where they come in with a low price and then claims it was an error and then raises the price, in which the customer will agree on. Signing an agreement or check creates the illusion of irrevocability.

**MultipleChoice** Dissonance theory - moral acts

Dissonance reduction following a difficult moral decision can cause people to behave either more or less ethically in the future, because people's attitudes will polarize in the attempt to justify the ethical choice they made

**MultipleChoice** Emotions as heuristics

Emotions causing an attitude change by acting as a signal for how we feel about something

**MultipleChoice**Explicit and implicit attitudes - differences

Explicit attitudes are ones we consciously endorse and can easily report; implicit attitudes, which are involuntary, uncontrollable, and at times unconscious evaluations

**MultipleChoice** How does emotion effect attitude change

If someone is scared enough, it can cause them to change attitude. Another way emotions can cause attitude change is by acting as a signal for how we feel about something

**MultipleChoice** How do we justify cruel acts we do to humans?

If we harm someone, this induces dissonance between our action and our self-concept as a decent person and resolving this dissonance, we may derogate our victim

The role of mild or insufficient punishment in changing your personal views.

Insufficient punishment induces dissonance about why one is not engaging in the behavior and inspires dissonance reduction by devaluing the forbidden activity or object. This was used in Aronson and Carlsmith's experiment showing that mild, insufficient punishment was effective in changing the attitude of preschoolers towards a forbidden, previously very attractive toy.

Briefly describe the Yale attitude change approach.

It examined the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitude in response to persuasive messages and which focuses on who said what to whom.

**MultipleChoice** Application of the Ben Franklin effect

It is used to get people to like us by asking them for favors instead of doing favors for them

The psychology of insufficient justification, including the role of internal and external justification. Counter attitudinal advocacy and what it results in.

Justification of effort - the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain External justification - reduces dissonance and consists of determining that dissonant personal behavior was caused by some factor outside of the self Internal justification - consists of determining that dissonant personal behavior was caused by something about the self Counter attitudinal advocacy - the process by which people are induced to state publicly an attitude that runs counter to their own attitude. - It results in a change of beliefs

Describe the theory of cognitive dissonance and give an example. Describe impact bias.

The feeling of discomfort caused by performing an action that is discrepant from one's self-concept. Ex. - A man feels its important to take care of the environment and he has bought a non-environmentally friendly vehicle. Impact bias - when someone thinks about how they will react to future negative events

**MultipleChoice** Factors that affect our willingness to pay attention

The relevance of the topic the persons personality

**MultipleChoice** What justification of effort will do to your belief and attitude.

a person may change their attitude towards the thing they worked hard for and see it positively

**MultipleChoice** Fear arousing communications

scaring a person in a way to get someones attention, and to persuade them in a certain direction

**MultipleChoice** Peripheral ques of persuasion

they are persuaded if the surface characteristics or the message, such as the fact that it is long or is delivered by an expert or attractive communicator, make it seem like a reasonable one