attitudes and stereotypes

• attitude


  evaluation mad up of feelings, beliefs and behaviours towards a person place or event
• explicit attitudes

  conscious judgement held towards an attitude object
• implicit attitudes


  unconscious judgements held towards an attitude object
• tripartite model of attitudes

  
• Festinger theory of cognitive dissonance: people will try to reduce the dissonance between their beliefs and their behaviours
• cognitive dissonance - a feeling of mental disdcomfort when contradictory information is percived
• effects of cognitive dissonance on behaviour

  • avoidance - avoid situations where cognitive dissonance may occur
  • reduction - people seek to reduce cognitive dissonance so their life is balanced
  • rationalisation - when experiencing cognitive dissonance people justify their behaviour
• cognitive dissonancce

  
• Attribution


  process of attaching meaning to a behaviour or the behaviour of others to help make sence of the world
• dispositional attribution- assigning cause of behaviour internally

  situational attribution- assigning causes of behaviour externally

  • self serving bias blaming your wrong on situationally, and other peoples wrongs on dispositional
• social norm


  unwritten rules of beliefs attitudes and behaviours that are considered acceptable in a social group
• social identity 


  sence of self in terms of group membership. positive self identiy allows for positive self esteem
• social identity theory Tadjfel and Turner

  • groups that people belong to are an important source of pride and self esteem
  • stereotyping is based off normal cognitive process
• ingroup - group an individual associates with


  out group - any group an individual doesn't associate with
• social identity theory


  proposes that all members of an ingroup will steryotype members of an outgroup by assuming all members of the outgroup are similar and find ways to show them in poor light to boost their own self esteem
• 3 cognitive stages of determining out group vs in group

  • Social categorisation -categorising people into groups based off characteristics
  • social identification - adopt the identity of the group they categorise themselves into
  • social comparison - comparing the joined group to other groups
• strengths - explains sympathy towards ingroups vs out groups & bias between in and out groups


  limitations - intergroup conflict for competition
• stereotypes - oversimplified belief about an outgroup leading to either positive of negative thoughts about its memebers

  cognitive schemata used to quickly and simply process large amounts of information
• causes of stereotypes

  • media
  • influence from others
  • social communication - second hand information
• prejudice - negative feeling held towards members of an outgroup
• discrimination - unjustified negative actions towards members of an outgroup
• direct discrimintaiton - intentional, individual is treated unfairly bcause of their characteristics
• indirect discrimintation - unintentional, individuals with a specific characteristic are unfairly disadvantages
• just world phenomenon - karma. assumption that everything happens for a reason and the world is just fair
• intergroup contact - interactions between memebers of different gorups
• contact hypothesis - intergroup contact can reduce prejudice and negative stereotypes held against members
• superordinate goals - goals both groups want to achieve but need cooperation from both groups
• robbert cave experiment

  • 2 groups were kept separate, team bonding
  • when aware of each other hostility arouse
  • series of competitive activities
  • cooling off period where had to list similar features between the groups and boys tended to characterise their own group in more positive ways and the other group in negative
• festinger and Carlsmith

  • to investigate whether making people perform a dull task would create cognitive dissonance through forced compliance
  • those bribed $1 rated the tasks as more fun/enjoyable than those bribed $20
  • small amount of money wasn't enough to lie so they changed their belief
  • no informed consent and poor validity bc tasks don't occur in everyday life
• independent variable - variable that you change


  dependent variable - what you measure

  qualitative data - not numbers
• self concept

  A collection of beliefs, ideas and feelings about one’s own identity
• magnitude as a factor affecting cognitive dissonance


  • magnitude is a subjective measure of the level of discomfort an individual feels when experiencing cognitive dissonance
  • greater the magnitude of dissonance the greater the preassure to reduce dissonance
  • 2 factors affecting magnitude of discomfort - more value placed on the situation providing dissonance, maximum level of dissonance an individual can manage before needing to reduce discomfort
• 3 ways to reduce cognitive dissonance

  • change belief, behaviour or perception
• causes for prejudice


  • social influence
  • intergroup competition
  • social categorisation
  • just world phenomenon