L21 Social beliefs and attitudes
Cards (13)
- What is attitude?A relatively enduring evaluation of a given entity.
- Strong attitudes are characterised by what?
- Persistence over time
- Resistance to change
- Habitual impact on a person’s life
- What is the knowledge function of attitudes?They help us to explain and understand the world, providing a sense of structure.
- What is the instrumental function of attitudes?By highlighting ‘good’ and ‘bad‘ entities, they allow us to maximise our chances of receiving the former and avoiding the latter.
- What is value-expressive function?Allows us to express and reinforce our sense of self and identity.
- What is the ego-defensive function of attitudes?Attitudes can serve as a defence mechanism, for example they can protect our self esteem or justify actions that make us feel guilty.
- What is the ABC approach?
- Affective component: a person’s emotions towards an entity
- Behavioural component: a person‘s habitual and/or preferred actions towards an entity.
- Cognitive component: a person’s beliefs about an entity.
- What is the theory of planned behaviour?
- Tries to describe the relationship between a person’s cognition and behaviour
- Willingness to act in a certain manner is determined by three types of beliefs:
- Behavioural - belief the behaviour will produce a specific outcome
- Normative - belief that others expect them to person or suppress a specific behaviour
- Control - belief about the factors that may facilitate or hinder performing the behaviour
- Cognitive dissonance: when the three ABCs are not aligned
- Systematic persuasion: a change in attitude brought about by appeals to logic or reason.
- Heuristic persuasion: a change in attitude brought about by appeals to logic or habit.
- Sleeper effect: information from non-credible sources can have a delayed impact because people tend to forget the source.
- Unbelieving effect: the human mind seems to quickly believe everything and then needs to actively ‘unbelieve‘ it - requires cognitive resources.